If we can stuff one in a metal tube and sail it underwater round the world, we can surely build many micro plants where they are needed, and not risk a Chernobyl or Fukushima.
It’s not the technology, it’s the regulation blocking the technology, that I worry about.
These devices are absolutely the way to go. Safe, clean, and extraordinarily versatile, a really distributed power grid, and not amenable to centralized control. These things ARE the future. IMHO.
Wouldn’t it be smarter to focus on and expand where Tesla left off? Specifically his ideas and experiments about FREE ENERGY that is all around us transmitted wirelessly to the masses. You will need his research papers, see the CIA,NSA,FBI....
Pebble Bed Reactors?..........
Any idea what kind of reactors these SMRs will be? I read about the molten salt reactors not too long ago and they seemed promising.
Why do we need renewables at all if these are cheap and efficient? No ugly fields of solar panels and bird-killing wind mills are required if this works,
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‘SMRs are also capable of generating base load electrical power.’
True. American technology from Cal Tech and Berkeley brought about four tools in the 1980’s that should be used to strengthen American, decrease energy prices and please the global warming freaks.
Plasma recyclers. Turn everything (even radioactive waste) into electricity.
Boron cars. One tank lasts twenty years.
Integral fast reactors. Clean, safe, self-contained and capable of powering 80% of America.
Oil. A natural, abundant, renewable substance that should be 50 cents/gallon.
What blocks the 80’s technology? Blindness of leaders.
What opens the 80’s technology? Discovery and awe.
There are 3 nuclear core meltdowns in Japan that will be dumping radioactive waste into the environment daily for decades (and have been doing so since March 2011). And yet, nuclear power is STILL being touted as “clean”???????!
Nuclear engineers are the first to admit the technology does not exist to clean up Fukushima but the “answer” is to forget about it and build something new?
I don’t think we’ll see super-saver coupons in the Harbor Freight flyer for a cheap family size chinese knockoff nuclear pile anytime soon.
The grid is a big risk and copper loss is huge in transmission. Local small sources of power make sense like nuke sub power plants for counties and cities. Thorium would be best...
Light Water Reactor design is stupid.
I need a 50 megawatt modular plant for my anti-gravity craft.
Unlike today's pressurized water reactor fueled by solid uranium-235 fuel rods, MSR's use commonly-found thorium-232 dissolved in molten fluoride salts as fuel and doesn't need the enormous expense of a overbuilt pressurized reactor vessel, either. Also, because the fuel is in liquid form already, there's no such thing as a "reactor meltdown."
Because of its very safe operation, that makes it possible for much smaller reactor buildings for the 50 to 250 MW size MSR's. And it could make it possible to locate a lot more power generation plants very close to the places the needed the most, like factories, larger computer server farms and urban areas. And that means a lot less reliance on expensive (and sometimes unreliable) long range power transmission across state lines.
Sounds to me like we’re just continuing on with a bad idea. If we’re looking for small, scalable power generation, look to gas turbines.
Each SMR module can be operated independently of others to match operation coordinated with renewables’ fluctuating duty cycle. To accommodate varying electrical power demand or refueling or maintenance outages, the SMR modules provide optimum electrical generation.
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Or so they say. These things have been promised for many years.