The next stage of the process will see companies able to bid for Government contracts with successful bids from the six going to contract award stage next summer.
Next summer is soon
What is the benefit of smaller reactors? It seems like they would be worse in just about every way? Wouldn’t smaller reactors be less efficient as you need more sites/material/personnel to generate the same power? Wouldn’t needing more sites also make logistics and regulatory approval more difficult?
A nuclear reactor is the part of a nuclear plant that generates steam from the radioactive materials.
NuScale’s plan, for example, is to build a pre-fabricated reactor you can ship via truck to the plant. You put it in a deep pool, and add some piping to connect it to your steam turbine, and you’ve got a power plant.
It’s modular, in that you can put many nuclear reactors in your pool. You can hook them up to whatever steam turbine you want. You don’t necessarily need more sites, you can have one site with more reactors.
The advantages of the design is better passive emergency safety, centralized building of the most complex parts, and the ability to build smaller plants for smaller cities.
Additionally, there’s been some discussion refurbishing old coal plants with small modular reactors; you’d basically replace the old coal furnace with a new pool of SMRs, hooking the steam to the old turbines and other infrastructure. Honestly, I’ll beleive it when I see it.
Economies of scale in construction and disposal. Ease of transportation. Modularity. Manufacturers can have better oversight of them, and design flaws can be found and fixed easier when you have, say, 1000 production articles as opposed to 4 articles.
Plus, if you put six of them together in a 2x3 configuration, you get a massive power output multiplier (source: Factorio)
Contracts being awarded means that they can start planning construction. Building a pilot plant will still take several years, if everything goes very well. Then you need to commission and test the new system. That again will take a number of years in the best of circumstances. Then, if everything goes very well, you can start thinking about getting series production going. Which has never been done before for a technology like this so it’s again going to take a long time. You’re looking at several decades in the best case scenario for those things to make any kind of meaningful impact on world energy generation. Which is why anybody touting SMRs as a solution to climate change is either clueless, delusional or lying.
The future has already begun and it will not include nukes. At least not on earth.
That’s weird. Considering commercial scale nuclear power plants exist all over earth right now. And if the “future has already begun,” then we are living in that future, and it does include “nukes” providing clean safe power to probably a billion people on earth. Too bad the fossil fuel industry knows that nuclear reactors are the only threat to their existence and has pumped anti-nuclear propaganda to the mainstream envrionmental movement for the past 50 years.
Wake up, let’s save our future.
When it comes to generating electricity, nuclear is hugely more expensive than renewables. Every 1000Wh of nuclear power could be 2000-3000 Wh solar or wind.
If you’ve been told “it’s not possible to have all power from renewable sources”, you have been a victim of disinformation from the fossil fuel industry. The majority of studies show that a global transition to 100% renewable energy across all sectors – power, heat, transport and industry – is feasible and economically viable.
This is all with current, modern day technology, not with some far-off dream or potential future tech such as nuclear fusion, thorium reactors or breeder reactors.
Compared to nuclear, renewables are:
- Cheaper
- As clean or cleaner, in terms of emissions
- Faster to provision
- Less environmentally damaging
- Not reliant on continuous consumption of fuel
- Decentralised
- Much, much safer
- Much easier to maintain
- More reliable
- Much more capable of being scaled down on demand to meet changes in energy demands
Nuclear power has promise as a future technology. But at present, while I’m all in favour of keeping the ones we have until the end of their useful life, building new nuclear power stations is a massive waste of money, resources, effort and political capital.
Nuclear energy should be funded only to conduct new research into potential future improvements and to construct experimental power stations. Any money that would be spent on building nuclear power plants should be spent on renewables instead.
Frequently asked questions:
- But it’s not always sunny or windy, how can we deal with that?
While a given spot in your country is going to have periods where it’s not sunny or rainy, with a mixture of energy distribution (modern interconnectors can transmit 800kV or more over 800km or more with less than 3% loss) non-electrical storage such as pumped storage, and diversified renewable sources, this problem is completely mitigated - we can generate wind, solar or hydro power over 2,000km away from where it is consumed for cheaper than we could generate nuclear electricity 20km away.
- Don’t renewables take up too much space?
The United States has enough land paved over for parking spaces to have 8 spaces per car - 5% of the land. If just 10% of that space was used to generate solar electricity - a mere 0.5% - that would generate enough solar power to provide electricity to the entire country. By comparison, around 50% of the land is agricultural. The amount of land used by renewable sources is not a real problem, it’s an argument used by the very wealthy pro-nuclear lobby to justify the huge amounts of funding that they currently receive.
- Isn’t Nuclear power cleaner than renewables?
