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."

Comments

Every 10 year

[sphealey]

The "mini-reactor" idea comes around every 10 years. And every 12 year someone discovers that the fixed costs of operating any type of reactor that produces enough power to be useful (e.g. a US Air Force or Soviet "remote base" or "small town" system) mean that a somewhat larger plant is much more efficient, and a somewhat larger plant more efficient than that, and so on into the economy of scale argument for power/steam plants around... 1000 MWe (3000 MWt). Which is what tend to get built today.

The basics of power engineering, nuclear engineer, security, and waste disposal are well known and aren't going to be magically 'disrupted' by anything other than Mr. Fusion.

Re:Every 10 year

[Mashiki]

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.

Re:Every 10 year

[crunchygranola]

Links?

Please mod this guy down - he is simply making stuff up.

Here is a list of every power reactor under construction or planned in the world.

There are a total of five reactors under construction, or planned, with Gross MWe of 210 MW or less (I presume this is the standard being used here for "small scale"). They are located in China, Russia, Argentina an no where else. And only three of these (two in China, one in Argentina) is a Gen 4 design.

There's 3 or 4 going live in the next few years in the US, 4 here in Canada, 2 in S.Korea.

These reactors exist only in your imagination there are no such actual projects in any of these nations.

There are a couple of dozen power reactors operating in the world with MWe output of 220 MW or less, but not one of these is a "Gen 4" reactor. There instead old designs (>40 years old) in Russian, India and Pakistan which would not be commercially viable anywhere else.

Now there is a company called "NuScale Power" which claims to have planned projects, but no actual projects have been announced (at least, that were not later retracted.) A press release does not equate to a reactor under construction, not have a "planned" reactor.

Hoping this gets done.

[Chas]

Because small, unitized reactors that can be easily dropped into place, and later removed and refurbished could make all the difference in the nuclear industry.

Then, you can strategically drop a reactor wherever you need steady power and encase it in a concrete/steel/lead sarcophagus and only address it again when the core needs replacing. This can help with the issues involved in building large nuclear facilities in danger-prone areas (like California).

Or, if you need more power, you drop multiples in and gang them together.

Re:Hoping this gets done.

[toejam13]

Don't forget that these reactors can be built on an assembly line. That allows for a stable supply chain, a controlled building environment, and the chance for workers to gain experience in assembling the devices. That should dramatically help in stabilizing costs.

Re: Alas, it won't get past the anti-nuke hysteric

[WindBourne]

You are right that the anti-nukes are f%ing insane. However, most of these 4th gen are much cheaper and safer. Add to that many anti-nukes are environmentalists and know that we MUST get CO2 down, and nuke as part is the only solution.

Re:Alas, it won't get past the anti-nuke hysterics

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Re:Still the only real choice

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re: Alas, it won't get past the anti-nuke hysteri

[blindseer]

Forbes claims to know how deadly each energy source is to people.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...

Nuclear power is by far the safest energy source we have available, that's especially true in the USA. There hasn't been a major incident in the USA with nuclear power since Three Mile Island, and no one died from that. Problems in Japan and with old Soviet reactors are not indicative of anything being built today in the USA. Even so the death count from Fukushima is zero, or so close to it that it's just noise on top of the signal from the tsunami that started it all. A once in a century tsunami that hit a reactor older than Chernobyl is not the metric we should use to measure the safety of nuclear power. Certainly not Chernobyl, a reactor with no containment dome and operated by drunken bureaucrats instead of properly trained technicians.

The question isn't if we should use nuclear power, we don't have much choice not to. The question is how quickly we should be building new nuclear power plants. The nuclear power reactors we have now are getting old and we need to replace them with something. It's going to be nuclear power or the lights will start to go out. Or, at least the lights will go dim. We can build devices to collect energy from wind, water, and sun, but that will never be enough for a society that wants to keep airplanes flying, and explore beyond the atmosphere. In space there is no wind, and even on Mars the sun gets pretty dim.

Using wind, water, and sun for energy might mean survival. Using coal and natural gas will mean continued air pollution. If we are going to keep Earth clean, and go even as far as low earth orbit, then we will need nuclear power.