Small modular nuclear reactors get a reality check in new report
Small modular nuclear reactors get a reality check in new report
A new report has assessed the feasibility of deploying small modular nuclear reactors to meet increasing energy demands around the world. The findings don't look so good for this particular form of energy production.
[T]he report's executive summary certainly gets to the heart of their findings.
"The rhetoric from small modular reactor (SMR) advocates is loud and persistent: This time will be different because the cost overruns and schedule delays that have plagued large reactor construction projects will not be repeated with the new designs," says the report. "But the few SMRs that have been built (or have been started) paint a different picture – one that looks startlingly similar to the past. Significant construction delays are still the norm and costs have continued to climb."
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Why can't we switch to thorium and molten salt instead? Much cleaner, much safer, same idea.
Because it is actually not that simple, especially on the "cleaner" and "safer" parts.
Theoretically the main advantage of the thorium is precisely because its safer and cleaner. When removed from its neutron source thorium quickly ceases fission and decay.
"Theoretically" is worth very little. It is pretty much the same for every concept NPP, that once construction starts on an actual practical plant, ugly problems start coming up all over the place that were not considered or thought of in the concept stage. Corrosion is one of the biggest ones.
See also the Rickover memo.
The technology doesn't exist in a commercially viable form. That's why.
Containing it for a while seems to be super hard. It's really corrosive to most anything that can withstand the heat and pressure. Basically, they haven't managed to make plumbing that works for it. Liquid salt gets mad at shit all the time.
And even more expensive, no?
I didn’t think that was ready for commercialize yet. You have all the disadvantages of nuclear, but need additional development costs, need to implement a supply chain, then build out a new technology that is less efficient than existing nuclear, has unclear service life, may be supplanted by fusion or renewables, and you can still use it to make bomb material. Seems like a poor idea and a waste of money.
From India’s perspective, they’d get to lead in a new technology, where they have huge reserves of fuel, and cheap labor to scale up to a billion energy-starved citizens …. And if it helped increase their nuclear weapons stock in the face of tight controls on plutonium, so much the better
What makes you think it's less efficient. Normally high temperature reactor technology is more efficient not less.
I’m not claiming to be any more knowledgeable than what I read here, but Wikipedia says
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
In 1973, however, the US government settled on uranium technology and largely discontinued thorium-related nuclear research. The reasons were that uranium-fuelled reactors were more efficient, the research was proven and thorium's breeding ratio was thought insufficient to produce enough fuel to support development of a commercial nuclear industry
I didn't say anything about thorium. Not all molten salt reactors are thorium though. In fact not all high temperature reactors are molten salt either. People keep mixing these technologies up.