Small Modular Reactors Are Bulking Up

[@Blanka-999]

Everything mentioned seems rational and correct. However, it overlooks one of the biggest issues with large plants: the financing cost. Several years of large investment in deployment without any return is a significant burden. If a government and utility can undertake the NOAK of a large reactor, that’s great, but this hasn’t been the case for the past few decades. SMRs will have a higher overnight cost per kWh, but their much lower deployment time will reduce the time needed to start paying back those financial costs. Some studies have estimated financing costs to be around 70% of the total cost of a large reactor, we are not talking about little money here. Yes, SMRs will still be complex projects and not a plug-and-play type. But I have been to large nuclear projects and the complexity of them it is in a level that few people realize. How many large projects have been abandoned with investors pouring billions and getting no return? We must account for that risk. In the big picture, those lost billions would have been better allocated to slightly more expensive yet successful smaller reactors. At this point, we should not be debating large versus small reactors. We need successful NOAK designs for both large and small reactors, each having their market and role in maintaining a healthy nuclear industry.

[@MaxPower-11]

I am a bit disappointed that there was no discussion regarding high temperature pebble-bed SMRs since that is where the two big end-user customers (Google and Amazon) have decided to pour their investments into.

[@Grobocopatel]

Great interview. IMO, the key takeaway is made by Prof. Shirvan in the segment from 34:50 to 38:42, although I am not sure I would agree with the way he framed the issue. The only way to make nuclear competitive with fossil generation (i.e., and enjoy the societal benefits the switch would bring) is to harmonize the risk-adjusted regulatory and quality compliance standards to a comparable level between the two. That to go through the licensing process with a regulator means the design of a plant is changed so radically as to completely destroy its economic case, is far and beyond anything anyone would ever expect to see with a coal-fired or natural gas CCGT plant. This is pathological behavior from both the regulator to impose it and from industry not to push back against it, and not at all something to be blamed on any unexperienced engineering design team. As long as this doesn't change, physics and engineering arguments go out the window. By the way, this is something every MSR nukebro out there should get into their skull: it doesn't matter what the reactor looks like or does on paper, or even if the (often very real) engineering challenges of new designs can be overcome in timeframes that matter. If the regulator steps in with requests and the regulated passively complies, that's it. Nuclear is doomed as long as this toxic dynamic that is basically absent among competitors to nuclear (e.g., solar and wind power) doesn't change.

[@aliendroneservices6621]

53:23 53:26 "...we can never have a million reactors..." Why not? 1k AP1000 reactors = 1TWe = 3TWt 1M AP1000 reactors = 1PWe = 3PWt 3PWt is still well-within the thermal envelope of the biosphere. A Type 1 civilization would be somewhere in the range of 20-200PWt.

[@saltyroe3179]

My dad said the reason why nuclear electric power was so expensive was public fear leading to extreme regulation.

[@GreezyWorks]

Both pebble bed and liquid fuel are inherently passively safe without needing huge tanks of water. Pebbles reach temperature equilibrium through black body heat radiation while still remaining solid. Liquid fuels passively drain to a decay heat removal tank. The real solution is to move away from legacy oxide pellets to either of these two.

[@aliendroneservices6621]

No proof-of-concept. You know that fuel expands as fission-products build up, right?

[@thomasgreene5750]

Well done. A quite rational discussion of the realities of using nuclear power to generate electricity, an essential bulk commodity. Professor Shirvan seems to have a solid understanding of the benefits of scale in combatting the significant, almost-output-independent, indirect costs of constructing a nuclear power plant. If you want to reliably produce large amounts of carbon-free electricity, large LWRs of a standard design built in a series are a pretty good solution. Professor Shirvan correctly identifies the problem with achieving this -- the financial scale becomes a bet-the-company proposition for most orginizations, and few, if any, have the scale to fully realize the Nth-of-a-Kind benefits by themselves. A private consortium of like-minded organizations, who together have the combination of financial depth and need for power at scale, seems like a possible solution.

[@chrisjohns38]

This is where big government subsidy or “insurance “ makes sense.

[@thomasgreene5750]

@@chrisjohns38 Loan guarantees on the first few units in a standard series to get the supply chain going might be appropriate, but the government should get out of the business of subsidizing electricity production. Producers should have to get their revenue solely from the purchasers of the electricity. Otherwise, government is making the choices by what and by how much they subsidize individual technologies. A better solution to my mind would be a group of utilities getting together in a joint venture to build six or eight large standard reactors over eight to twelve years and then operate them, each partner getting a share of the output in proportion to their ownership share. That would spread the costs of individual units, including the learning-curve costs of the first few, over more users. It would also allow the individual utilities to capture the benefits of the learnings applied to the follow-on units, increase the economies of scale in construction, and make the individual utilities' capacity additions smaller and more frequent. Some of the existing nuclear units were built as joint ventures, including the four units at Vogtle and the three at Palo Verde. This joint venture would be a little larger and spread out over more units, but the basic idea has been done before.

