Nuclear Fission and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) News and Discussions

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Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)

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Predicted on our timeline for 2025-2035.

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Rolls-Royce gets funding to develop mini nuclear reactors

3 hours ago

Rolls-Royce has been backed by a consortium of private investors and the UK government to develop small nuclear reactors to generate cleaner energy.

The creation of the Rolls-Royce Small Modular Reactor (SMR) business was announced following a £195m cash injection from private firms and a £210m grant from the government.

It is hoped the new company could create up to 40,000 jobs by 2050.

However, critics say the focus should be on renewable power, not new nuclear.

Currently, about 21% of UK electricity generation comes from nuclear power.

Small modular reactors are nuclear fission reactors but are smaller than conventional ones.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59212983


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Nuclear Fission and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) News and Discussions

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:!:
N.B. Not to be confused with nuclear fusion.
:!:

As some of you know, I have a deep dislike of nuclear fission – due to the increasingly high costs and very slow construction times (see e.g. the UK's Hinkley Point C). I strongly believe that renewables + batteries/storage are a better option, as they're improving exponentially.

However, I'm slightly more welcoming of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), which could emerge in the next 5-10 years and have the potential to be cheaper as well as quicker to build, and safer too. I think larger-scale nuclear plants will be obsolete in the next decade or two, but I'm willing to hear counter arguments against that.

Let's start this thread with some news from the US...

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US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design

John Timmer - 7/29/2022, 11:20 PM

On Friday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced that it would be issuing a certification to a new nuclear reactor design, making it just the seventh that has been approved for use in the US. But in some ways, it's a first: the design, from a company called NuScale, is a small modular reactor that can be constructed at a central facility and then moved to the site where it will be operated.

The move was expected after the design received an okay during its final safety evaluation in 2020.

Small modular reactors have been promoted as avoiding many of the problems that have made large nuclear plants exceedingly expensive to build. They're small enough that they can be assembled on a factory floor and then shipped to the site where they will operate, eliminating many of the challenges of custom, on-site construction. In addition, they're structured in a way to allow passive safety, where no operator actions are necessary to shut the reactor down if problems occur.

Many of the small modular designs involve different technology from traditional reactors, such as the use of molten uranium salts as the reactor fuel. NuScale has a much more traditional design, with fuel and control rods and energy transported through boiling water. Its operator-free safety features include setting the entire reactor in a large pool of water, control rods that are inserted into the reactor by gravity in the case of a power cut, and convection-driven cooling from an external water source.

NuScale started the certification process in 2016. According to the NRC, that process required the company to submit technical information that allows the Commission to evaluate it as follows:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07 ... or-design/


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Credit: NuScale
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Re: Nuclear Fission and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) News and Discussions

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Germany rules out delay to nuclear phaseout

Date 21.08.2022

Germany won't extend the lifespan of three remaining nuclear power stations due to the energy crisis, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said. He also warned against public panic over a potential winter gas shortage.

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said Sunday that allowing the country's three last nuclear power stations to remain operational would be of little help in solving the country's energy crisis.

Speaking during a discussion with citizens at the government's open-door day in Berlin, Habeck said extending the lifespan of the plants — which are due to close at the end of the year — would only save about 2% of gas use.

It is the "wrong decision given how little we would save," Habeck, who is also Vice Chancellor, added.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-rules-out ... a-62880769
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Re: Nuclear Fission and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) News and Discussions

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The Hollow Promise of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors
by M.V. Ramana
August 2, 2022

Extract:
(Counterpunch) The hardest challenge is economics. Nuclear energy is an expensive way to generate electricity. In the 2021 edition of its annual cost report, Lazard, the Wall Street firm, estimated that the levelized cost of electricity from new nuclear plants will be between $131 and $204 per megawatt hour; in contrast, newly constructed utility-scale solar and wind plants produce electricity at somewhere between $26 and $50 per megawatt hour according to Lazard. The gap between nuclear power and renewables is large, and is growing larger. While nuclear costs have increased with time, the levelized cost of electricity for solar and wind have declined rapidly, and this is expected to continue over the coming decades.

SMRs (Small Modular Reactors), as the name suggests, produce relatively small amounts of electricity in comparison. Economically, this is a disadvantage. When the power output of the reactor decreases, it generates less revenue for the owning utility, but the cost of constructing the reactor is not proportionately smaller. SMRs will, therefore, cost more than large reactors for each unit (megawatt) of generation capacity. This makes electricity from small reactors more expensive. This is why most of the early small reactors built in the United States shut down early: they just couldn’t compete economically.

SMR proponents argue that the lost economies of scale will be compensated by savings through mass manufacture in factories and as these plants are built in large numbers costs will go down. But this claim is not very tenable. Historically, in the United States and France, the countries with the highest number of nuclear plants, costs went up, not down, with experience. Further, to achieve such savings, these reactors have to be manufactured by the hundreds, if not the thousands, even under very optimistic assumptions about rates of learning. Finally, even if SMRs were to become comparable in cost per unit capacity of large nuclear reactors, that would not be sufficient to make them economically competitive, because their electricity production cost would still be far higher than solar and wind energy.
Read more here: https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/08/0 ... reactors/
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Re: Nuclear Fission and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) News and Discussions

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Nuclear power could be the future of expedition cruises

Jacopo Prisco, CNN • Published 3rd June 2022

A new ship design concept from Norwegian shipbuilder Ulstein could be the first step toward a zero-emission future for expedition cruises and a range of other maritime operations.

The proposed 500-foot-long vessel is called Thor -- a reference to both the Norse god of thunder and the element thorium, which would power its on-board nuclear reactor.

Such a ship would never need to refuel and could create its own supply of electricity, which in turn would be used to power a companion vessel, Sif, named after a golden-haired Norse goddess who was also Thor's wife. This expedition cruise ship, with a passenger capacity of 60, would be able to explore environmentally fragile areas with minimal impact.

[...]

A lot needs to happen before the concept becomes reality, however: "We could launch a fully operational ship in maybe 10 to 15 years," says Gjerde Kamsvåg.

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/ ... index.html


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Re: Nuclear Fission and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) News and Discussions

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today released a report showing that hundreds of U.S. coal power plant sites could convert to nuclear power plant sites, adding new jobs, increasing economic benefit, and significantly improving environmental conditions. This coal-to-nuclear transition could add a substantial amount of clean electricity to the grid, helping the U.S. reach its net-zero emissions goals by 2050.

...The reuse of coal infrastructure for advanced nuclear reactors could also reduce costs for developing new nuclear technology, saving from 15% to 35% in construction costs. Coal-to-nuclear transitions could save millions of dollars by reusing the coal plant’s electrical equipment (e.g., transmission lines, switchyards), cooling ponds or towers, and civil infrastructure such as roads and office buildings.
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/doe- ... rt-nuclear
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Re: Nuclear Fission and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) News and Discussions

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Re: Nuclear Fission and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) News and Discussions

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^^^Here is a direct link to that Bulletin of Atomic Scientists article: https://thebulletin.org/2022/10/new-rep ... t-heading
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Re: Nuclear Fission and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) News and Discussions

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Nuclear fission will become increasingly irrelevant.


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Re: Nuclear Fission and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) News and Discussions

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