They are Scary if you don't do any research into it to find out that the amount of scare mongering in the world right now is unjust.
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
38 points (67.0% liked)
Memes
45888 readers
1245 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
I'm pro nuclear not anti
Yes, because energy companies would never cheap out on safety for the sake of profit.
NAVSEA's safety record is 100% due to explicit, institutional anal-retentiveness. Rickover was a power tripping dick, but God damn was he effective. PG&E would shut down if they had to get ORSE'd
So, are those small modular reactors in the room with us now?
I'm not certain what you mean by that but if you are asking how small they would be and where they would be placed the normal recommendation would be you would want a warehouse sized facility with an Olympic sized swimming pool to submerse a standard container sized reactor. You would probably house one to three reactors per facility. You would probably want an exclusion zone of 1 mi. Minimum. Depending on the model a single reactor would be able to power roughly 50,000 to 100,000 homes. Ideally you would build one of these 20 miles from a city. Plug in the SMRs and after 15 to 20 years unplug them and replace with newer models ship them off to a long-term storage facility and eventually process them for fuel once a we have functional thorium salt reactors at scale.
They're saying they don't exist
I don't even know how to argue with that viewpoint. Are they denying that we have small modular reactors what? It's a technology that's been employed since the '50s. I literally have a link at the top of the post.
I like you. You're funny. I your original post you're making fun of people because they can't tell the difference between military small reactors and commercial SMRs. Now you're saying (correctly) that they're the same thing. Which is it now?
Right, but they don't exist commercially and are 10 years away by best estimate (I think I haven't looked lately). Also, Navy style reactors are not anything like SMR designs currently under development. They are much closer to current PWR reactors in use. I love the idea of more nuclear, hell that's what I do for a living. I just feel like SMRs are more vapor ware that's always "10 years away". I hope not, I know some really smart people who are currently working at Terrapower trying to make it a reality.
All of the three candidates that I'm aware that are currently trying to get department of energy clearance for commercialization are pressurized water reactors...
And what is the timeline for commercial deployments? And what is the timeline for commercial deployments at a scale that might make a significant contribution to overall energy generation? And how realistic are those timelines after decades of delays?
The first module is expected to be operational by 2029 with full plant operation the following year.
Uh huh. Let's see how that goes. And even if they do succeed with that. It'll still be decades until these things can make a significant contribution. Which was my point all along.
If people like you would stop naysaying then we could expedite the process
Correct.
They literally do exist and have for 70 years
I'm gonna say it!
~thorium~
Forum reactors would be cool but I'm only basing this off the difference between modern small modular pressurized water reactors vs Soviet designs from wwii
Haha yeah, those who don't agree with me must surely be stupid.
That will show them.
I know for some reason it is never popular to argue against the pro nuclear propaganda that keeps getting posted both here and on the old site, but I just hate how it tries to make anyone seem stupid that is afraid of the myriad of problems with this technology that are still unsolved to this day.
Especially considering how nuclear energy gets dominated so hard by renewables.
the myriad of problems with this technology that are still unsolved to this day
Like what?
Cost. Simple as that.
Nuclear power is not economically viable, never has been, probably never will. The only reason it exists are massive subsidies.
You really really should look into how much subsidies get thrown at Coal oil and natural gas
As I said in my other comment: coal is not the alternative here. You're not refuting any argument. Just look into the cost projections of your SMRs and then look at the current cost of solar and wind.
What you're missing is solar and wind projections do not consider a grid scale storage solution.... Factor into the grid scale storage solution with modern battery technology and suddenly the SMRs are a lot cheaper than battery super warehouses every few miles.
Again I am not saying we should not be building more renewables I'm just stating that we should also be developing more reactors with the renewables.
Long term storage and/or reprocessing of fuel. On site storage is not a viable long term solution. We need some way to safely store expended fuel or change the rules to allow reprocessing. Commercially, we need to figure out an economical way to build power plants that doesn't die under the weight of its own regulations. Vogtle 3 & 4 went waaayy over budget, and almost bankrupted the partners (Westinghouse I believe). Solar and wind are seeing reduction in cost due to expanding market and the economy of scale that goes with it, along with generous subsidies. For nuclear to get those benefits it would have to be constructed at a rate not seen since Three Mile Island. We lost all of those benefits accrued during the 60s 70s and 80s. We would be starting at least 10 years behind wind and solar.