[@MaxPower-11]

These scaled down designs of already large reactors don’t seem to make much sense. If anything, it’s more cost effective to increase, rather then decrease the size of these traditional designs. Novel designs that operate at higher temperatures seem better suited for SMRs.

[@tobyw9573]

SMRs should be generally installed locally at low voltages, using existing local grid. SMRs may be installed sequentially as they are built in the factory and/or as they are financed. This would cur financing costs, create short term revenues, and allow power online with the first installed reactor, not in 10 years +++ waiting for financing, approvals and legal BS.. Drive around your town and gage voltage via length of insulators on power lines which goes hand in hand with the cost of transformers as well, I would expect.

[@PlanetFrosty]

Great discussion as I’m in the global data center business.

[@happyhome41]

Fantastic discussion - leaves me craving more. Since you didn’t provide the links, and Professor Shirvan referenced several times his articles, I was motivated to go look. I am curious, I did not hear once mentioned the concept of Energy Return on Energy Invested - I suppose elements were covered, at least indirectly in perhaps the “ownership costs”. Like he said, the cost is paramount. And I would like to explore to a greater extent, the implications of the cited fuel and maintenance being 50% the cost of a nuclear power plant.

[@synth1002]

I always thought 300MW for example, size o bay container, but in reality it is the size of classic 300MW unit, so it is better to build full scale 1300MWe.

[@malcolmsmith6449]

When’s Mark Carney going to be on the show? He touched on this subjected today!

[@ryccoh]

Can we just bore into a mountain and thus not use concrete for containment? There have to be mountains solid enough that also have very low permittivity to water. Some of the boring machines for train tunnels are probably large enough

[@GreezyWorks]

Something that's been tried by the Swiss at Lucens. In their case, it was a small gas-cooled reactor that lost cooling and had a meltdown. Everything was contained in the cavern and was eventually decontaminated.

[@ryccoh]

​@@GreezyWorkssick, i didn't know about this

[@Opa1arrow]

Wasn't it much more expensive and difficult to decommission? I recall the consensus being that it was actually a bad option.

[@missano3856]

I thought they never deconned it, just filled it with concrete.​@GreezyWorks

[@soapbar88]

i have a feeling the smr industry will be much bigger than the fusion industry in my lifetime. im just a janitor. my son just turned 2. what can i do to help him have a future in this industry? looking for any specific advice or anecdotal experiences that could help me figure it out.

[@chrisjohns38]

It’s extremely unlikely we’ll see fusion power hit the grid for in a full lifetime.

[@tobyw9573]

Are there any breakdowns in materials, labor, etc available for different reactor designs? Where does the money go???

[@sarcasmo57]

Will be interesting to see some in action.

[@tobyw9573]

How can standard reactor be more expensive than building an oil refinery, or even a refinery annual overhaul? (usually closed for a month or so when demand is low - (roughly in January.)

[@chapter4travels]

Raise your hand if you think AP1000s are going to replace coal plants in Rwanda or any other developing nation that can't afford LNG infrastructure. Maybe that's why Rwanda is pursuing a far less expensive high-temperature/low-pressure option that also supports developing industries with cheap process heat.

[@GreezyWorks]

Rwanda is also landlocked, so a high-temp power output is needed for air cooling.

[@chapter4travels]

@@GreezyWorks Rwanda sits on Lake Kivu, they could water cool if they wanted to. But you're right, air cooling works everywhere.

[@aliendroneservices6621]

Rwanda is 88% powered by animal dung (IEA). It could use a lot more coal-fired power plants.

[@stephenbrickwood1602]

Nuclear industries are how you get Nuclear weapons. 80% of the world's population live in dictatorships. No problems that I can see. Happy days.

[@paul1862]

Rwanda can barely maintain roads and sewage infrastructure, a nuclear plant is out of the realm

[@davidwilkie9551]

The thing about an expert is that there's nothing left to say, they've usually covered their topic thoroughly

[@stephenbrickwood1602]

The grid expert said that dirt cheap electricity is only 10% of grid supplied electricity costs to the customers. The grid expert said that if the customer oversupplied themselves with rooftop PV then the grid has a 10 times bigger cashflow problem and a no cashflow disaster, if all customers self oversupply and use their EV big battery. Every day the sunshines. Nuclear electricity needs 247 cashflow to be economically viable.

[@chrisjohns38]

Reactor Pump pressure boundaries ARE safety related! The motors, electronics, etc are not safety related the way decay heat removal pumps are relied upon for safe shutdown. It’s a subtle difference.

