Energy buffs give small modular reactors a gigantic reality check

Miniature nuclear reactors promise a future filled with local, clean, safe zero-carbon energy, but those promises quickly melt when confronted with reality, say a pair of researchers. Known as small modular reactors, or SMRs, miniaturized atomic power plants have been touted as a way to ensure the world meets climate change …

[VicMortimer]

Not really a surprise

While we shouldn't be shutting down existing nuclear, unless there are special circumstances it's a bad idea to be building more.

Don't get me wrong, I'd rather see new nuclear than new gas, and obviously no new coal should be built anywhere under any circumstances, it doesn't make any sense to add nuclear when solar or wind plus storage is cheaper - and it is.

[IGotOut]

Re: Not really a surprise

Baseline it's all about baseline. You'll always need to fall back when the wind doesn't blow and the sun isn't shining. It's ok to say "Batteries", but if you have a sustained spell of bad weather, your going to really need those nukes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not really a surprise

Baseline capacity in renewables, just means having a (very) large excess, so that you can always meet the baseline demand.

That leads to long periods of excess power that has to be dumped a very low prices.

That leads to designing your chemical processes - smelting, cement, hydrogen production, fertiliser, hydrocarbon fuel synthesis, bricks, to run at variable rate depending on energy price.

When power is cheap you smelt aluminium and steel, and synthesise Jet A1

All these chemical products (except for gaseous hydrogen) are easy and cheap to store and transport - it's what we do at present.

It is better to store the products of electricity that try to store electricity.

[LybsterRoy]

Re: Not really a surprise

There are so many "interesting" assumptions in there I have difficulty picking a starting point.

-- just means having a (very) large excess --

Any idea what land/sea area you're talking off, any idea what that scale of installation does to the environment/ecology, Have you taken account of the additional infrastructure to cope with this?

-- That leads to long periods of excess power that has to be dumped a very low prices. --

How do you "dump" it or do you mean not generate as they do now (its not cheap), and battery technology isn't up to the task yet

-- When power is cheap you smelt aluminium and steel, and synthesise Jet A1 --

I'm guessing that you've never worked in manufacturing. Process plants are not easy to turn off and on.

-- All these chemical products (except for gaseous hydrogen) are easy and cheap to store and transport - it's what we do at present. --

But what do we do when there's not been any cheap power for a while and the tanks are dry?

-- It is better to store the products of electricity that try to store electricity. --

Goody, more land needed

[MyffyW]

Re: Not really a surprise

I'm guessing that you've never worked in manufacturing. Process plants are not easy to turn off and on.

In an ideal world you run your process plant for 8000 hours a year. In practice you are dictated to by availability of feedstock and energy, not necessarily actual scarcity, just pricing.

The examples given all have established practice of producing to available power, to the extent that they employ analysts (and increasingly ML algorithms these days) to plot when the power is cheapest. It's been established practice since at least when I was a mere slip of a girl and things could (apparently) only get better.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Not really a surprise

In reality some of those processes take a long time, if ever, to restart once they've been shutdown.

[G Mac]

Re: Not really a surprise

I can see an argument made for peak vs. off-peak electricity use where the cycle is predictable and rapid, but the non-baseload capability adds far more variability (days/weeks?) that I thought would be a concern (apart from shutdown//startup):

* Manufacturing inventory would idle (=cost)

* Manufacturing output would be tricky to manage (=cost)

* Workers would have to be furloughed/laid-off

* Return on Investment is tricky - getting into insurance risk areas

* I have not heard of debt payments that have a random stop/start capability, which would increase interest rate charged

Obviously storage helps here but that is also additional cost.

Do you have an industry case study for such a variability problem that takes into account above?

[blackcat]

Re: Not really a surprise

Back before the major grid infrastructure was in place many companies generated their own elec. Aluminium smelters were usually built along with a hydro plant. Once the capitol of the hydro build was complete the elec was essentially free.

[John Robson]

Re: Not really a surprise

"It is better to store the products of electricity that try to store electricity."

Both are needed... and there is always some electricity demand, so the ability to store some in a form that can be easily reverted (either in batteries, or gravitational storage, or chemical storage) is needed.

[HandleBaz]

Re: Not really a surprise

You could do this, but you'd have to build new Aluminum smelters to do it.

Most plants are designed to have a fixed power draw, and aren't able to shut down, even briefly, without significant damage or disruptuion.

This is often solved by the plant having it's own power plant, that it owns, and only occationall excess being sold on the market.

There are some plants that take advantage of electricity prices, but it is unusual.

This goes for most industrial processes, having slack capacity is frightfully capital intensive, and frankly almost as unrealistic as having spare base load in form of SMRs.

[cantankerous swineherd]

Re: Not really a surprise

it's called batteries, flywheels, pumped storage...

[Schultz]

it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

If you look at how these methods scale, then it really is pumped hydroelectric storage. The Tesla powerwall-3 battery has a capacity of 13.5 kWh. A fairly new Swiss hydroelectric storage project has a capacity of 20 GWh. All the 600'000 powerwall batteries Tesla has installed, according to its own press releases, don't sum up to half that capacity.

So we really should build more pumped hydroelectric storage. Batteries, on the other hand, are affordable for individuals and may play a role for those who want their individual installations. Indeed, comparing the cost of the Swiss hydroelectric project with the cost of powerwall 3, the price difference may be less than a factor 3.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

Actually, pumped storage doesn't scale either, except in certain places with particular geography (that don't include the UK). So apparently we need a lot of hydrogen storage. See https://royalsociety.org/news/2023/09/electricity-storage-report/ or other similar reputable reports. I was extremely surprised, to say the least, but I am convinced.

[Dr Dan Holdsworth]

Re: it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

Pumped storage using water doesn't scale in the UK.

Pumped storage using something a lot denser than water, on the other hand...

[MyffyW]

Re: it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

As a sort-of-Welsh girl keen to avoid too many Cambrian mountains being hollowed out I would like to suggest sheep as the working fluid, with some regulation perhaps from a suitably skilled canine.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

But they're not denser than water, whatever my sheep-farming neighbour thinks.

[MyffyW]

Re: it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

You've got me: a small flaw in an otherwise perfect plan. Perhaps some form of cloven-hoof boot fabricated from all that spare Uranium would be appropriate?

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

Re: it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

Apparently if you rub them against an amber rod, you generate positive charge on the rod and a negative charge on the sheep.

[MyffyW]

Re: it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

An acquaintance of mine got himself in an awful state rubbing his rod against a sheep. He ended up on a charge which was very negative.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

Pumped mercury storage sounds interesting. Would it be possible amalgamate several installations?

I rather liked the idea of raising and lowering heavy weights in redundant mine shafts..

[Jellied Eel]

Re: it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

Pumped mercury storage sounds interesting. Would it be possible amalgamate several installations?

Just don't fulminate on the problem for too long. Personally I'm in favour of combining two problems into one solution. Both carbon and nitrogen are now considered dangerous pollutants. So I have a modest proposal that builds on the successes of Carbon Capture and Storage. So I propose the energy experts at the 'IEEFA' put their heads together and develop C-N Capture and Storage.

But being me, I decided to have a look at who this lot were, and might have guessed-

https://ieefa.org/

The Institute’s mission is to accelerate the transition to a diverse, sustainable and profitable energy economy.

So the usual greenwashing outift. No wonder they don't like nuclear. I'm especially wary of this kind of stink-tank that provides no financial information and seems to be based out of a small, shared office space in a 3 story building above a wine bar in Lakewood, Ohio. I rather suspect if I did around a bit more, I'll find funding comes from the usual astroturfers.

Doesn't anyone do their due diligence any more? Is this a 'reliable source'?

[HandleBaz]

Re: it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

"C-N Capture and Storage."

Mmmm, tasty tasty almonds.

This, and mercury based power plants cannot in any shape, way or form become a disaster.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

Mmmm, tasty tasty almonds.

