
The Next Nuclear Plants Will Be Smaller and Safer - corporate_shi11
https://www.wired.com/story/the-next-nuclear-plants-will-be-small-svelte-and-safer/
======
mdorazio
No word here on how much they will cost to build and decommission or how much
water they require, or what the plan for waste management is. I'd love to see
some numbers here because without them it's easy to assume this is not cost
competitive with solar+battery in +5 years given current trends.

~~~
jillesvangurp
The article includes an interesting note at the end:

> “I am skeptical of the ability to license advanced nuclear reactors and
> deploy them on a scale that would make a difference for climate change,”
> adds Fetter. “But I think it’s worth exploring because they’re a centralized
> form of carbon-free electricity and we don’t have a lot of those available.”
> At least in the US, it might be the only way nuclear power gets another
> chance.

I think that's a fair assessment. It's probably not going to make a lot of
difference but it is still interesting to explore and invest in.

Regarding solar and battery, mass production capacity is basically the biggest
hurdle here. Demand seems to be taking care of that (i.e. people are building
so-called Giga factories to take care of this) but we're still an order of
magnitude or two off to take care of most of our needs. Just the process of
ramping up production is going to cut cost further. And of course at the
current price levels, battery + solar is already highly competitive with just
about everything else. Of course in the process of ramping up production,
there are likely to also going to be massive technical improvements that will
further drive down cost and performance.

And just to pre-empt the argument: darkness is temporary and local, which
means it is much less of a problem than some nuclear proponents seem to claim.
Basically, if your panels don't provide enough power when it is cloudy,
install more. If your battery runs out in the middle of the night, buy a
bigger battery. If the area you live in is susceptible to extended periods of
darkness (aka. the polar night), import power using cables. On the other hand,
if, like most of the population of planet Earth, you live closer to the
equator this is not going to be an issue.

Nuclear is still going to be useful but just not as our primary source of
electricity. The safety and securitt concerns alone would make this
impractical. Even if we can deliver this technically and produce these things
cost effectively, you'd still need a lot of security measures to prevent
people from doing silly things like creating dirty bombs with the nasty stuff
inside. Imagine a few tens of thousands of these things, it would be a
nightmare from a security point of view.

~~~
doikor
Darkness is temporary (in the sense of nights) only when close enough to
equator. Here in Finland even as far south as you can go solar efficiency
drops to almost nothing for a good 4 months a year. And in the north it goes
to literally to nothing. And it isn’t very safe to rely on other counties for
electricity over this period. Doing that basically hands the keys to freeze a
sizable portion of our population to an external entity (government)

Though even now we aren’t independent when it comes to heating over the
winters. We have to import oil, gas and coal. But with those one can have
strategic stockpiles to last over the next/current winter at least if things
go bad. Kind of similar for nuclear fuel. We have stockpiles for years but
don’t mine it here (we could but economically much cheaper to buy from Sweden
and Russia). Just much easier to stockpile that stuff.

But yeah for the vast majority of the whole planets population solar with
batteries should work just fine.

~~~
jacquesm
I would be highly surprised if the habitable zone of our planet in
'sustainable' mode would be the exact same habitable zone in 'unsustainable'
mode.

~~~
marcosdumay
I wouldn't. We are roughly distributed by local food availability, and that
correlates well with solar power availability.

The one large difference is that food is easier to import. But I am pretty
sure we can solve the energy long distance trade problems.

------
xorfish
> “I am skeptical of the ability to license advanced nuclear reactors and
> deploy them on a scale that would make a difference for climate change”

I know of at least one design that is likely to be commercialiced in 5-10
years.

The 195 MWe IMSR is much smaller than the nuScale reactor and is already in
the middle of the second pre licicing review of cnsc.

Main advantage of the imsr is that it operates at normal pressure and it has a
much better fuel economy. It produces six times more with the same amount of
fuel as a LWR.

~~~
baking
I had to look this up. The CNSC is the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.
Their Pre-Licensing Review is an optional process intended to streamline the
eventual license application.
([https://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/reactors/power-plants/pre-
li...](https://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/reactors/power-plants/pre-licensing-
vendor-design-review/index.cfm))

The NRC and the CNSC have also agreed to a joint review process that might
perhaps allow the same design to be used in both Canada and the US.
([https://www.terrestrialenergy.com/2019/12/terrestrial-
energy...](https://www.terrestrialenergy.com/2019/12/terrestrial-energy-imsr-
advanced-reactor-selected-by-canadian-and-u-s-regulators-for-joint-review/))

However, the ISMR is at least three years behind NuScale who started their NRC
application in December 2016 and are well along in the process.

