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.
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?
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?
Correct.
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.
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.