Blame this chap-

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-azidoazide-azides-more-or-less

The most alarming of them has two carbons, fourteen nitrogens, and no hydrogens at all, a formula that even Klapötke himself, who clearly has refined sensibilities when it comes to hellishly unstable chemicals, calls "exciting". Trust me, you don't want to be around when someone who works with azidotetrazoles comes across something "exciting".

Someone once forwarded me his article on FOOF and his writing style got me diving down that rabbit hole. I which I found myself learning a bit more about chemistry, and being glad I decided not to pursue that field. Also watching other chemists and them stressing the importance of fume cupboards, I'm kind of suprised I survived O and A-level chemistry.. PPE wasn't really a thing in my school.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

Lowe might be my favorite blogger ever. I wish he'd done more "things I won't work with" entries.

Hexanitrohexaazaisowurzitane! (I've read that one enough times that I remember the name of the compound.) The molecule diagram alone in that entry is worth the price of admission — it's the sort of thing that, if you know any chemistry, makes you shudder in horror — but as always Lowe's prose is terrific:

Yes, this is an example of something that becomes less explosive as a one-to-one cocrystal with TNT. Although, as the authors point out, if you heat those crystals up the two components separate out, and you're left with crystals of pure CL-20 soaking in liquid TNT, a situation that will heighten your awareness of the fleeting nature of life.

[MyffyW]

Re: it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

If we're getting into geoengineering might I also advocate for removing the dangerous pollutant that is Oxygen. It is, apparently, quite a strong oxidising agent (I know! Who knew?).

So we need to find useful compounds of Carbon, Nitrogen and Oxygen. Fortunately with a little bit of hydrogen (we all know how abundant free hydrogen is, don't we?) and a clever arrangement along the lines proposed by August Kekulé et al we could be generating Trinitrotoluene in commercially significant volumes. Which would have the beneficial side-effect of providing materiel for the war effort.

Synergies like this makes me truly optimistic for the future of mankind....

[Jellied Eel]

Re: it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

So we need to find useful compounds of Carbon, Nitrogen and Oxygen. Fortunately with a little bit of hydrogen (we all know how abundant free hydrogen is, don't we?) and a clever arrangement along the lines proposed by August Kekulé et al we could be generating Trinitrotoluene in commercially significant volumes. Which would have the beneficial side-effect of providing materiel for the war effort.

By jove, you've cracked it! So we'll have a surplus of sheep once everyone's become vegetarian. Terminating them would be inhumane, although provide an opportunity to partake in one last curry, or mutton stew. Or we save them, and turn them into a source of sustainable, renewable energy.

So all we need to do is create a modern version of the wool mill*. Sheep would be placed between two rotating discs. The lower acting as a treadmill connected to a turbine, thus generating electricity. The upper would dangle amber, thus generating even more electricty via static. The electricity could then be utilised to reduce the horrific amounts of dihydrogen monoxide that is responsible for thousands of deaths annually, not to mention billions in property damage by cracking it into hydrogen.

Then, as you say both the hydrogen and sheep's urine could be converted into safe, stable and economically valuable compounds like Trinitrotoluene, which safeguard our future! Our ancestors would be so proud that we've taken their work and made it fit for the 21st Century! And with only a modest amount more effort, we could re-engineer our sewage system to recycle our urine and convert that into nitrates as well! We don't need those stinky Russian's ammonia! We can produce our own stink! We could all sleep safely again near our new nitre beds!

*Ish..

[MyffyW]

Re: it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

@Jellied Eel Genius ... I think we've nailed it. I honestly do :-)

[vtcodger]

Re: it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

Pumped storage really does have some appeal. Lots more I think than the other no/low carbon alternatives like chemical batteries,hydrogen, etc And it's actually used in a few places today to stash energy from more or less continuous sources -- nuclear power, the water driven turbines at Niagara Falls for delivery during peak hours on the next day.

Problems I'm aware of:

1. Disappointing turn around efficiency (60-70%),

2. Sitting issues -- not that many suitable sites

3. Constantly changing water levels in one or both ponds -- impedes use of the ponds for outdoors activities.

4. Cost per kwh of storage (mostly maintenance and paying off the construction loans) tend to increase a lot if the pumped storage isn't used frequently (preferably every day).

5. Not a whole lot of water available for pumping in many places

All that said, at least pumped storage is proven technology and MAYBE it can be effective in some situations.

[Commonsense999]

Re: it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

As usual we are all blindly following a stupid target driven process without reference to common sense. Net Zero is pie in the sky and putting every ounce of effort into achieving it is setting our selves up to fail wasting massive resources and emitting lots of CO2 as we do it. Has anybody compared the carbon budget involved in hollowing out a mountain against using a couple of gas turbines to fill in when the wind isn't blowing in the dark until a suitable battery technology is available? I suspect the last 10% of decarbonising will cost more than the other 90% both in money and in carbon emissions.

So why can't we start by attempting something achievable like "Net 90%"

[vtcodger]

Re: Not really a surprise

"Baseline it's all about baseline...."

Exactly. And once you have the nuclear plants, you might as well run them. They need to be paid for (fixed cost) and staffed (600-800 folk the internet tells me) whether they are used or not. And I doubt they are much more dangerous running than on standby.

I'm less than happy about the situation because of potential nuclear proliferation and some other issues. But it is what it is.

[John Robson]

Re: Not really a surprise

Except that it's not about baseload - it's about matching supply and demand. Historically the only tools to do this have been very crude (E7/E10 to encourage higher demand overnight) and so we've needed entirely dispatchable generation.

We are now in a position where we have can have demand that is dispatchable, and can in many cases become an energy source, rather than a sink.

There is still a baseload, but it's much more flexible than it ever used to be.

I used to draw energy throughout the day, with spikes when the kettle was on etc. In the last year just 1% of my energy usage has been at peak rate, and I really don't care when that peak is, assuming I get at least a few hours of off peak every 24 hours.

We also have the capacity to massively reduce our primary energy requirements through increased efficiency, we've started on that journey, which is why we are more than a decade past our peak electricity usage, but there is alot more that can be done.

Quite happy to have nuclear on the grid, but we need to be realistic and actually educate people about the risks involved (hint they're much, much, smaller than is made out). We also need to educate people on the risks of other forms of generation...

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Not really a surprise

I used to draw energy throughout the day, with spikes when the kettle was on etc. In the last year just 1% of my energy usage has been at peak rate, and I really don't care when that peak is, assuming I get at least a few hours of off peak every 24 hours.

This is a good way to think about the problems of 'renewables'. You want a coffee and you want it now. You turn on the kettle and nothing happens. You figure you may as well grab a shower while you wait, but that's cold. You check your 'smart meter', and it shows a big D for Dunkelflaute. Calm and cloudy, so virtually no wind or solar. What is being generated is being used by priority customers like hospitals. Anything left over is being used by premium customers who pay a higher tariff.

The meter has a flashing button encouraging you to press it and buy 1kWh of surge electricity for only £5. Your meter shows that rate ticking upwards as other coffee drinkers press it.

Gridscale batteries won't really help because they can't provide grid-scale energy for more than a few minutes when a good'ol Dunkelflaute might last for days. It's the immutable law of supply and demand. If there's no supply due to the weather, demand goes unmet. Batteries don't generate electricity, they only store it and delay the inevitable.

...we've started on that journey, which is why we are more than a decade past our peak electricity usage

Except that's sadly not true. Politicians have slammed that into reverse. We reduced electricity usage by using gas for heating, or err.. gas and diesel for driving. Decarbonisation means converting all that energy use from gas to electricity, massively increasing peak demand. Then to add to the challenge, multi-MW datacentres with AIs generating pictures of cats. So in order to decarbonise, various estimates reckon we'll need around 3x more electricity than we generate now.

[John Robson]

Re: Not really a surprise

"various estimates reckon we'll need around 3x more electricity than we generate now."

And many other estimates put it alot lower.

Your surge pricing is an absurd illustration of what won't happen - grid scale storage is not limited to chemical batteries, though they are clearly the best option for instant and short term grid balancing.

The cost of storage and of demand shaping is already visible on the grid, because we have tariffs which track wholesale rates and we have systems like DFS.