~~~
xorfish
If you look at the progress at the CNSC, then NuScale appears to be one year
ahead. The IMSR should finish the second phase in October 2020.

Terrestrial Energy plans to have the first commercial plant on the grid in the
next decade.

~~~
baking
I don't know enough about the process to make comparisons, but NuScale
currently expects to be producing grid power in 2026. Nothing against
Terrestrial Energy or molten salt reactors which is certainly an interesting
tech. NuScale is about as boring as all get-out and might face fewer
regulatory hurdles, but it might also have a harder time competing against
better tech.

------
symplee
From the article:

>> NuScale’s reactor is 65 feet tall and 9 feet in diameter, and is housed in
a containment vessel only slightly larger. About the size of two school buses
stacked end to end, you could fit around 100 of them in the containment
chamber of a large conventional reactor. Yet this small reactor can crank out
60 megawatts of energy.

>> The review process is brutal—NuScale submitted a 12,000 page technical
application—and will likely stretch on for at least another year. But the
company has already secured permission to build its first 12-reactor plant at
the Idaho National Laboratory, which may start supplying power to communities
in Western states as soon as 2026.

~~~
symplee
A couple extra ideas for these beyond land-based power generation:

1) Put a couple of these on trans-Atlantic cruise ships, designed for speed,
to make the journey in 3 days (at 50 MPH) carrying 2,000+ people.

2) Cargo ships that operate on the backbone long haul routes. If there are
concerns about these getting too close to shoreline or population, just have
them only operate 10 miles from land. Other cargo ships can then load and
unload them in open water. (This would require some faster loading/unloading
mechanism, maybe something where the front would open up and slide out the
entire deck into the other ship.)

Thoughts?

~~~
onesmallcoin
The New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament and Arms Control Act 1987 is
arguably the strongest anti-nuclear weapon domestic legislation in the world.
It bans nuclear weapons and propulsion from New Zealand's land, sea and
airspace out to the country's 12-mile territorial limits.

~~~
loeg
How is this related? Are you quibbling with the 10 mile figure in GP's
comment? Or suggesting that NZ is some substantial portion of the hypothetical
target market for GP's hypothetical nuclear cruise ship? Something else?

Nuclear-powered US military vessels (subs and aircraft carriers, at least)
already sail all around the world. I guess they don't enter NZ's 12 mile zone,
or get some exemption when they do.

------
smaddox
TIL about liquid metal cooled nuclear reactors. Wikipedia makes lead-cooled
reactors sound pretty amazing, and yet lead-bismuth seems to be preferred,
presumably simply because of the lower melting point, despite the
disadvantages of bismuth (polonium byproduct, high cost). I'd be interested to
hear if there are other reasons pure lead cooling isn't being more actively
pursued. Especially for small, single-use reactors, it seems like it would be
perfect.

~~~
minikites
The reactor is difficult to turn off:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa-
class_submarine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa-class_submarine)

>The issue was that the lead/bismuth eutectic solution solidifies at 125 °C
(257 °F). If it ever hardened, it would be impossible to restart the reactor,
since the fuel assemblies would be frozen in the solidified coolant. Thus,
whenever the reactor is shut down, the liquid coolant must be heated
externally with superheated steam.

~~~
makomk
Yeah, those Soviet lead-bismuth reactors were basically single-use devices -
once they ran out of fuel, they were useless and had to be replaced with a new
reactor. I don't think Russia had any plans on how to safely decommission and
dispose of them at the end of their life either.

~~~
mechhacker
If you're interested in a more modern Russian lead reactor, check out:
[https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/...](https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/49/085/49085788.pdf)

They also have a lot of recent experience with sodium fast reactors, of which
the BN-600 is still running, BN-800 is running (and was started within the
past 2 years), but the BN-1200 is delayed:

[http://fissilematerials.org/blog/2019/08/the_construction_of...](http://fissilematerials.org/blog/2019/08/the_construction_of_the_b.html)

------
pkaye
On Netflix there is a three part documentary about Bill Gates. One of the
parts is about him funding a new generation nuclear plant.

~~~
petre
Too bad he was working with China. I want it to succeed but I imagine it
cannot in the curent political reality (trade war, Xi, HK, Taiwan
independence, etc).

~~~
loeg
The major setback highlighted in the documentary was Fukushima, which predates
the recent political climate.

