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.”

  • pyrflie@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    So looking at the article it seems to be against small scale traditional (fission/boiler) systems. Which are fair game. They were pretty much outdated over 50 years ago. I would be more interested in studies on dispersed Thorium Reactors which held far more potential as little as a decade ago.

    • vzq@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Nuclear technologies missed their window. The use cases where they are the best technical solution now are extremely limited, and that means you can get the investment going to improve them.

      It’s a curiosity now.

      There’s an alternative timeline where Chernobyl doesn’t happen and we decarbonize by leaning on nuclear in the nineties, then transition to renewables about now. But that’s not our timeline. And if it were, it would be in the past now.

      • Rakonat@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        From where I stand you couldn’t be further from the reality of the situation.

        Nuclear has a number of advantages from low carbon output per kilowatt over lifetime as well as being extremely cheap per kilowatt.

        But the real advantage being overlooked is the small foot print and land use compared to other forms power generation. A nuclear reactor is ideal for high density population areas, adding no pollution like fossil fuels and using a fraction of the land that renewables require. And there is room for overlap between renewables and nuclear as well, meaning days where wind or solar would produce more power than usual, its easy to scale back solar production to take advantage of cheaper power, and vice versa for times when renewables aren’t going to generate enough to meet demand nuclear can increase their output relatively quickly and effectively.

        The future of nuclear is however one of the most important. We are eventually going to be spending humans to other planets, and having mature, efficient and compact forms of power generation with long lifetimes and minimal start up power from idle states is going to be important, solar gets less effective the further from the sun we get, you can’t stick a wind turbine on a space craft and expect good results, and you’re out of your mind if you want to burn fossil fuels in an oxygen limited environment.

        Treating nuclear as more than a curiosity but rather as the genuine lifeline and corner stone of our futures and future generations is significantly more important than fossil fuel profits today and all their propaganda.

  • BrightCandle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    They are still going for big building size reactors that have site specific details even if the core is built in a “factory”. This still doesn’t scale well.

    I wonder if it can be economical to go smaller still and ship a reactor and power generation (TRG maybe or a small turbine) that then doesn’t require much other than connecting wiring and plumbing and its encased in at least one security layer covered in sensors if something goes wrong its all contained. Then its just a single lorry with a box you wire in. That has a chance of being scalable and easy to deploy and I can’t help but think there is a market for ~0.5-10 KW reactors if they can get the lowest end down to about $20,000, it would compete OK with solar and wind price wise.

    I suspect no one has bothered because the regulatory overhead means it has to be big enough to be worth it and like Wind power scales enormously with the size of the plant. But what I want is a tiny reactor in my basement, add a few batteries for dealing with the duck curve and you have something that will sit there producing power for 25 years and a contract for it be repaired and ultimately collected at end of life.

    You can sort of do this today using the Tritium glow sticks and solar cells but it doesn’t last long enough and the price is not competitive. Going more directly to the band gap in a silicon or something else semi-conductive and a long lived nuclear material could maybe get a little closer price wise.

      • Lumisal@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        I sympathized with your statement immediately, but then after thinking about it for a bit, most people basically have controlled pressure bombs (gas-water boilers) and buildings filled with gas pipes that can (and have) wiped out whole city blocks.

        It’s still not a good idea, obviously, but localized fossil fuels are also ridiculous when you think about it.