You're welcome to come here and have a cup of tea.

Dunkelflaute is an issue, but it's not insurmountable, not by a long stretch - for some places in the world it simply doesn't exist, and for others it's something we're dealing with. Of course the solutions haven't been built yet, but they will be. And a combination of different storage technologies (and this is the main situation where I can see hydrogen having a place) will be used to deal with differing duration events. One of those technologies may well include demand management - easy enough for my energy supplier to top up my car before the event and then delay recharging until after, there will obviously be people who need to charge during the event, but we can pretty easily shift load away.

Heating is usually the critical load here - and in the short term we might have to burn some gas, but we get more heat into people's homes by burning that gas at a power plant than we would by burning it in a boiler. At the point at which you can shape demand extensively... then you can shape it to be flat, or to any other shape you want.

The issue is that nuclear isn't particularly dispatchable - it's continuous, but it doesn't scale up and down with demand easily. Now smaller reactors have an advantage here, but they're still far better off running at their design power constantly. That constant generation does increase the lowest generation during a DF, but it only slows down the rate at which we'll consume storage, and probably not by a huge amount. If we had 25% nuclear then we'd drain storage at a slightly slower rate, but we'd also be less able to fill it (since we'd have less "other" generation). If we can get to micro-reactors, then I think we're potentially onto a great solution for data centres - which have an effectively constant demand (though the hyperscale providers can relatively easily move load to a region with lower electricity prices).

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Not really a surprise

Your surge pricing is an absurd illustration of what won't happen - grid scale storage is not limited to chemical batteries, though they are clearly the best option for instant and short term grid balancing.

The cost of storage and of demand shaping is already visible on the grid, because we have tariffs which track wholesale rates and we have systems like DFS

So first you call it absurd, and then point out that it's already happening. What's truly absurd is ending up in a situation where our capacity margin is so tiny that even domestic users had to be bribed with schemes like DFS to reduce their energy usage. At least last winter was pretty mild so we didn't get to find out just how much FUN! a black start would be. Plus, because of how insane our energy 'market' has become, we also have stuff like this-

https://www.nationalgrid.co.uk/rota-load-disconnections

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its impact on global energy markets mean the UK and Europe face a challenging winter. The energy industry is prepared and has well-established procedures in place if there is a national energy shortage.

What they really meant to say is because the UK sanctioned Russia and 'invested' in 30GW of occasional generators, the grid is screwed..

If needed, customers would lose power for around three hours per day during the emergency, on an area-by-area basis. This would ensure power supplies are shared fairly with customers, and everyone has power for most of the day.

Funnily enough, Ukraine is currently implementing this, but only because Russia's been twatting Ukraine's electricity grid. Our 'need' for rationing has been entirely inflicted on us by insane government policy and intense lobbying by the 'renewables' scumbags. Oh, and don't ask why, despite the way our standing charges have rocketed up faster than a Kinzhal, we're told we might have to have energy rationing.

[John Robson]

Re: Not really a surprise

"So first you call it absurd, and then point out that it's already happening."

Do you have a button on your meter?

Do you have to check the price of electricity before you make coffee?

No - you get predictable pricing, which varies by the half hour according to a well known formula.

DFS is demonstrating that we don't even need to cold start a power station, we can move demand and even encourage domestic export to support the grid. A very small proportion of households took part, and collectively reduced the demand on the grid at peak times by 3.3GWh in 22/23, and 3.7 in 23/24. That's a pretty significant amount of load to move around.

You'll note of course that rota disconnections didn't happen - they're the last resort of demand management. In the same way that you didn't use your airbags last time you were in the car, I bet you're still glad they're there. So no - the fact that we have planned for the worst case doesn't mean we're rationing energy - the plans are nothing new, it's just that you've heard about them and jumped to entirely the wrong conclusion.

And without the "scumbag" renewables we really would have been in trouble - we'd have needed at least twice as much gas from Russia, and yes we've santioned them because they're invading another country. We should have sanctioned them when they first invaded, not just the recent expansion.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Not really a surprise

And without the "scumbag" renewables we really would have been in trouble - we'd have needed at least twice as much gas from Russia, and yes we've santioned them because they're invading another country.

If we'd invested in nuclear instead of windmills, we wouldn't have been in any trouble at all. The only reason we're in trouble, and now have one of the highest electricity costs in the world is because we've been tilting at windmills.

We should have sanctioned them when they first invaded, not just the recent expansion.

Not sure what you mean by 'invaded' given they were already based in Crimea. But was interesting to see Zelensky dressed for such a solemn occasion as the D-Day rememberance. Then again, his heroes did fight on the losing side of that conflict as well.

[John Robson]

Re: Not really a surprise

No - wind is substantially cheaper than other forms of energy, but our electricity market prices electrons based on the most expensive form of generation (generally gas).

The reason we have fairly high electricity costs is because we have a government who prioritised private company profits over essential services - and of course we are somewhat at the whim of the international gas markets.

"Not sure what you mean by 'invaded' given they were already based in Crimea."

I mean we should have sanctioned them in 2014 when they invaded Ukraine and annexed the Crimean peninsula.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Not really a surprise

No - wind is substantially cheaper than other forms of energy, but our electricity market prices electrons based on the most expensive form of generation (generally gas).

Obviously this is why my electricity bill is practically zero! Strange the way wind is supposed to be cheap, and getting cheaper and yet there's an inverse relationship with what we're being charged. Plus if course boring little details like a low-ball CfD bid that the developer pulled out of, and the peak stupidity of sanctioning gas being used to make the claim that 'wind is 7x cheaper'. And yet no wind farmers bid in the last round of CfDs, even though the price was a very generous £80/MWh.

I mean we should have sanctioned them in 2014 when they invaded Ukraine and annexed the Crimean peninsula

I think you mean the people of Crimea exercised their UN supported right to self-determination, voted to become independent, then voted to join the Russian Federation. But do keep up at the back. 2014 is when the sanctions started..

[John Robson]

Re: Not really a surprise

Again - no - the relationship is clear, the more wind (and solar) we have on the grid the lower the wholesale price - and it makes a great deal of sense as well, a wind turbine doesn't need fuel to be imported.

The IEA report that not only are new built renewables cheaper than new build fossil fuel plants, a substantial majority (3/4) are cheaper than running existing fossil fuel plants!

And no we didn't seriously sanction Russia in 2014

The russians invaded, replaced the government (i.e. held a coup), held a referendum and said that the result was overwhelmingly in favour of joining Russia... you don't see any potential weaknesses in that referendum?

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Not really a surprise

Again - no - the relationship is clear, the more wind (and solar) we have on the grid the lower the wholesale price - and it makes a great deal of sense as well, a wind turbine doesn't need fuel to be imported.

Again, no. The relationship is clear in our electricity bills. The more wind and solar we have on the grid, the more our energy bills increase. And the worst is yet to come, eg National Grid saying they need £90bn to upgrade the grid to support intermittent, unreliable occasional generators.

The IEA report that not only are new built renewables cheaper than new build fossil fuel plants, a substantial majority (3/4) are cheaper than running existing fossil fuel plants!

Again, something that isn't being reflected in our energy bills. But that's all part of the "levelised costs" scam, and the way markets are rigged. If markets were reformed to be based on firm energy contracts, nobody would be buying windmills because they're just not economic. So rather than CfD auctions being based on nameplate MW capacity, it's based on MWh. This is what the market wants.

Then a 300MW SMR could give me 200MWh. Wind? Well-

https://gridwatch.co.uk/Wind

minimum: 0.219 GW maximum: 12.507 GW average: 4.304 GW

I think that site is based on roughly 30GW installed wind capacity. So using that as a reference, 300MW wind would only generate around 45MWh. If the CfD was for 200MWh a month, the wind farmers would have to make up the difference. If the cost of connectivity and back-up capacity is added to the cost of wind, it can never be competitive. And it's much the same for coal and gas, with the 'levelised costs' loading on policy costs like carbon taxes, CCS etc that artificially inflate those costs and further subsidise the 'renewables' lobby. It's also the same with nuclear because even though it's low or zero carbon generation, it doesn't get the subsidies that 'renewables' do.