No, they’re pretty comparable in terms of emissions, and renewables are cleaner in terms of other environmental impacts. You can look up total lifetime emissions for nuclear vs. renewables - this is the aggregated and equalised emissions caused per kWh for each energy source. It takes into account the energy used to extract raw materials, build the power plant, operate the plant, maintenance, the fuels needed to sustain it, the transport needed to service it, and so on. These numbers generally show that renewables tend to be as clean or cleaner in terms of total lifetime emissions, and in addition, since nuclear relies on fuel extraction (mining) and has lots of issues regarding waste, renewables is overall cleaner than nuclear.
- We need a baseline load, though, and that can only be nuclear or fossil fuels.
Not according to industry experts - the majority of studies show that a 100% renewable source of energy across all industries for all needs - electricity, heating, transport, and industry - is completely possible with current technology and is economically viable. If you disagree, don’t argue with me, take it up with the IEC. Here’s a Wikipedia article that you can use as a baseline for more information: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy
While I agree that these renewables can be effective, they have many problems that stop me from supporting them over nuclear even at a lower cost.
We aren’t recycling solar panels enough, so I’m not optimistic that heavy metals won’t be polluting our dirt in the future. Wind still is killing birds and uses massive amounts of land. And that’s before we get into the cost of transporting these things from china which requires pollution from shipping and also kills wildlife. And then on top of that, there’s a very real human rights problem as solar currently is made mostly by slaves at multiple steps in the supply chain.
We aren’t recycling solar panels enough
This is pro-nuclear scare mongering. Go ahead and compare the numbers for tons of solar panel E-waste produced compared to tons of nuclear waste produced per year.
Under EU law, producers are required to ensure their solar panels are recycled properly.
We haven’t had a lot of need for solar panel recycling yet because they last so fucking long and even when they reach “the end of their working life” they’re still generating a decent amount of power, so they can just be sold off or given away to someone with no solar panels.
It’s only if solar panels become damaged or really really old that they need recycled. It’s basically a non issue, especially when you compare it to nuclear waste.
Wind still is killing birds
Yet more pro-nuclear propaganda nonsense. Wind turbines kill an absolutely tiny fraction of birds compared to house cats, not to mention birds getting hit by cars, let alone commercial and private aircraft. It’s a non-issue.
uses massive amounts of land
As mentioned above: the entire United States could be 100% powered by renewable electricity if we converted just 5% of the land currently used FOR PARKING SPACES and turned it into renewables. It’s not a real issue.
that’s before we get into the cost of transporting
Which is all factored into TCOE, which, surprise surprise, is around the same or better than the TCOE of nuclear. So, nope, irrelevant. Go ahead and prove that utility-scale renewables have a greater TCOE than nuclear if you want to argue it though. Looking forward to you providing a source.
very real human rights problem
Ah yes, and the extraction of uranium ore, the handling of nuclear waste and the construction of nuclear power plants are all notoriously free from human rights issues!
It really isn’t. Many salient points here that you breezed over. Focus on the US because that’s who we need to fix right now. Solar panel waste is a big problem. Does the US recycle them? Or anything? No not really. They recycle 10% of them.
Now that doesn’t kill the idea, but I would need to see the US sign laws to recycle them or improve that rate before I’d believe that the panels wouldn’t end up wasted.
Next: wind turbines killing bird populations is real even if it’s a minor concern because it stacks on everything you mentioned. Our estimates aren’t great but the ecological impact of these turbines is not well understood over the whole of the US. I like them more than solar, sure, and they’re better than fossil fuels absolutely. Just wish we can understand that these two have issues we need to solve to deploy them everywhere.
As for the land comparison, that’s not a great statistic. The parking lots will only get bigger in the US, I promise. Cars are too prevalent. Maybe in 30 years, not now though. So we have to increase land use. I have yet to see US cities do much more than putting the turbines on pasture land and they usually choose undeveloped land in the middle of nowhere. So yes, valid concern.
The thing about transport is fine if they’re equal, I’m not about to fight you on something you’re this passionate about.
As for the uranium ore extraction problem, my point is that it’s a problem that the west actually has a chance at fixing. They can mine their own uranium, they can find other sources. Meanwhile china owns most of the solar power production. Most of the panels are made by slaves. The cobalt mines involve entire countries worth of human rights issues.
I don’t dislike the use of solar and wind, I just feel that the takes here have been far from balanced when nuclear has some real advantages if you’re being honest about the weaknesses of current renewables.
“total lifetime emissions for nuclear vs. renewables”
I looked it up. IPCC (2014) says nuclear is at 12g CO2eq/kWh. Only wind is lower at 11g. UNECE (2020) has nuclear at 5.1g. No other source gets closer.
Your wikipedia link at the end saos lower austria has as 100% renewable electricity. First that’s a bold claim by the premier of the region, considering they have 3 active natural gas plants there. It’s power used, yes. It should be power produced. Austria is always proud to not own nuclear plants they sure use much of the nuclear power produced in czechia.