~~~
qes
I thought I recalled that the major setback was the current U.S.
administration's trade policies with China. Everything was set to go, but then
the plans got trumped.

~~~
loeg
You're right :-). They were both addressed in the series (part 3).

> [~27:24] Narrator: Bill and his team finally believed they had developed the
> ideal energy source. A reactor that was clean, efficient, and most
> importantly, safe.

> [cuts to conference room TV playing Fukushima news coverage] ...

> [~28:22] N: Public opinion, already skittish, turned against nuclear.

> [cuts to the two walking around outside]

> N: When you have a massive setback, how do you deal with that?

> ... [some cut to old DOJ drama] ...

> [~32:07] TV anchor: The US nuclear industry is bracing for a backlash

> [background switches to Fukushima footage]

Later:

> [~41:49] N: In 2015, President Xi came to Seattle and had a private meeting
> with Bill.

> Some guy: Then we see real movement.

> ...

> [~42:39] TV: A tariff tit-for-tat, teetering on a trade war ...

> [~42:50] TV: Investment restrictions on China with respect to high
> technology.

> [43:09] Guy working on the reactor: China and the United States had to
> negotiate this very complicated contract. Well, each government had a right
> to cancel it, and our government did. So, by canceling that contract that
> gives us the legal right to do nuclear things in China, we can't do it
> anymore.

> [43:35] [cuts to another guy] N: What was his reaction when you showed it to
> him?

> Guy: I think he just said, "oh shit."

> [cuts away to more DOJ stuff]

------
Causality1
Great, except those aren't the problems facing nuclear. The issues are cost
and public perception. Reactors are already exceptionally safe compared to
fossil fuel plants. People don't like nuclear and even when they do they don't
want it near their home. This has resulted in among other things an absurdly
expensive and drawn-out process for getting approval to build a new plant.

~~~
7952
The hope is that small reactors are cheaper to produce and maintain.

Also, can you give more detail on why you think regulation is so over the top?

~~~
Causality1
In short, deliberate regulatory obstructionism. Telling people you'll protect
them from nuclear meltdown is a great way to get votes. Estimates for the cost
of nuclear energy without the past four decades of anti-nuke activism are as
low as 10% of current costs.

[https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/12/2169](https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/12/2169)

------
Ididntdothis
If these proliferate how do we deal with fuel being stolen and used by
terrorists or similar? I don’t know how realistic a dirty bomb scenario but
right now nuclear fuel is tightly controlled in a small number of locations.
With these reactors it would spread out into more locations and potentially
into countries that don’t take maintenance and disposal seriously.

~~~
sneak
I think that if dirty bombs were a real threat, we would see more of the
people who would want to use them doing more traditional bombing first/now,
and bomb attacks are extremely rare.

I think this is perhaps more movie-plot threat than real risk.

~~~
mantap
Extremely rare in the west in 2019. Not rare in some other parts of the world
with an unstable security situation. They were also common in the UK in the
90s and earlier during the troubles, so it's not like western countries are
magically immune from instability.

------
spenrose
Maybe nuclear reactors will be easier to deploy in China, where the government
has more control:
[https://twitter.com/sampenrose/status/1162772916125126656](https://twitter.com/sampenrose/status/1162772916125126656)

------
EricE
I won't be happy until I can have one of these in my basement.

It's about time at least some people are becoming sensible about nuclear and
dropping the "boogyman" attitudes towards it.

------
RickJWagner
Awesome. Nuclear is a necessary step as we move away from petro-energy.

~~~
pfdietz
Nuclear is not necessary. It's not even clear if it's even useful for that.

------
chvid
Too “bad” it will be economically uncompetitive compared to next generation
wind and solar.

~~~
koheripbal
Wind and solar produce variable power sources.

Power for baseload has a 99.99% uptime requirement.

The batteries needed to make variable power sources even 95% capable of
meeting demand are economically unfeasible as well.

As a couple examples.... The laegest solar plant in Arizona produces only 10%
of its peak summer power in the winter. ...similarily, in Texas the wind
turbines are usually not turning during Texas peak demand because it's during
high pressure systems where there's not wind.

~~~
merb
the problem with wind and solar is not 99% uptime requirement. it's always
sunny somewhere or windy. it's not like at one point in time the whole world
will be covered in clouds with no wind at all.

the problem is distribution the power over long distances.

~~~
temac
That's kind of the "same" problem given we are not going to ditribute power of
solar provenance by traveling half the earth. Likewise for wind: the distance
are enormous to get reasonable wind diversity. So in practice it is not sure
it is even possible in some (most?) regions of the world.

~~~
merb
well it would be, if countries would see a need other than making money. but
unfortunatly energy is something where everybody wants to make some money.
also regions which are very unstable have a lot of sunpower. it's not easy to
build reliable sunpower plants there.

and there is no grid available that spans the whole world. that would take a
huge amount of work for all the countries, but countries do not think global,
so it would be a pita to get everybody on the same feets.