The russians invaded, replaced the government (i.e. held a coup), held a referendum and said that the result was overwhelmingly in favour of joining Russia... you don't see any potential weaknesses in that referendum?

You have that bass-akwards. Ukraine held a coup and replaced the government. That government removed Crimea's autonomy and parliament. Russia didn't invade Crimea because it was already there, and predominantly ethnic Russian. So in accordance with the UN principles of the right to self-determination, Crimea voted for independence, and election observers didn't find much weakness in that process. Then they voted to rejoin Russia, the sanctions started piling on, and the rest is becoming history.

[John Robson]

Re: Not really a surprise

And our increased energy bills have nothing at all to do with the massive spike in gas prices on the international market... no, nothing at all.

And of course all windmills are is big fans, taking power to generate wind, so that we can claim that the climate in changing.

"You have that bass-akwards"

Oh, I didn't realise Putin posted on here... Hi

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Not really a surprise

And our increased energy bills have nothing at all to do with the massive spike in gas prices on the international market... no, nothing at all.

Nope. Not really. Our electricity bills were rocketing long before our 'leaders' decided to sanction ourselves on top of rigging the UK energy market. There were no bids for offshore wind in the last round of CfDs not because the 'renewables' scumbags were whining that they needed more subsidies, but because of the high cost of gas and tobacco.

And of course all windmills are is big fans, taking power to generate wind, so that we can claim that the climate in changing.

Now there's an idea. People use desk fans to cool down, we could go bigger and blow away that 'global warming'. Of course windmills do consume power, sometimes making wind capacity go negative. Often worse during winter when the blades need to be kept turning and de-icing running.

Then again, there's more evidence appearing that man-made warming truly is man-made, just not in the way we've been lead to believe, eg-

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/06/09/dyce-weather-station-next-to-runway/

Ray has managed to locate the weather station, which is about 50m from the aircraft pictured on the runway, and only a few yards from a road and car park.

It has a WMO classification of Class 4, meaning there is uncertainty of up to 2C.

The Met Office's claim of a record May has managed to peg a lot of BS meters..

[StudeJeff]

Re: Not really a surprise (wind and solar cheaper?)

I don't think that's really the case.

When you consider all the land required, the extra infrastructure to connect all those windmills and panels to the grid (including big inverters), and some way to supply power when the wind isn't blowing and the sun not shining. All of that ads up.

For the most part wind and solar are economically feasible because governments are propping them up.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Not really a surprise (wind and solar cheaper?)

For the most part wind and solar are economically feasible because governments are propping them up.

Sadly this is incorrect. Governments aren't propping them up, we are via the subsidies added to our energy bills. Or higher costs for practically everything given energy costs are input costs to all businesses except the subsidy farmers scum like the IEEA promote. I smelled a rat with this bit-

Meanwhile, all the time, energy, and money spent constructing SMRs is taking resources away from renewables that work, and would work now, the duo said.

"Developers bringing multibillion-dollar SMRs onto the electric grid would have every incentive to run them as much as possible," the report surmises. "The less they run, the more their per megawatt-hour costs rise and the harder it will be for them to compete in the market."

This, of course is what the 'renewables' lobby is terrified of. Renewables don't work, and certainly don't work 24x7x365. Nuclear just keeps going, regardless of the weather. Nuclear provides baseload capacity, wind, when the weather's just right. Nuclear can produce Nx 730MWh a month where N= the reactor's capacity. Wind usually only manages around 20% of it's nameplate or capacity factor. So a 1GW NPP will generate 730GWh, 1GW wind, only 146GWh. Because wind runs for less, the more their megawatt hour costs rise, hence the massive subsidies we're forced to pay to prop them up.

If wind and solar truly were cheaper, subsidies could be removed. Funnily enough, they really don't want that to happen and are currently demanding we give them even more money.

[John Robson]

Re: Not really a surprise (wind and solar cheaper?)

"Renewables don't work"

So 47% of our electricity last year was imagined?

You need to come up with a better argument... maybe one which fits the known facts?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not really a surprise

Don't we already have the equivalent of SMRs swimming around in subs and ships?

They are a well proven design (although I don't know the cost) and if an aircraft carrier plant doesn't produce enough 'leccy, daisy-chain a few together - also giving you redundancy. Cooling might be a problem though unless they run next to a large body of water.

I guess the Industrial Military Complex wouldn't like that idea much if it meant military hardware in civilian hands.

[I could be a dog really]

Re: Not really a surprise

We do, but they are :

a) fairly small. Small enough not to be a viable contender for mass power generation - but the actual output is classified so I couldn't say even if I knew beyond a fairly vague value.

b) are of a design that's not well suited to civil applications. For starters, they use highly enriched uranium, which is not the sort of stuff you want outside of very well secured locations. Less enriched uranium wouldn't work well in the design. They also rely more on skilled operators than a typical civil plant - though yes, they do have safety systems that will shut them down if they go outside limits.

c) "reassuringly expensive". You think civil plants are expensive, considering the size difference, these are "gold plated unobtanium" prices AIUI

[cornetman]

The report sounds suspiciously like an industry hit piece TBH. The arguments given, while possibly true, have been touted around by opposition groups to all of the other options being developed:

- wind (too expensive, only generates when the wind blows, too far away from users to be useful, ugly),

- solar (too expensive, only generates when there is sun, ugly),

- large-scale nuclear (unbelievably expensive, ugly, still we don't really know what to do with the waste),

- coal/gas (now expensive, bad for the environment, will run out at some point so we need alternatives anyway).

And now we have SMRs: expensive, still generates waste that we don't really know what to do with.

You need to pick your poison(s). They all have problems. New tech is always expensive to develop otherwise we would have been doing it years ago.

What we probably need is a comprehensive mix so that issues with supply don't cause us major problems. So we don't really need people saying that one technology is taking too much of the limelight. Limelight isn't a limited commodity, and we certainly would not benefit from putting all our eggs in one basket yet again.

[AdamWill]

It was fashionable to tout "too expensive" against wind and solar for a while, but awkward reality has mostly put the kibosh on those, since they both turn out to be *ridiculously* cheap.

Now the somewhat-sensible con is intermittency (which is why sensible folks are putting a lot of effort into storage tech) and the Ludicrous Orange Guy con (for wind) is "won't somebody, please, think about the birds?"

[Catkin]

Another area where they're not so rosy is in carbon emissions. They're better than fossil fuels but the spreading out of generation means that they're more carbon-intensive than nuclear, thanks to everything from the concrete (especially for those giant offshore ones) to the increased number of substations (made drastically worse by SF6). Hydroelectric can compete but only under specific circumstances, namely, where you're not flooding fertile land and belching methane into the air.

[LybsterRoy]

Brill, so wind turbines don't use concrete, loads of wind turbines don't need substations and transmission lines dotted about.

[Catkin]

For the foundations, there are attempts to develop low concrete foundations but, especially at sea, these have corrosion issues. They're certainly not common.

For the substations, wind turbines operate at very low voltages (by electric grid standards) of a few hundred volts, up to 3kV (very rare, difficult to engineer and expensive to manufacture) so they're absolutely required. Even cutting down the number slightly causes efficiency losses and emissions from all the extra copper required for the thicker cables.

[LybsterRoy]

-- they both turn out to be *ridiculously* cheap. --

Have you seen an electricity bill recently?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you the slightest idea how electricity prices are calculated?

[MyffyW]

your leccy bill is largely a product of the market price of gas ...

renewable obligation is not the main determinant right now, although some cockwomble allowed the renewable providers to charge the fossil fuel cost (regardless of what it is) for their power. If they'd been clever the would have nailed the price at a more advantageous rate. Alas a flaw in contract drafting, not physics.

[blackcat]

The standing charge is getting to be a larger component of your bill in the UK.

[cornetman]

> although some cockwomble allowed the renewable providers to charge the fossil fuel cost

Yeah, that is the case here in BC, Canada. We have a *lot* of hydro power which was promised to be extremely cheap, but for "reasons" they have to charge the market energy rate, which makes our bills unreasonably large.

