In Nuclear Power, Size Matters

PerlJedi writes "Most nations with nuclear power capabilities have been re-assessing the risk/benefit of nuclear power reactors following the Fukushima plant melt down, a newly released study suggests the U.S. should expand its nuclear power production using 'Small Modular Reactors'. 'The reports assessed the economic feasibility [PDF] of classical, gigawatt-scale reactors and the possible new generation of modular reactors. The latter would have a generating capacity of 600 megawatts or less, would be factory-built as modular components, and then shipped to their desired location for assembly.'"

Comments

Cheap energy saves lives.

[Anonymous Coward]

It took one of the worst Earth Quakes immediately followed by one of the worst Tsunamis in modern history to take down a 40 year old nuclear plant via a flaw found and reported 35 years ago (but never corrected). Like it or not, nuclear energy has come a long way and is pretty damn safe.

Don't like that the flaw wasn't fixed or how the accident unfolded ... but I admire how tough that facility was engineered.

Re:Cheap energy saves lives.

[Jappus]

As far as I understand it, the main problem most people have with Nuclear Reactors -- at least over here in Europe -- is not that they can go kablooie when something deemed "unlikely" hits them. This is just a problem as long as they are actually running, and a few years after for cooling down.

The problem is rather: Where do you put all that irradiated waste, ranging from water over metals, concrete, oils, various sealants and so on? After all, most of this stuff happily glows for a few decades at minimum and hundreds of thousands of years at the upper echelon. I mean, if I look at the Egyptian tombs for example, I find it hard to believe that anybody could guarantee that a sign of "Keep out or else you'll die horribly" would actually stop future people from digging up that stuff.

And that already excludes the observation that nothing humankind has ever built or excavated managed to stay permanently, physically sealed for more than a few hundred in most cases and a few thousand years in all cases. That's at least two orders of decimal magnitudes too few time to guarantee anything.

Of course things like coal, gas, etc. are not better -- especially regarding the climate. But at least they don't cause such extremely permanent issues that we can't even imagine a kind of physical or chemical process to get rid of it. They are still bad, but in a less ... distant way.

And if you finally arrive at hydroelectric, geothermal, solar and wind generation, the scope of the problems you cause by running them can be measured in "less than a decade" for cleaning up a broken dam and "what problems?" for solar and wind. That fundamental difference between nuclear, coal/gas and finally regenerative power is what is important to most environmentalists and general critics of the first and to a lesser extend next two kinds of power generation. The fact that they can go kablooie is just icing on the cake compared to that.

I always wonder if people who fully and blindly support nuclear power have ever heard what the term "neglectful precursors" means. After all, economy is mostly a private affair and expires with the generation who had to live in it, but ecology gets inherited fully and permanently.

Cause and effect all backwards

[vlm]

Cause and effect all backwards. Its not that small reactors are inherently more economical than large reactors, they most certainly are not. Its that new designs including some pretty radical fuels and coolants are being proposed, and you don't scale those bad boys in one jump from lab simulations to GW+. So these new designs are going to start small, then you build midrange 100s of MW, then you build the big ole GW+ roasters, thats just how its always been and going to be.

The next issue is there is a magic shopping list of rewards, but they're all interrelated to people that know about nukes. Can use natural convection cooling. Well, OK. Look at cube-square law and tell me how a smaller reactor at a given specific thermal output could not possibly be harder to cool? Or given an infinite budget to make a really low specific volume thermal output giant, you can convection cool them too, assuming you can manufacture something that huge. Also you get safety tradeoffs, the dough you spent on a 5 times larger vessel could have gone to quintuple redundant diesel drive coolant pumps on top of 100 meter tsunami wave proof seawalls... Big pieces of reactor grade steel are staggeringly expensive. So you are getting better burnup and better Pu non-proliferation? OK well tell me how to get better burn up without eating its own bomb isotope Pu? Answer, you can't, has nothing directly to do with size, the longer a rod sits in a core the less bomb grade Pu you can refine out of it.

Don't get me wrong, these are cool, very cool. But don't confuse having to release version 1.0 at a small scale as a permanent long term trend. "In the long run" the only thing better than an itty bitty cute little modernized PBMR or a cute little RS-MHR is a cool freaking huge PBMR or RS-MHR, but the big momma version is most certainly not going to be release 1.0. Maybe 10, 20 years after the new high tech ones are rolled out, then, out comes the plans for big ones.

I think this is the mistake the fine article makes, confusing this small beta release, with a long term roadmap. Its very much like thinking that internet sites that roll out slowly via invitations means they intent to stay small forever... not so, its just the scale up process.

Re:I Thought NIMBY Prevented Even the Big Sites ..

[Eternauta3k]

NIMBY might be less of a problem outside the US. For example, I suspect China doesn't give a shit about who wants what on his backyard.

Nothing Doing

[hercubus]

As other posters have said, the not-in-my-backyard effect means any proposal along these lines is dead-on-arrival in the United States for the near-term.

However, in the long-term there is likely going to be a "come to Jesus" moment when Texas turns to desert or California burns to the ground, when even hard-core skeptics will realize something has to give. Then maybe a plan like this would be dusted off and put into practice.

Wasn't it W. Churchill who said "You can trust the Americans to do the right thing after they've exhausted all other possibilities." Maybe we'll pull our heads out but it'll be a long time coming.

Things will have to get desperate, such as the situation in Galena Alaska where remoteness means energy costs are crazy high. As long as the dollar costs of coal extraction are low and there's not an undeniable disaster in progress due to climate change then coal-fired will burn on.

The navy doesn't have any answers

[fyngyrz]

Naval reactors -- be they powering submarines, aircraft carriers, etc. -- don't have to show a profit. When they need money to run them, they just take it from you and me. Rinse, wash and repeat.

Compare that to one of the very few nuclear powered cargo ships, the NS Savannah. Truly beautiful ship; fast, clean, etc. Couldn't be run cost-effectively, some of which was due to a bit of overzealous streamlining and so forth, but in terms of propulsion costs, oil fueled cargo ships are simply less expensive.

That's why you're not going to see naval reactor designs in your back yard. Ever. Commercial reactors have to be practical.

The right answer is solar and/or wind and/or hydro plus storage. We just don't have cost-effective / space-effective storage. Yet.

Re:The navy doesn't have any answers

[frosty_tsm]

Compare that to one of the very few nuclear powered cargo ships, the NS Savannah. Truly beautiful ship; fast, clean, etc. Couldn't be run cost-effectively, some of which was due to a bit of overzealous streamlining and so forth, but in terms of propulsion costs, oil fueled cargo ships are simply less expensive.

From the link, that ship was built more than 40 years ago, had an overly-small cargo-hold and was done more as a proof of concept (which seems silly). Doing the same today (and doing it economically) would yield different results.

Re:interacts badly with neighbor opinion

[jheath314]

That's a horrible idea. America is already in trouble because we've become a nation of consumers instead of manufacturers... just about the only advantage we have left is a slight lead in innovation.

Becoming a leader in alternative energy technologies could have enormous benefits for America, such as reversing the dynamic of wealth flowing out of the country in exchange for foreign energy. I'd much rather put American scientists and engineers to work on the problem rather than getting foreign experts to build it for us (and racking up debt by paying them with money we don't have).