Shut up with your facts and logic this is clearly an emotional response only zone
Your post is clearly based on emotion only, so I don't think you're doing yourself many favors trying to be sarcastic here.
This post was based on the fact y'all don't have basic reading comprehension skills. I only have like 60 comments total maybe read through some of them.
I didn't call you stupid I stated that anti-nuclear activists have a tendency to compare 80-year-old technology to modern technology and claim it's the same thing. If you can recognize the difference in the pictures then you're not stupid.
We could shut down every coal fired plant and replace the coal fired apparatus with a modern reactor and keep the current steam turbine facility in place. But tell me more about how keeping Cole burning and spewing radioactive nuclei into the atmosphere as preferable than hypothetical meltdown situations.
And that will take just, what, 200 years? Nuclear reactors aren't diesel engines, they take a while to build.
Also, assuming the only option besides nuclear is coal, is stupid at best, but I'd assume, you're misleading on purpose here.
If only we could use an assembly like process on a proven modular self contained reactor design to turn them out of a factory like clockwork. It's almost like you don't have to build an entire condensing tower if you already have one from a coal fired plant and it's basically a direct engine swap. Does this gloss over a lot of complications Yes Yes it does is it a realistic solution Yes it is. You're complaining that there isn't an economy of scale will also stopping an economy of scale from existing...
And if my grandma had wheels, she would be a bike.
You're massively oversimplifying pretty much everything involved here. Nuclear reactors are not just pressure cookers with concrete shielding, they're very complicated machines. Even countries with a, let's say rather speedy certification and construction process like China need years, if not decades to build a reactor. From a design that already exists.
You're proposing an unproven reactor, with unproven economics, retrofitted in an unproven way into aging infrastructure, using factories that don't exist yet. Why?
Seriously, give me one viable reason, why any sane person would do that? I'm deliberately ignoring all safety concerns, this is just about economics. We have proven, existing, scalable and cheap technologies (wind, solar). Yes, they do have downsides, like any technology, but those are known, quantifiable and solvable. So why would an investor give money to a nuclear company? There are currently two reasons: expectations of subsidies and an almost insane desire for anything nuclear out of principle (this is you).
I'm not against nuclear power per se, but currently, there's simply no viable approach to that.
Do me a favor and read. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nrc-certifies-first-us-small-modular-reactor-design#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Nuclear%20Regulatory%20Commission,use%20in%20the%20United%20States.
If we can get economies of scale involved that solar and wind currently utilize then we will also see a similar massive drop in price
The biggest, best argument against nuclear energy is the limited fuel supply.
If the world replaced base load power with nuclear (as a nuclear plus solar plus wind energy mix) we would only have enough uranium for something like 50 years
The waste storage problem isn't worth it for so little time, but OTOH we need to solve the storage problem anyway, and 50 years of CO2 clean power would be useful for aiding decarbonising the energy supply
-
spent fuel can be recycled and it isn't a terrible complex process to do so
-
even if we didn't recycle spent fuel there's far more than 50 years worth left on land
-
even if we ran out of land sources spent fuel there's 4.5 billion tons of uranium dissolved in the ocean
- Doesn't that require breeder reactors? They're a nuclear proliferation risk, so can't really be allowed in untrusted countries
- I think the 50 year number excludes resources that are unavailable, for example an enormous uranium deposit in Australia, which cannot be extracted because the indigenous owners of the land have traditions about the area which make it untouchable
- Extracting elements from sea water is stupidly expensive
-
no, just simple reprocessing. Breeder reactors are even better and can generate fuel from u-238, but wouldn't be necessary for several centuries at least
-
I think the 50 year number comes from anti nuclear activists, there's about 8 million tons of uranium out there only considering proven reserves, if we restarted prospecting we could find more
-
if you're desalinating anyways and reprocessing spent fuel you don't need much, the average nuclear plant needs 27 tons per year per 1000 MW of capacity, and 95% of that can be recycled without breeder reactors
- No, not breeders, but reprocessing. There is still a lot of usable fuel left in an "expended" fuel cell, just not in enough concentration.
If I remember correctly non-viable fuel ratio is anything under 95% pure.
There's far more available fuel than that. As demand grows it becomes worth finding more. Even without reprocessing and thorium, it's unlikely that running out of uranium is actually a problem.
I am not trying to be condescending but I would very much like to know where you got your facts and figures from.