[AdamWill]

I'm in BC too. Our power is, indeed, very cheap. The numbers are a bit fuzzy because there's a lower rate for your first X units of power and a higher rate for units after that, and some misc fees slapped on top, but I paid C$120 for 1041kWh of power on my last bill, including all the random fees. That's 11.5 cents per kWh. The Reg is a historically British site, and a lot of the commenters are Brits; over there, the government artificially caps the price of electricity at 22.36 *pence* per kWh, which is 39.13 cents. They're paying nearly 4x as much as us.

Of course, it's somewhat tangential to the thread topic, which was solar and wind; our power is mainly hydro, which is extremely cheap on an ongoing basis but expensive up-front. We are currently benefiting from the outlays (and lax environmental and reconciliation policies) of our forebears. As power demands increase in the next few decades, and snowmelt flows to the existing dams decrease, we're going to have to pay more for power, one way or another.

[cornetman]

> I'm in BC too. Our power is, indeed, very cheap.

I wouldn't call it cheap. It's not terrible, but it is certainly not cheap. It also depends on who you get your power from.

If you live in New Westminster, like I used to, you have to pay the New Westminster city who buy it on your behalf from BC Hydro and the number of add-ons or "rate riders" they tag on is outrageous. Not BC Hydro's fault of course but still shocking.

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

Actually no. I have rooftop solar and a domestic storage battery. And I'm a net generator, even at night.

[Anonymous Coward]

While there is some truth in that, reactors a qualitatively different. SMRs have only one thing going for them: The unproven theory that they could be made much cheaper.

- When anything else proves uneconomic, it can be abandoned. You have to avoid the disintegrating old wind farms, but they can be ignored. When a reactor becomes uneconomic, it can't be ignored, and the taxpayer will have to pay to deal with it after a few decades as eventually corrosion will make it .

- The end-of-life radioactive waste vs MW ratio is very likely to be far worse than large reactors because of the usual volumetric scaling effect.

- A small nuclear installation has 100% of the siting and permitting costs and problems of a big reactor. i.e. the per MW costs are much higher. Lots of small industrial sites seem like a fantasy.

- "Problems" probably scale with the number of units more than the size of the unit. Lots of SMR's are probably more problems than the same MW of big reactors

- A small reactor just doesn't produce that many dollars. It's not clear that anyone would ever want the grief of siting a reactor for the amount of value it produces.

- I don't think any private company has every decommissioned a reactor at it's own cost. Ever. As soon as the number of old SMRs becomes a flood, the manufacturers will just demand the state pays them to clean up the mess. In the absence of a massive prepayment escrow system, which would be such a rich target it would be raided, there won't be money to clean them up.

The reality is that the nuclear industry left it's run at an acceptable modern reactor 20 years too late. There are some promising ideas underway like Moltex which looks like it could be an economic upgrade on existing nuclear sites, but they are probably still 20 years away from being rolled out at scale. It simply began too late.

[vtcodger]

... One more thing

Mostly, I agree. One more thing. The problems caused by failure of a reactor probably scale minimally if at all with the reactor's power output. Nuclear meltdown (Chernobyl, Fukishma) is nuclear meltdown. If you're planning to replace a 1000 MW conventional plant with 16 or 17 60MW SMRs, the SMRs probably need to be 16 or 17 times as safe. That's probably not realistic

All in all I think SMRs are probably as much the product of Utopian thinking as the notion of net zero at low cost via wind and sun.

It seems instructive to read admiral Hyman Rickover's "Paper Reactor Paper". It was written 70 years ago (tomorrow), and some of the specific problems cited have been tamed in the intervening seven decades. But overall it nicely sums up the problem of everything looks easy until you actually try to do it,

[vtcodger]

Re: ... One more thing

As an afterthought -- here's what seem to me to be the key paragraphs in the Paper Reactor paper

An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics:

It is simple.

It is small.

It is cheap.

It is light.

It can be built very quickly.

It is very flexible in purpose (“omnibus reactor”)

Very little development is required. It will use mostly “off-the-shelf” components.

The reactor is in the study phase. It is not being built now.

On the other hand, a practical reactor plant can be distinguished by the following characteristics:

It is being built now.

It is behind schedule.

It is requiring an immense amount of development on apparently trivial items. Corrosion, in particular, is a problem.

It is very expensive.

It takes a long time to build because of the engineering development problems.

It is large.

It is heavy.

It is complicated.

Sound familiar?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: ... One more thing

Thanks for the reference. ++good.

"The academic-reactor designer is a dilettante. He has not had to assume any real responsibility in connection with his projects. He is free to luxuriate in elegant ideas,"

Phew, thank heavens that is confined to reactor designers.

[I could be a dog really]

Re: ... One more thing

Nuclear meltdown (Chernobyl, Fukishma) is nuclear meltdown

You might like to read up a bit since SMRs are VERY different beast to the big ones we have now. Then you can look up what intrinsic safety and inherent safety are, because that's one of the major differences between SMRs and current large designs. Apart from the AP1000 and derivatives which do have a short term (days to week) passive emergency cooling system, current designs basically require an active cooling system for some time after shutdown - immediately after shutdown, secondary decay generates around 10% of the previous power (which for a 1gW plant would be 100MW), decaying rapidly over the next few days. But an SMR is designed to be either inherently or intrinsically safe - basically the cooling system can be catastrophically lost and you won't have a meltdown (the unit may well be "not fit for further use", but there won't have been a meltdown or other release of radiation).

Partly this is because with the lower power output, there's less heat to remove from a relatively larger surface area (i.e. less w/m2). But other design features are things like different fuels that won't melt at the temperatures that could arise.

So no, with the SMR designs I know of, it is impossible to have a Chernobyl or Fukushima style incident. And of course, for Fukushima that never met even the most basic western design standards as it lacked basic protections that have always been required of western civil reactors - so we couldn't have a meltdown of that kind with any of our plants (well perhaps, if someone really tried).

[Jellied Eel]

- The end-of-life radioactive waste vs MW ratio is very likely to be far worse than large reactors because of the usual volumetric scaling effect.

Ooh.. foncy sounding words to fool the gullible. What exactly do you mean by 'volumetric scaling effect'? I assume you're not referring to an SMR being, well, small. So small that it can be left to cool down for a bit and then taken by barge or train for longer term storage or disposal. And I'm assuming you're the usual anonymong because as you did when you confused capacity and load factors, you seem to have your units mixed up.

Surely for end-of-life waste, you'd want to be looking at the lifetime MWh generated vs end-of-life waste? Plus you'd need to define and quantify what you think you mean by 'waste', high, low or intermediate. Then we could compare waste generated by an SMR vs say, a hospital radiotherapy department.

- A small nuclear installation has 100% of the siting and permitting costs and problems of a big reactor. i.e. the per MW costs are much higher. Lots of small industrial sites seem like a fantasy.

I think the fantasy is best left to you and the scumbags desperate to flog windmills. The key point of SMRs is to create type-approved reactors that can be churned out on a production line. Once that's done, then SMRs can be built and installed without going through all the expensive permitting and approvals costs that a FOAK full-scale NPP has to go through. Oh, and you again miss the point of the 'S' in SMRs.. Being, well, small, the siting costs are correspondingly lower because they don't take up anywhere near as much space or materials as a full-sized Nx1GW NPP..

[I could be a dog really]

I assume he's referring to the fact that due to the design, per MWHr generated you will get more waste from an SMR. And it may be harder to process* than current waste.

* As someone pointed out, currently we throw away most of the stuff that in any other industry would be called fuel - because too many people have listed to the lies and scaremongering of the various anti nuclear factions and it's considered politically unacceptable to actually use it as fuel instead of throwing it away at huge expense.

[John Robson]

The point is that a power orb has a surface area and a volume.

As you make it larger there is more volume (and decay heat is produced per unit volume) than surface area (heat is lost through the surface area).

That means that a larger power orb will get hotter as the secondary decays continue after the reactor is shut down. A smaller power orb loses enough heat to not get hot enough to melt.

