Posted on 06/19/2022 9:28:28 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Outside the United States, nuclear is entering a golden era, especially in China. There is a record building boom in current and announced plants, including more than 225 plants in China alone. Costs are being driven down to exceptionally affordable levels. Best practice current nuclear plants deliver costs of $0.05/kwh versus the average U.S. electric bill of $0.14/kwh. Most impressively, technology is rapidly evolving to safe, low-waste fourth-generation technology, or GEN IV, expected to be commercialized by 2030.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, GEN IV high-temperature, low-pressure plants "offer impressive safety features and can be easy to construct and affordable to maintain." High temperature means GEN IV nuclear plants can generate electricity, which accounts for some 20% of world energy demand, and, for the first time, replace fossil fuels in process industries that rely on heat.
This opens a new world to nuclear and will, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, in addition to all-important electric generation, power "hydrogen production, desalination, district heating, petroleum refining and ammonia production." As process energy is the second largest source of energy, powered by fossil fuels, the coming dual electric and process heat output of GEN IV nuclear is of huge significance.
Despite all this positive, yet virtually unreported news, nuclear energy in the U.S. has in essence been abandoned, with two exceptions. Utility operators working through supplemental license renewals (SLRs) are seeking to extend the useful lives of the existing nuclear fleet, but this is a mere stopgap effort and is now subject to a freeze by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Prospectively, tech entrepreneurs, supported by generous Department of Energy subsidies, aim to commercialize experimental reactors scaled down to small size, known as small modular reactors or SMRs.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
WHAT ARE SMRs?
The concept animating SMRs is quite simple. Break down nuclear technology into bite-sized 60-MW components that can be strung together as needed. Absolute cost per module is low, reducing sticker shock for utilities. Delivery of small units can be made using conventional truck and rail. Sites can be located on small plots, including existing brownfield former coal plants.
Developed as a concept in the 1990s, thirty years later, there is yet to be a working commercial unit, with the soonest one now promised for 2027. Of the two demonstration plants in the U.S., NuScale in Utah and TerraForm in Wyoming, NuScale has to date received the most funding, including a recent life-saving $1.4-billion grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, following a long series of delays and cost overruns.
Cost estimates for the 720-MW plant (i.e., twelve 60-unit modules) now total $6.1 billion and counting. At a per-unit cost of more than $8,000/mwh, the NuScale plant is uncompetitive but argued as forgivable for a first-of-its-kind operation.
While NuScale claims that it will ultimately deliver sustainable costs, critics allege that SMR construction costs and cost per kilowatt-hour will miss forecasts by a wide margin.
Just because China is doing is not a reason we should do anything.
We should do it because energy is a huge input into the economy and we don’t have any alternatives that can provide energy in the amount or as safe and clean as nuclear.
There are new designs that can’t melt down, and don’t rely on pumping or cooling systems to be operational to shut down safely.
The left wants us to move to Electric Vehicles (EVs) yesterday. And I think once the kinks have been worked out and the range is sufficient we probably should.
What convinces me is watching Dutchsense’s youtube videos on earthquakes. He isn’t against oil and gas, but he has a theory that earthquakes go to the weakest area of the crust and that’s often drill sites. But what convinced me is seeing just how many thousands and thousands of drill sites are in the west. It’s not sustainable, we need more sources of energy and nuclear fits the bill.
I also think we should have every metropolitan area of 50,000 or more build grid connector sites. Where a small nuclear reactor, the concrete encased, zero maintenance kinds can be trucked in and connected in the event of a disaster. And FEMA should have several of those on hand, perhaps stored regionally where they can truck them in and connect them in a very very short amount of time.
The mini nuclear reactors are interesting. Some are using nuclear waste as batteries with extremely long lives. And I understand they have great safety profiles as far as radiation emitted. These should be used for communications.
It’s a brand new world of abundant energy if we would only let it be.
IF it’s good for America and her People, look for the UniParty/DS to quash it.
“...abandoned, with two exceptions...”
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I guess those are the two being built in Georgia.
And of course the Obama administration handed over the U-233 technology to the PRC which intends to use it in their next generation of nuclear power plants for aircraft carriers.
SMR reactors make sense for remote locations without a large scale grid. The Koreans have the right idea. First and foremost stop the greens from using lawfare to inflate the costs of nuclear plant build out. Second standardized the design and build then again and again with per approved regulatory licences see point one. Once the design is fixed and standardized no suing to stop a licence from being granted. A combined build and operate licence at that. Third build out large reactors in a energy plant arrangement multiple reactors at the same location so they can share infrastructures like fuel pools, cooling lakes and rail yards plus security forces.