------
natch
Smaller, safer, and just as friendly to centralized top-down control by
governments, utilities, and mega corporations. Unlike solar which can be
controlled by yourself on your own property.

~~~
sephamorr
While rooftop solar does allow you to go completely off-grid, if you still
want to have a grid around, it will have to be centralized. An
underappreciated aspect of power grids is just how much advanced control is
required to keep the entire thing stable and functioning, think armies-of-
PhD's-difficult. When grids get too small, or don't have sufficient control
(either knobs, or software/people turning the knobs), the results are frequent
blackouts. Interestingly, the risk begins increasing again as your grid gets
too large: you have too many knobs to reasonably control centrally, and it
certainly won't work without synchronized control. As a case study, see how
China is breaking up some of their huge electricity grids (in to still-large
~1000mile or so regions), as maintaining reliability and preventing faults
from propagating across the country became too difficult.

~~~
grecy
> _While rooftop solar does allow you to go completely off-grid, if you still
> want to have a grid around_

Why would you want to have a grid around?

Friends have been entirely off-grid in the Yukon for over 7 years now. They
have a large, modern house with every convenience. Last time they tried to
switch house insurance the insurance company didn't want to give them a policy
because they don't have "stable" power supply.

My buddy replied by asking how many power outages the insurance person had
been through in Whitehorse in 7 years (easily a few a year)... his off-grid
setup has never had a single outage in 7 years.

So who has the "unstable" power supply?

~~~
ksec
>Why would you want to have a grid around?

Because vast majority of the world are and will be living in Mega Cities.

------
acd
We could build these reactors underground in areas where there are not seismic
activity. That would also protect the atmosphere should there be any kind of
incident.

------
baybal2
No, does make sense.

Going smaller will shoot the price through the roof. The basic convention is
the bigger reactor you have, the cheaper it per unit of power output.

~~~
imtringued
Nuclear powerplants suffer from high upfront costs that can be amortized if
you mass produce the same model.

~~~
baybal2
Then, you must mass produce the biggest type you can make.

------
k__
Wasn't the main issue with nuclear plants in the past that they failed in ways
that were deemed impossible before they happened?

~~~
hwillis
Not really. Chernobyl was explicitly known to have a vulnerability at a very
unusual operating point. Fukushima was repeatedly flooded and officials
refused to make protections against modest natural disasters. Three Mile
Island was a mechanical failure.

There aren't many examples where something that went wrong was thought to be
impossible. Much more often it is scenarios that were known to be possible,
but ignored for reasons of cost or politics.

Nuclear plants are hardened against virtually everything. Certainly there may
be things people haven't managed to think of, but there are many, many more
things that we _have_ thought of and haven't dealt with. A plant may be able
to survive a bomb, but not a bunker buster or a full out war.

We don't want to and often can't ensure safety in every event that is thought
of, which is why fail-safer designs are so popular in research and press
circles.

It's a bit of an unfair rap since other thermal plants blow up all the time,
dams burst, and windmills fall over. Radation makes everything more dangerous
and has a permanent impact on our planet, but the actual rate of accidents is
tiny. We do need more fail-safe plants (Fukushima in particular was
inexcusable) but the real problem facing nuclear right now is cost.

------
wahern
Are modular nuclear reactors popular science's new flying car--one in every
garage, arriving tomorrow?

Modular reactors have been on the horizon for at least 20-30 years. Large
nuclear reactors aren't viable because of the immensely costly regulatory
burden imposed by a fearful, democratic population. To focus on reducing costs
without considering the _reason_ for those costs seems naive. The fear is
irrational. The population won't permit modular reactors anymore than they'd
permit traditional reactors. Science, engineering, and reason don't matter.
Necessity may matter, but the oceans may need to start boiling before people's
fear of nuclear is overcome by other fears.

~~~
philipkglass
There are places where the local population consents to new reactors and then
the projects still end up years late and badly over budget. SMRs wouldn't
necessarily help to make nuclear-hostile regions more welcoming of reactors,
but they might help builders to actually meet their cost and schedule
estimates after they start building in a friendly region.

See these projects to understand why utilities in Western Europe and North
America aren't ordering additional reactors recently, even in locales where
the population already accepts nuclear power:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_C._Summer_Nuclear_Gener...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_C._Summer_Nuclear_Generating_Station#Units_2_and_3)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant#Units_3_and_4)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Flamanvi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_\(nuclear_reactor\)#Flamanville_3_\(France\))

I live near an operating nuclear reactor. I _much_ prefer it as my neighbor
over a fossil generating station. But if it were put to a popular vote, I
wouldn't support building a new reactor here because I don't want my electric
rates to soar after the project ends up late and over budget.