[blackcat]

"still we don't really know what to do with the waste"

We used to do something with the waste but thanks to Jimmy Carter it was made near enough impossible so the switch was made to a once through and very expensive fuel cycle. When you are throwing away 95% of your usable fuel then nuclear looks like a very bad option... and that was the point.

I personally don't like SMRs as it is perpetuating a very old and not very good design of reactor. If we'd spent the last 40 years looking at GEN4 reactors and beyond rather than dragging our heels and listening to the doom mongers we'd be in a much happier place AND we'd have something to do with the current 'waste' stockpiles.

[stevebp]

As I've stated on other posts, Micro Nuclear Reactors or Very Small Nuclear Reactors (VSNR) do not suffer from any of the drawbacks mentioned above. They come in ISO (shipping) containers, a variety of nuclear fuels can be used, 3rd parties can install, secure, operate and decommission them so the energy consumer doesn't have to, and, apart from the first-mover costs of getting permits approved in new jurisdictions, consequent installations will be vastly cheaper than SMRs in terms of cost, land use, resiliency and waste products. Plus, nuclear reactors do not generate electricity directly, they generate heat - the heat store can be topped up by waste heat from the energy consumers (ie. Data Centres), creating a virtuous cycle. This is where the future lies until Nuclear Fusion becomes a reality (maybe never!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Micro Nuclear Reactors or Very Small Nuclear Reactors (VSNR) suffer from a huge problem of scale which never gets mentioned. You arguably need the same security around these tiny reactors that you do around a full size reactor. They need the same consideration of terrorist attacks, so your iso container will need to be placed within a reinforced concrete bunker, with 24/7 security.

Also, these reactors have to be built to the same standards as the "full size" reactors, so don't expect the manufacturers cost estimates to be right, because they haven't actually considered all the possible failure modes of the reactor properly during the design phase....

[Jellied Eel]

You arguably need the same security around these tiny reactors that you do around a full size reactor. They need the same consideration of terrorist attacks, so your iso container will need to be placed within a reinforced concrete bunker, with 24/7 security.

You make that sound like it's difficult. You don't need the same security because your security perimeter is a lot smaller. Slap ISO container into your bunker. Build a 'moat' around that bunker. Build a wall around the moat. Paint red lines around the above. Shoot anyone who crosses those red lines that doesn't have permission to be there. Or if you're feeling especially brave, ask Boston Dynamics or similar for a quote on some armed robodogs.

Oh, and go look up Gravel Gerties. This is a semi-SFW query, depending on who you work for and I take no responsibility if you end up on any watch lists. But the idea around SMRs is they're inherently fail-safe, easier to protect and defend and contain less radioactive material in the first place, should there be an unscheduled and unauthorised excursion.

... because they haven't actually considered all the possible failure modes of the reactor properly during the design phase....

Err.. right. Because nuclear engineering isn't at all extremely paranoid about safety. Then again, this is an area where with some care, costs could be reduced. Most of the risks were theoretical wrt things like exposure levels. But after a few decades of evidence where exposures have occurred, the actual risks haven't been as great as predicted.

[I could be a dog really]

You arguably need the same security around these tiny reactors that you do around a full size reactor

Well you can argue that - but you'd be wrong.

Due to the design, there's not much anyone could do with an SMR when it's installed on site. You can't get at the fuel without something to lift it out of it's concrete "pocket" - and that's not a small crane we're talking about. Then you'd have to physically cut it open to get at the fuel. It doesn't take much security on top of that to slow anyone down enough till a few vans with heavily armed people turn up to arrest you.

And you couldn't steal one. While they are small, they aren't actually ISO container small. "Road transportable" really means "with special transport arrangements and equipment" - so even if you managed to get that onto site, and lift the reactor onto it, and get away before being surrounded by lots of people with guns, you won't get far as your progress would make even a slapped out old Transit look spritely.

[Strong as Taishan Mountains]

Why the obsession with tiny reactors everywhere? You're just increasing the sets of risk and upside/downside on novel reactor ideas with new fuel formats. Just asking for problems, costly problems.

Meanwhile no one is bothering to follow through on latest generation reactors with passive safety features. Strange that.

The politics around nuclear energy are a disaster. (Take Lake Anna for example, a nuclear cooling lagoon where the locals stopped construction of another reactor because after all, they're entitled to cooling lagoon-front property and a third reactor may endanger that)

(Specifically the Economic simplified reactor by GEH)

[cantankerous swineherd]

it's the economics around nuclear power that are the disaster, when it isn't an actual nuclear disaster.

[I could be a dog really]

Meanwhile no one is bothering to follow through on latest generation reactors with passive safety features. Strange that.

SMRs actually do have passive safety features - a key feature (at least of the western designs) is inherent or intrinsic safety. That means, remove the cooling system, it doesn't melt down or release radioactive material. That is a key point - which it seems few people understand (or perhaps, don't want to understand ?)

[Gaius]

On the contrary the UK knows a great deal about small, very reliable nuclear reactors. We use them on submarines and have done for decades.

[Ken Hagan]

Limited numbers, low power output, and even less planning than usual about how to decommission them.

I'm a big fan of nuclear power, but I'm not going to cite those reactors as role models.

[Anonymous Coward]

And the price per MWh ever generated is truly eye watering.

I was a bit surprised the Russian nuke barge was so slow and problematic.

If submarine reactor are so easy, why** do we not have nuke barges already? Britain, France, US, Russia (not to mention Australia), all have the reactors as well established, proven designs.

(**They use high enrichment fuel for starters.)

[Jimmy2Cows]

Proliferation fears, and decades of scaremongering by the anti-nuclear crowd. Take those away and there could have been vast progress on both power output and cost. But with those in place, it's never really be practical or feasible to build anything more than powerpoint reactors.

[blackcat]

"Proliferation fears"

This is the thing, commercial nuclear plants don't produce weapons grade material. You need a much shorter fuel cycle otherwise the Pu239 gets converted into Pu240 and that is no good for bombs.

In the UK Calder Hall and Chapel Cross were built as dual use civilian/bomb reactors, the rest were normal fuel cycle. The belief that all reactors are dual use likely stems from this.

Generation 4 and beyond will be able to use Pu240 and other currently unusable fission products, hopefully along with thorium, as fissile fuel which will get you 10-15x more electricity per fuel rod. The other upside is you won't be reliant on the current uranium sources and all the associated geopolitics and pollution from extraction.

[Strong as Taishan Mountains]

Technically we could reuse spent fuel, (MOX) build incredibly safe and effective reactors, store waste securely and safely.

Politically? No. (Technically we could be colonizing the stars, its the political garbage what makes everything a nightmare mess)

[Doctor Syntax]

"Technically we could be colonizing the stars"

Could you fill in the detail a little, please. I'm sure a lot of us would like to know about this startling news.

[DJO]

Don't worry, you've not missed some startling news. People go on about generation ships or von Neumann probes but we are nowhere close to being able to construct either.

With either the theory says we could cover the galaxy in about a single rotation (~225 million years) which in human terms is a while but in galactic terms is nothing.

In all such cases the theory is unbelievably optimistic. Generation ships are a problem both technically and ethically, making something that'll last for several hundred years in the rather hostile environment space provides is asking a lot, as for expecting the people 6 or 7 generations down the line to do the colonization is a bit presumptive. As for von Neumann probes the technology to make self replicating probes is a distant dream and really a bit pointless, good for a bit of science but do we really want to seed a robot galaxy?

A way to circumvent the speed of light problem would change everything and while exceeding the SoL is impossible, in theory it should be possible to reduce the distance between points but without some exotic matter we've not encountered yet we don't have much chance.

[AndrueC]

I think it involves asbestos underpants and a lot of sunscreen lotion.

[I could be a dog really]

even less planning than usual about how to decommission them

I guess it will come as a surprise to you that there is in fact a plan, in place, to fully decommission all of them - and not as far away time wise as you might think.