The Koreans and the Chinese are absolutely kicking our butts in the nuclear world. Korea can put up a nuclear plant cheaper than we can put up gas turbines and the power they produce is half the cost of gas turbine power here. They also reprocess their spent fuel so the only materials going to the geological storage are fission products that represent only 6% of the mass of spent fuel.
Been advocating for “SMR grid” and nimble “SMR’s” for over 40 years, not dissimilar to those on an aircraft carrier or submarine.
And yes, emergency mobile versions. Wipe out a station, roll in another. Malfunction, roll in another. Portions of the grid are taken out, go around the area.
We should also have led the way in recycling spent fuel/fuel rods.
But the leftist totalitarian FAKE “environmentalists/climate change” lobby bribes politicians so heavily, they would rather go along with mass global depopulation and a totalitarian one world government model.
As well, such energy independence would crush market prices for most commodities.
We should still do it.
I wonder how much land I required. I have some spre land out back and would put on on in the back 40. I would love the idea of powering part of the county. Beat the heck of solar panels.
“Unlimited” cheap power.
Just like the big reactors were supposed to provide.
The costs will be as high or higher IF they are ever brought on line.
BUT they can be a viable option. Lets just be honest: they won’t be cheap.
It absolutely should. But doesn’t. And we will all be sorry for it.
Are these the small thorium reactors scientists have been backing for more than a decade?
Nuc plant designs of the megascale in the USA are essentially a one off custom design when you look at the overall facility. Yes, I know that the reactor and the generating equipment are more or less fixed in design but the overall facility is a one off custom design.
Detail designing starting with a blank piece of paper is expensive. It's especially expensive when process design engineers like myself have a minor role in the process to do the initial ID of major issues and options to produce an outline of how things will be put together and work together. This means detail engineers in massive amounts of man hours within their individual narrow specialties are doing a lot of trial and error work. Big $$$. Each change has a cascading effect on other disciplines. Think cost overruns. You want detail engineering to work in a straight line and not excessively go off chasing rabbits.
Oops…. Detailed design is not perfect, not that anything is. A $100 million here and another there and before long you have some billions of $$$ of cost overruns. I'm acquainted with one canceled nuc plant that spent a couple of billion $$$ before the owners canceled the project because of $$$ overruns and delays.
The final straw that broke the project was an engineering oops. The civil and mechanical groups had a communications breakdown. Two major sections had to be built on separate floating foundations because of soil constraints and weight distribution. Fine, not uncommon. However, the information was not communicated to the piping designers and they had not made provision for piping movements. Lots of piping detail had to be redesigned plus equipment and construction budgets increased.
A nuc plant issue I crossed paths with had to do with construction quality control. Quality control inspectors and cohorts in their office were under immense pressure to not slow down construction. Fraudulent inspection reports were produced for inspections not done or nonconforming work passed as okay. Eventually, auditors caught onto the scam halfway through construction of the first unit.
IIRC, this involved three individual nuc units at about 1500 megawatt each. People in on the fraud were fired. No one went to jail. Construction company fired. Mass construction layoffs. New engineering construction company hired. Quality inspections repeated. Problems fixed.
The small nuc plant concepts I've seen are very intriguing. Factory built package plants with preapproved designs. Short field construction timeline. Controllable costs. Controllable schedule. Nice.
The lead smr is nuscale they are making small light water reactors like they have on nuclear submarines. they’re nothing new. They’ll likely be obsoleted by 4th gen nuclear reactors being developed in China. The US is doing work on the 4th gen reactors but its slow. Most federal funding goes to the light water reactors. Alas, the light water crowd controls US development.
I believe Gates, and Buffett have their greedy little paws in these Wyoming / Utah start ups. So be wary.
No, there is no future in the US. I spent 25+ years in the industry and left it because the politicos caved the liars in the treehugger community.
Advanced designs will achieve nothing. Because the treehuggers successfully lied about the spent fuel waste issue. It is not a problem, just do what all other countries do: chemically dissolve: take out the fuel that is still good and sequester the high-level waste crappola and bury it. Cut out the stupidity that it has the be buried for 10K+ years.
Until any nuke design can throw this entire argument out, show the treehuggers for the liars they are, nuclear has no place here.
Big reactors did provide cheap energy — until the small minded idiots who listened to the lies of the treehuggers, especially about the back end.
Nuke industry in this country in the ‘90’s turned into a visit to the DMV. Hopeless, by design.
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