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America's Energy Department Works With Bill Gates To Test Mini Nuclear Reactors (washingtonexaminer.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Examiner:
The Energy Department is participating in a major push with electric utility Southern and a company founded by Microsoft founder Bill Gates to develop small nuclear power reactors that are less expensive and more efficient than their much larger cousins. "Molten salt reactors are getting a reboot," the Energy Department tweeted late Wednesday, offering a schematic of a battery-like power plant module that "could power America's energy"... The Department of Energy linked to a detailed description of how its Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other federal labs are teaming up with Southern Company, a big coal utility with several nuclear plants, and Gates' TerraPower to test and develop a type of reactor that uses liquefied sodium "as both coolant and fuel."
These liquid-metal reactors are sometimes referred to as nuclear batteries because they are small, self-contained units, which theoretically can be deployed anywhere, although the version being tested at Oak Ridge appears to be one requiring a permanent structure and housing. TerraPower was awarded a $40 million award by the Energy Department in 2016 to pursue the project.
Currently it's in the "early design phase" to assess commercial viability, but testing will begin in 2019, "which will help validate the reactor's safety systems for license certification by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."
These liquid-metal reactors are sometimes referred to as nuclear batteries because they are small, self-contained units, which theoretically can be deployed anywhere, although the version being tested at Oak Ridge appears to be one requiring a permanent structure and housing. TerraPower was awarded a $40 million award by the Energy Department in 2016 to pursue the project.
Currently it's in the "early design phase" to assess commercial viability, but testing will begin in 2019, "which will help validate the reactor's safety systems for license certification by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."
Small scale reactor development has been pretty heavy for the last 20 years or so. It's not that someone discovers the cost being more expensive, the problem is "environmental and legal" costs associated with them, especially here in the west. The whole anti-nuke hysteria happens to drive things pretty hard. Live deployments of small scale reactors have already happened. China, India and Russia all have them. They're as small as 10Mw and as big as 220Mw. There's 3 or 4 going live in the next few years in the US, 4 here in Canada, 2 in S.Korea. These are all Gen4 designs to boot, and Gen4 reactors are far cheaper to build and maintain then any design.
One of the real big problems is "licensing" of the designs, especially US or designs based on US. This does make it more attractive for countries to take other designs that can use different types of fuel sources, low-grade and premade fuel like MOX for instance. And drastically cuts the possibility of terrorist groups getting their hands on fissile materials.
Om, nomnomnom...
Face it, a very large chunk of the price of a conventional nuclear reactor is built into the legal challenges that pop up whenever building a reactor is proposed.
First World problem. In China there are zero protests, and in India there are few. Asia and Africa account for nearly all growth in energy consumption, and they currently have the dirtiest energy generation. If these mini-reactors work there, that is good enough.
Nuclear power is the only alternative that has all the qualities you need to power civilization.
Besides Wind and Solar, which you carefully did not mention in your comment?
It provides on demand power,
What? No it doesn't. Nuclear is the worst at following load.
it doesn't require very limited geographic features the way hydro or geothermal do,
What? Yes it does. It needs cooling water.
and it has the lowest impact of any power technology.
What? No it doesn't. Uranium is the least concentrated ore we mine. That means that nuclear is predicated upon massive strip-mines. The tailings from these mines always seem to wind up leaching into ground water, despite the ubiquitous promises that this will not happen.
If we are lucky we will see its resurgence soon.
If we are lucky, trolls will stop shouting about how battery banks like the ones built by Tesla don't work, and then we can get on with building out more solar and wind, the only power technologies which actually make sense today.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"