Also, when our Magnox civil reactors were built, there was in fact a plan for decommissioning. But the anti-nuclear factions won the ear of policy makers and instead of doing it the safe and cheap way, we have to do it the expensive way and make lots of "waste" in the process that simply wouldn't have existing following the original plan.

[gecho]

Delay Tactic

The local right wing government in my province has embraced SMRs as an alternative to doing anything to reduce reliance on gas / coal. Toss in some token research dollars and sign onto a coalition, and they get to kick the can down the road 15-20 years when it will be someone else's problem. The magical promises of SMRs has surprisingly broad support across the political spectrum.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh good

One of the several objections to fission power is that it's a very poor use of capital. Glad to see some authoritative backing.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Oh good

Glad to see some authoritative backing.

Citation needed Did you bother to see who IEEFA actually are? Sure, they sound authoritative, but.. are they? Who's funding them?

[Erik Beall]

Re: Oh good

That is so bizarre, that's not a likely place for a reputable think tank at all. I lived in Cleveland to 2015 and used to go to melt bar a block east of there and know that area well. Great area but good Lord that is an odd location to be based out of.

[Anonymous Coward]

Energy is a whole system problem

This kind of article irritates energy engineers. Thinking that nuclear is just a 'stop-gap until renewables fully mature and see widespread adoption' is a fantasy rooted in ignorance. There is no single correct technology family that we just need to back exclusively. We will need to do lots of everything. Energy is a whole-system problem, involving the availability and use of land, raw materials etc, as well as the issue of intermittency.

For example:

https://www.oecd.org/publications/the-costs-of-decarbonisation-9789264312180-en.htm

Renewables are fine up to a point (having used a lot of copper, rare earths etc to build) but become an expensive problem to fully rely on. Therefore, nuclear, while having costs and downsides, fills that piece of the puzzle. Already the price of electricity goes negative on the European grid when there is too much sun or wind (storage at serious scale and duration is hard and far off). Therefore the LCOE of the generating plant is irrelevant, since the *value* of the product is almost nil during these periods.

This is also just taking about electricity - there is the rest of the energy sector to decarbonise too, and it's a lot bigger...

[diodesign]

Not a stop gap

Hi -- we've reviewed the piece and, yes, stop gap wasn't the right word for the reasons you've given.

For one thing, as a publication, our editorial line is that nuclear is not a stop gap - we should be in it for the long haul, and the nuclear by its very nature is a long-haul undertaking. There's no stop gap to it.

We've tweaked the piece accordingly. Thanks for the feedback.

C.

[Robert 22]

I've always wondered about the viability of the concept. Nuclear reactors require that the loss of neutrons be kept small enough to allow a nuclear chain reaction to be maintained. That is hard to do with a small reactor unless you use highly enriched fuel. That in turn raises questions about economics and possibly nuclear proliferation.

[Andy 73]

Colour me cynical

...but if their data points are designs primarily in Russia and China that were apparently initiated some 15 years ago, this research is not analysing current western technology.

Further, some corners of the renewable industry has been doing all it can to mobilise against Nuclear (see the recent controversies in Germany, which are in some cases quite shocking), whilst carefully ignoring the issues with intermittency and reliability that remain unsolved problems that seriously limit the capabilities of wind and solar. Demands that all investment is only in renewables has choked development of Nuclear - so pointing out that no serious developments have been made in the west is probably more a symptom of a distorted market than an indication that the technology is not capable. This should be a sign of a problem to be solved, not a case for dismissal. Unfortunately admitting as such risks loosing critical subsidies... and we get reports like this.

Not that renewables don't have an important place in a multi-modal energy grid, but *some* of the recent development work has only been made possible by artificially supressing work on serious alternatives. The risk here is that we end up with an energy grid that is unreliable, intermittently expensive and unable to support long term investment. Few people fully understand that the current occasions of negative energy prices are a warning sign not an outcome to be celebrated.

[gtarthur]

Re: Colour me cynical

That was exactly what I was thinking too - evaluating 4 devices that are based on technology that's over 10 years old is ridiculous. At the time those projects were starting, the only extant technology was naval propulsion systems. Previous commentors have correctly spotted the weaknesses of adapting those technologies for civilian power production. It's far too soon in the life cycle of SMRs to do this kind of "hit job" based such a small number of devices. At this point there's no way to evaluate the possible scaling factors that might be evolved.

Also, I would not grant any credibility for results from any of the 3 countries mentioned.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Colour me cynical

>the only extant technology was naval propulsion systems.

Actually a lot of small reactors have been made. The SMR idea is far from new.

They didn't meet an actual economic need, and by the late '60s it was very clear that much bigger power stations were needed to make economic sense.

The only place economic value was high enough, was submarines, ice breakers, and a few aircraft carriers.

[Andy 73]

Re: Colour me cynical

Two things:

1. The SMR in a Nuclear submarine is not built to be economical. It's built to survive under almost any imaginable circumstance, and to work in extremely difficult environmental, physical and space constraints. Comparing one with a "domestic" SMR is pointless.

2. The economic drivers that made extremely large power stations sited in a few remote(ish) locations make sense have been upturned by renewables - where many small energy sources have been integrated in the grid. Further, the social problems (no nuclear near me) encouraged large and expensive stations rather than small and local.

The reason experienced companies like Rolls Royce are revisiting SMRs is that improvements in technology, changes in the nature of the energy grid and economic factors have made the logic of the late 60's a thing of the past.

[I could be a dog really]

Re: Colour me cynical

much bigger power stations were needed to make economic sense

For the technology being used, yes. You need a lot of active safety systems to make a typical large reactor design safe. They are very expensive. But if you (say) double the capacity of the reactor, you don't double the costs of the safety systems - far from it. Hence there's a huge economy of scale.

SMRs are specifically designed to not rely on those expensive active safety systems. Once you take that cost away, then the economics changes.

The other big economic driver for big plants is the massive design and certification costs - and having spent that, you build very few of that model. Plus each build is bespoke to the location even if the reactor itself is the same (e.g. different ground conditions needing massive amounts of further development and certification work).

The idea with an SMR is to make a factory assembled, "mass" produced unit so the development and certification costs are spread across "many" units. The on-site civils are to a standard design, except for some customisation of the foundation layer to adapt to local ground conditions - so there's only a small site-specific design/development cost.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Colour me cynical

It's far too soon in the life cycle of SMRs to do this kind of "hit job" based such a small number of devices.

Depending on what you're trying to achieve. If you have a vested interest in a competing technology it's exactly the right time.

[bernmeister]

Dissapointing.

One of the original attractions of SMR was the short build time. Why has it turned out they take so long to build?

[Filippo]

Re: Dissapointing.

The short build time would come from standardization and economy of scale. That can't happen until the R&D phase is done.

[blackcat]

Re: Dissapointing.

That was also a justification of using the EPR design, but the design is STILL in flux over a decade later and not helped that every country has different regs and requirements.

[Filippo]

Re: Dissapointing.

Yup, and the same will probably happen to SMRs - but it's still worth a shot. If some day we manage to fix the political issues around nuclear, it will be nice to have the technical issues sorted already.

The world won't go bankrupt over a few research projects, and the notion that we shouldn't do it because it steals limelight from renewables is ... deeply problematic. A dangerous line of reasoning. The current strategy for low-carbon sources should be to steal limelight from fossils, not from each other. Every time a pro-nuke poos on renewables or vice-versa, the oil barons smile.

SMRs? 4th-gen reactors? PV? Geo? Hydro? Wind? Better batteries? Pumped storage? Green H2? Fund it all, I say. Stop when it's proven stupid (biofuels, I'm looking at you).

[blackcat]

Re: Dissapointing.

I'm still confused why it has to be an all or nothing approach. Even when coal and oil were king a lot good few countries went nuclear and not because they wanted bombs. As the eco-loonies have been anti-nuclear for a very long time (and for very bad reasons) they can't suddenly do a large scale about face. Many have changed tune on an individual level which is good.

Biofuels from algae, yes. Ammonia rather than H2... not so sure. Ammonia comes with its own issues. There will always be a need for a dense and easily storable fuel.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Dissapointing.