~~~
wahern
Vogtle is a jobs project, an odd, almost absurd artifact of the high costs. I
have family members working on that site. The Summer units across the river
were canceled. Vogtle barely survived. The loss of Vogtle would have caused
too much unemployment in the region.

I'd bet money the others are jobs projects, too, presuming they're still
ongoing. But they'll be the _last_ such nuclear jobs projects.

I hope modular reactors work out. I just don't think they'll work out in the
U.S. or most other democratic countries, not until they're so well established
elsewhere that nuclear becomes boring again. Failure to appreciate this--to
shift focus to applications and regions where they have a viable, near-term
future--will only ensure the total death of nuclear.

I had the same criticism for Rolls-Royce marketing piece last week about
starting a modular reactor project in the U.K. I hope it works out, but Rolls-
Royce claimed they were going to _install_ the reactors in the U.K., which I
believe is highly unlikely--certainly much more unlikely than if they
attempted to first install them somewhere with less organized political
opposition.

My complaint is that popular science pieces such as this Wired article create
the wrong expectations. Articles about modular reactors are formulaic and
periodic, exactly like articles about flying cars many years ago.

~~~
7952
So about the opposition in the uk. When people talk about modular nuclear
there is an expectation that it would be built close to towns and cities. That
you could have one pop up down the road. I think this is unlikely for now in
the UK. It is just easier and more economical to cluster them together onto a
single site close to a large grid connection. This would probably be an
existing nuclear site or power station site. A lot of these sites in the UK
are being decommissioned anyway and are looking for new opportunities. This is
much less likely to cause opposition than a new site on green field land (like
fracking). And an existing nuclear site will have a local population that are
more comfortable with the technology.

------
HocusLocus
" Small Modular Reactors may be the nuclear industry's answer to avoiding
obscurity, sadly, and one cannot blame them (though I am starting to) for
failing to exhibit the courage or desire to commit attention to molten salt
research. Because what is being presented by default is a practical absurdity.

What if someone promoting utility wind approaches you and claims that wind is
the future? BUT in place of today's standard size 3MW turbines it absolutely
must be a far greater number of 1MW turbines. You'd take a step back,
confident that the reason must have little to do with technology. You'd feel
dubious, imagine you were being 'played' in some way. Even a layman would
sense something wrong with the proposal, given the overhead of placing units.

I have the same reaction when hearing discussion of Small Modular Reactors. I
see them as a high ticket luxury item that is being fronted as the 'stealth
solution' to a most pressing problem, to design something faux
environmentalists and radiophobes might fear and hate less, even though they
could never launch the nuclear industry into a new renaissance. Utility scale
electric is geared to multiple ~1GWe+ solutions per plant, the round number
that could practically be multiplied into a feasible grid solution.

Aside from industry desperation I also wonder if SMRs are being promoted by a
few billionaires, not from a desire to supply lesser developed countries (all
of whom should never go in for less than 1GWe), but to power their own
offshore enclaves, their survival retreats in places like New Zealand. Call it
my pet conspiracy theory. They wish to see the technology put to practice on
our collective dime as soon as possible. Helping to stock the pantries of
billionaires may be a tidy business some day but SMR fixation today represents
a foolish diversion of attention away from what needs to be the principal goal
--- attaining energy self-sufficiency for the grid with >=1GWe sources, less
fuel volatility and less risk. This is an existential crisis. "

(from my 2017 letter to Energy Secy Perry)

[https://archive.org/download/20170629EmailToEnergySecretaryP...](https://archive.org/download/20170629EmailToEnergySecretaryPerrySC/20170629%20Email%20to%20Energy%20Secretary%20Perry%20SC.pdf)

(2016 letter to Candidate Trump on Energy)

[https://archive.org/download/20160422TrumpEnergyLetterSC/201...](https://archive.org/download/20160422TrumpEnergyLetterSC/20160422%20trump%20energy%20letter%20SC.pdf)

~~~
HocusLocus
Is anyone going to comment on my capitalization of the word 'but' for emphasis
in the above quote? This place is starting to annoy me.

------
allard
But others remained unaware of the invisible dangers around them: soldiers
lounged in the sun close to the reactor, smoking cigarettes and stripped to
the waist in the summer heat; a group of KGB officers arrived in the zone
incognito, clad in tank crew overalls and carrying expensive Japanese-made
dosimeters—but approached the ruins of Unit Four without knowing enough to
turn the devices on. Only the fate of the crows that had come to scavenge from
the debris but stayed too long—and whose irradiated carcasses now littered the
area around the plant—provided any visible warning of the costs of ignorance.
(Higginbotham)

