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US Small-Scale Nuclear Reactor Industry Gains Traction In Missouri
trichard writes with this quote from an AP report:
"Ameren Missouri is vying to be the first utility in the country to seek a construction and operating license for a small-scale nuclear reactor, a technology that's appealing to utilities because of the smaller upfront costs and shorter development lead times. The small reactors, about a fourth or less the capacity of full-size nuclear units, are appealing to the nuclear industry because they could be manufactured at a central plant and shipped around the world. By contrast, building nuclear reactors today is a more cumbersome process that must be done largely on site and takes years."
Do lots of smaller reactors fail at a rate statistically below or at least equal to a single larger reactor that generates the same amount of power?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Soon you'll finally have electricity!
Running water won't be far behind!
For a small town, a small (~220 MW) plant will come very handy. It helps ensure they will be up if the grid goes down, that businesses would have a utility power guarantee, and it also gives clean power without having to deal with a coal or other fossil fuel plant.
I keep seeing these pieces of a puzzle popping up on /. that would solve the core problems our culture faces. A wind turbine to pull water from the air here, small reactors there, isobutane from CO2, better batteries from IBM, and self driving cars. Putting these technologies together, and we have done a lot for the transportation infrastructure. The reactors would give reliable power, which can be used to charge batteries on electric vehicles or make usable fuel for IC engines. Road congestion and even the need for a vehicle (as opposed to just renting one for a trip) would be eased by self driving cars.
I just wish some of these cool potential ideas came into practical use. Self driving cars would allow for a lot of flexibility especially.
As energy availability improves, so do economies.
Anyone have technical details for the reactors?
Of course! Just let us know your location and we'll send a team to deliver them.
Sincerely,
The FBI
This is kind of my view of the future. Have very small nuclear reactors, the kind you find on Navy Submarines that can be used to power a very small area, maybe just a single subdivision. Mass producing small, self contained reactors would probably bring the costs and complexity down quite a bit. Plus distribution would be much cheaper, because you wouldn't have to have super high capacity lines going all over the place. Nuclear power isn't that scary. I see no reason that we allow people to have gas furnaces and water heaters in their houses, but do not allow them to have a small scale nuclear reactor.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
have been in use by the U.S. Navy for decades. They've plenty of safety and failure rate data on them, they've got a high safety rating, and they're pretty small. Start mass producing them suckers and they'll be cheap as hell. Start peppering the power grid with them here and there, and soon we'll have clean, virtually unlimited power. Most counties in the country can get by with one, and still have plenty of power to spare which can be sold off to the larger cities that need would more than one.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
Just don't run a Gieger counter over it.
"Ameren said the application process could cost $80 million to $100 million and take four years."
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
That's an editorial addition by the submitter - and not part of TFA. And it's not quite right either.
Regardless of the size of the plant, the major machinery is built off-site and shipped to the construction site for installation. What's time consuming and expensive on site (and it's not clear that small reactors escape this) is the labor intensive work of hooking up all the piping, wiring, and ancillary systems for the plant.
What saves time and money in this kind of construction is eliminating building major machinery only on demand, and instead building it at a slow but steady and predictable pace. I.E. if you can negotiate to buy April's production in February of the previous year, you have less capital tied up (and thus pay less interest) than if you had to order your machinery two, three, or four years in advance. Though standardized serial production isn't quite the same as mass production, it has the same benefits to a lesser degree.
None of those methods can contaminate massive areas of land all at once. You can clean up a broken windfarm with ordinary equipment, not specialized robotics, and it's a lot cheaper.
Burning natural gas, while it does have a negative long term consequence for the entire planet, is far cheaper than nuclear, and can provide base-load generation just fine. Natural gas is ideal to use in conjunction with renewable energy because you can easily start up and shut down gas turbines as the wind/solar etc fluctuate.