"they can't suddenly do a large scale about face"

Making progress one death at a time.

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: Ammonia

Aren't the main issues with Ammonia that:

It burns, but not as hot or fast as hydrogen or hydrocarbons. Harder to start and sustain a burn, doesn't heat the working fluid as much, so all our current turbine designs won't work efficiently as they're designed for hotter fluid.

If doesn't produce CO2, but it produces a lot of NOx. Replace a GHG pollutant (that's also plant food) with one that causes adverse respiratory reactions and acid rain. Neither are great, but at least if we manage to plant enough trees (we've cut down something like 3 trillion, how about putting them back?) they will steadily consume the atmospheric CO2 and can be used for lumber, thus locking the CO2 away. Trees don't feed on NOx.

[blackcat]

Re: Ammonia

I think ammonia in itself is a potent GHG. The theory behind producing it is that it binds the hydrogen in a more dense and transportable way. And you can either use it as is or strip the hydrogen off it and turn the nitrogen back into N2 rather than oxidising it.

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: Dissapointing.

They take an infinite time to approve. We haven't yet built enough to know how long it takes to actually build one.

[Henry Wertz 1]

Expense

Well, even the early descriptions of SMRs I recall reading about 20+ years ago, the costs involved assuming EVERYTHING went 100% perfectly, licensing turned into a turnkey thing, and mass production brought costs down, still were rather high. I mean my recollection was them talking about them costing like 1/3rd to 1/2 the cost of a full scale reactor while producing 1/10th to 1/4 the power. I think back then, they were not expecting wind power to take off as it has, and were looking forward to the possibility of oil and coal shortages driving those per-kwh electricity prices right through the roof. I still enjoy very low rates (10-12 cents a kwh) where I live, SMRs would be more viable if that was like $1.50 a kwh instead.

In fact, on my last power bill it revealed 92% of the power used here is renewable -- Iowa's governor is a climate change denier nutbag and a bit of an asshole, but MidAmerica Energy has invested big on wind farms since it's quite windy here -- sometimes too windy. Here's a video from last week with some wind turbines about 150 miles west of me being completely shredded to hell by an EF4 to EF5 tornado (it also went through Greenfield, killed at least 4 people with some still missing, and leveled a bunch of the town... 185MPH winds will do that.):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_ZDVYzIhgc

(If you skip to 3:50, they have a second camera showing the same footage that is even clearer and more impressive. There's also a drone footage of the same event; Reed Timmer storm chases professionally so needless to say they made sure to get plenty of footage...)

For a sense of scale, those blades that are flapping around like paper are around 1.5-2x the length of a standard semi truck and trailer (lorry and trailer..), they must use oversized load signage on the trucks hauling them around and plan a route avoiding any tight turns since those blades don't bend (ordinarily, I guess you could say they bent plenty here.)

It does seem like the climate change has made the weather more active here -- I've had 4 tornados (usually more like 80-100MPH ones) pass within a few miles of my house just this year so far.

[cmdrklarg]

Re: Expense

The drone footage he got from that twister looked absolutely surreal with the dark interior and the white sub-vortices.

Same tornado from Timmer with drone footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFXN3X4e5sE

[cantankerous swineherd]

wind and solar have eaten nuclear's lunch.

if solar + battery becomes enough to keep a house going it's good bye (and good riddance) to the grid and gas and electric utilities. Africa and Australia will be the first to get there.

[ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo]

Well, with sufficient use of grid-forming inverters, there's no more argument against renewables.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/electric-inverter

I mean, why invest in a somewhere-in-the-future technology, when everything we need is already there.

The one remaining part to fully mature is to fully stabilize the grid using the inverters of solar and wind, instead of relying on the inertia of huge spinning generators.

[blackcat]

Works well on a small scale. The article describes how the grid coped with the loss of a 26MW generator.

If you compare this to the 2003 blackout in the US, one transmission line went from 3.7GW westwards to 2GW eastwards and back again in half a second. Due to the way most large scale grids have been designed, based around giga rather than mega, the scaling up of inverter technology is going to take a while.

Arguably it would be no bad thing to split grids into much smaller chunks but the current infrastructure is old and worn out already and getting the NIMBYs to allow new infrastructure is a nightmare.

[I could be a dog really]

Well, with sufficient use of grid-forming inverters, there's no more argument against renewables

Until reality inconveniently points out just how much storage would be needed. Then you realise that all the batteries ever made added together are barely a piss in the ocean. Maybe, a long way off, but I very much doubt in our lifetimes.

[Andy 73]

> Africa and Australia will be the first to get there.

We can test this (very bold theory)... see you in five years' time.

It's important to note that battery has not advanced nearly enough to meet this expectation, and the rate of progress has been glacial, despite relentless research and near daily announcement of "better" battery technology. It's this lack of progress that has derailed Tesla's plans and killed off a few dozen upstarts in the EV space - and remember that they have collectively been attempting to move the bar on battery technology for the last decade. Early wins were largely in improving basic industrial processes, of manufacture and processing - not of the underlying chemistry, and now battery companies are struggling to move on.

Worse still, the African use cases that we often see demonstrated are not providing the level of energy access that we enjoy in the developed west. Declaring that the job can be done by enforcing energy poverty is at best disingenuous.

[Filippo]

I have panels and batteries in my house, and a PHEV, and I heat with gas. I'm saying this so you know I have direct experience. Also, I'm in Italy. Assume everything is more difficult at higher latitudes.

I'm also assuming that by off-grid we also mean BEV and heat pumps; if we don't, then we're cheating.

Going off-grid in winter is unfeasible. It's not even close. It might work in regions where cloud cover is extremely rare, or where you never need heating, but most of Earth is not like that.

On bad weather days in winter, my PV production is nearly zero, and sometimes that happens for weeks in a row.

To manage that scenario, the improvements required in solar + battery would have to be well into science fiction territory. And I only have to freeze to death once.

Uh, also, virtually no industrial plant can run on its own renewables, not even with sci-fi level tech.

You have to have a grid with baseline.

The only scenario I can imagine with no nuclear would be one where you have fuel cell baseline power plants that you can spin up at a moment's notice, and as many renewables as you can, and massive hydrolysis plants that run on excess power in summer. But the logistics and grid engineering to get that to work... the mind boggles. I'm all right with giving it a shot, but we should also pursue nuclear at the same time; if it turns out we can do without, good, but let's not burn bridges ahead of time, yes?

[itzman]

not if solar plus battery costs 20 times as much as nuclear grid power and only lasts 6 yrears

[Bearshark]

I guess NGO's (IEEFA) do rule the world. What sort of bullshit are these people talking about???

"(IEEFA) concludes in a report that SMRs are "still too expensive, too slow to build, and too risky to play a significant role in transitioning away from fossil fuels."

We've had SMRs for 70 years in a military capacity. Now these jokers say it is "still too expensive, too slow to build". These people can go F themselves. It is all about keeping their foot on the necks of the populous that they hate so much. Hell, cancer has been cured for at least 30 years, but there isn't any money in that business model.

[itzman]

Tney must be a real threat to renewables to jusify such a hatchet job

look into who paid for this

[anderlan]

Sounds like they need $ to jump the startup chasm. A high Carbon price would give it to them.

An onerous price on fossil CO2 would equalize the playing field so that all low-carbon energy could compete against fossils. Including nuclear. An onerous Carbon price is nuclear's best and only real friend. But I never hear any nukers asking for one... (well, besides me and a few others - niskanencenter.org )

[Anonymous Coward]

I would question whether the IEEFA has an inherent bias to favour renewables as it has the following mission statement: 'to accelerate the transition to a diverse, sustainable and profitable energy economy.'

[aelfheld]

Conflict

Seems a bit suspect when an organisation devoted to making energy expensive carries on about something being "too expensive, too slow to build, and too risky to play a significant role in transitioning away from fossil fuels."

What's riskier? A nuclear reactor with all the safeguards producing reliable or intermittent, unreliable, 'renewable' power?

'Well, the operation was a success . . . right up until the wind dropped and the machines shut down. Sorry about your loss.'