The Bruce Power nuclear station is majority owned by Transcanada Pipeline. In Canada at least the nuclear industry is a complete racket.
Lmfao are you serious? Supporting renewables makes me a shill for fossil fuel companies? You’re stretching so far you’re going to split.
By setting up the conversation as Nuclear vs Renewables, you are ignoring fossil fuels which is the purpose of anti-nuclear posts to begin with. Right now Germany, your government, turned off nuclear plants and turned coal plants back on which is 100% incorrect in all situations. If you are defending that action, or concern trolling using long debunked anti-nuclear talking points from the 70’s you better at least be getting paid by the fossil fuel industry, otherwise you’d be better off in a gulag for reeducation rather the continuing to support the fossil fuel industry out of wanton ignorance.
Renewable power is now a huge business too, naturally there are corporations which will happily lobby and shill about it. Looks like you’re doing exactly that, claiming that wind and solar is without faults and basically a miracle.
The most basic proof of that: wind power isn’t safer. Way more people and animals are harmed by it than by nuclear.
Yeah you gotta love the “wind and solar is all we need crowd” claiming there’s no downsides like having to invent solutions for the issue of production hours versus time of max useage. Pumped hydro, among others like heat energy storage.
Nuclear is the only reliable form of energy for humanity’s inevitable outward expansion. I don’t believe space exploration and colonization is inherently at odds with repairing the planet. Rocket travel is a drop in the bucket compared to manufacturing, airline, and automotive pollution, and if materials science can find something mass producible that can be used for a space elevator we dont even need to use chem/nuclear to escape our own gravity well.
We need to solve the problem of energy in a way that can be scaled and taken with us to places that don’t have wind or geothermal, or are too environmentally unsuitable for solar for whatever reason.
Calling nuclear wealthy is hilarious, neither group has oil & gas beat, and wind/solar have both surpassed nuclear in overall business infrastructure. The reason we haven’t invented a fusion plant that can pass the Q limit is because fusion never got funded for shit, we’ve been at “fusion never” levels of funding since we began.
claiming there’s no downsides
Compared to nuclear? Yes, no downsides. In general? It’s not perfect of course but the best option we have.
having to invent solutions for the issue of production hours versus time of max useage
That’s like saying “nuclear has to invent solutions for the issues of meltdowns, and getting nuclear fuel, and dealing with waste material, and dealing with extremely high risk targets, and risks of earthquakes, and risks of flooding, and the need to have extremely highly qualified operators, and extreme building costs”…. I could go on.
Nuclear is the only reliable form of energy for humanity’s inevitable outward expansion
Ah yes, because nuclear fissile material is more ubiquitous in the galaxy than light.
The reason we haven’t invented a fusion plant that can pass the Q limit is because fusion never got funded for shit
Absolute nonsense, you just made that up completely. Post a source.
Calling nuclear wealthy is hilarious, neither group has oil & gas beat
“Calling a billionaire wealthy is hilarious, that’s not even in the top 500 richest people”
The nuclear industry is massively overfunded, they’ve consistently received billions in public money for years, and there’s basically nothing to show for it. It’s the carbon capture of electricity generation: cute idea, let’s keep researching it in hopes of a breakthrough, but in practice just a total waste of money at our current level of tech.
Way more people and animals are harmed by it than by nuclear.
Absolute and complete bullshit. Even if you take the very, very low estimate for the number of deaths caused by nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl, wind and nuclear have a similar number of deaths, but when it comes to “people and animals harmed”, nuclear is HUGELY more harmful, it’s not even a contest.
Just look up all of the people with horrible health issues caused by nuclear.
But go ahead and source your claim lmfao.
Chernobyl was a freak incident and it happened fourty years ago. We don’t build reactors like that anymore. Don’t use it as an example of something that happens all the time.
Meanwhile, wind turbines do fail, sometimes they catch on fire, sometimes while a worker is doing maintenance up top.
Don’t get me wrong, renewable power is wonderful and solar is really catching up but it’s not a miracle and they’ll never entirely replace other energy sources. There’s always a base load that needs to be satisfied, and nuclear is the cleanest, safest way to do it. It’s even safer than lithium batteries.
Of course it is, I’m not going to write it out anew every time, am I? That would be a big waste of time and would result in a less effective message. I think this is the fourth or maybe fifth incarnation - I have added to it every time someone has asked me about some specific issue, so it just gets progressively more and more complete.
I encourage everyone who wishes to argue against the wasteful deployment of nuclear power, please redistribute this comment as much as you’d like to.
Could you just post it on its own thread? Then you can just link to it each time, those will point to the latest version, and we can have all the replies in one place.
Says nothing about the designs.