[@davidwilkie9551]

​@stephenbrickwood1602 WYSIWYG, two aspects of Actuality pivoted on the Singularity-point Centre of Time bio-logical sequences of relative-timing, the underlying 24/7 Math-Physics is manipulated by the political/fiscal perceptions of who is important and who is not. The planet/ecology is where everyone lives and the markets are just burning down the world for profit cut out and excluded from the required rehabilitation/restoration of our home.

[@Critical-Thinker895]

Where do you want to use these??

[@YordanGeorgiev]

I did not get it - shared control rooms for SMRs from different vendors ?!

[@edsteadham4085]

Can someone tell me what omm (sp) costs are he refers to around the 55 minute mark. What is the acronym stame for?

[@aliendroneservices6621]

54:12 54:18 O&M. *_"Operations and Maintenance (O&M)_* is the management and upkeep of facilities, equipment, and systems to ensure they are safe, efficient, and operational." (Google AI)

[@chrisjohns38]

@@aliendroneservices6621or was it OPEX? Operating Expense.

[@aliendroneservices6621]

​​​@@chrisjohns381. That is not what he said. 2. "O&M and fuel" *_is_* what he said. Those are common terms in the industry.

[@chrisjohns38]

@@aliendroneservices6621opex includeoperating and maintenance costs. But we’re not picking. My thought is that O&M cost in the neighborhood of 50% is only true if you’re including life extension after the initial 40 year license period ehich I don’t think is the practice in the US. But it should be in the case of Vogtle since there is ample life extension experience today.

[@warwick.schaffer]

you probably get requests like this a lot so apologies in advance, but I would be interesting to hear an episode on thorium molten salt reactors. The reason I ask is that your channel has the unique ability to put these promising ideas into this perspective. is there anyone in the west down the track enough on designing these to be able to add anything useful to the discussion on where they might sit in relation to other nuclear options. China seems to be the most advanced on this with an experimental reactor already operating and plans for more commercial ones next. in relation to this video, I think the thorium molten salt reactor is interesting from the perspective that they say it will be compact as in this video here. kzbin.info/www/bejne/qmWoe4SGjM95oJosi=dzBpzu2qR3qmmqPb

[@chapter4travels]

A uranium MSR is simpler and cheaper than a thorium MSR and has all the same advantages.

[@chrisjohns38]

@@chapter4travelsanother way to say that is that a thorium MSR must first be a Uranium MSR but has the added complexity of thorium chemistry and fuel processing.

[@warwick.schaffer]

@@chrisjohns38 yes, but the link to the video I posted claims that that is actually an advantage. I am no expert though so interested to hear the debate. I guess the thing that is not controversial is that thorium is plentiful and therefore would be cheap which could be a big factor given that fuel costs are half the costs of running a nuclear power plant as stated in one of these de couple episodes.

[@ericdanielski4802]

Nice episode.

[@jtjones4081]

Why did Southern’s reactor come in at twice the cost against? What did natural gas have to do with the cost overruns?

[@pauldietz1325]

Natural gas meant the initial decision to build Vogtle 3/4 was bad, even before the cost overruns.

[@eddyimpanis]

Avoiding “small” in energy production protects the monopoly for current power producers. Small means local or even private control. Small means elimination of vulnerable distribution grid. Small means a multitude of suppliers aka competition!

[@chrisjohns38]

The revelation regarding 50% opex over 80-100 years is not true if the financial constraints are tied to 40 year license. It would be interesting to know how Vogtle costs are being charged to customers.

[@ibillwilson]

Removing coolant circulation/recirculation pumps does reduce achievable power density by... how much? He never says. Compare BWRX-300 to the now shutdown Muhleberg (KKM) BWR/4 in Switzerland. They're both 240-bundle cores using same basic fuel. X300 is 870 MWth, KKM was 1097 MWth. That's a significant difference (20 to 25% depending how you calculate it), but not huge. Then he says, basically, there's no safety benefit to removing the pumps. Really? What about eliminating large vessel penetrations below top of core, eliminating Large Break LOCA, and eliminating a whole class of initiating events associated with recirc pump/valve failures or malfunctions?

[@pauldietz1325]

The argument that the cost is reasonable if one extends the operation to 80-100 years requires an assumption that competition doesn't improve over that time. With the continuing rapid decline of cost in PV, wind, and storage, this doesn't seem like a safe assumption. Generation generations in the future is inherently less valuable than generation in the next decade or two.

[@davidanalyst671]

I would definitely be interested in watching this interview if Koroush had drunk a redbull before the interview.

[@stormrunner0029]

Thinking of overall costs and spin off industry, I had a brain fart. What if we could locate the SMR in the more Northern regions, and surround them with green houses. You would have to clean land for the green houses, therefore could install non-corrosive cooling lines below. In the end you would have a very nice geo thermal grow op. 8 sections. There would always be battles over light, power consumption, heat, and humidity, but if one co-op owned the whole operation, it would be minimal. And there would be excess power to transmit out for others. The new target for selflessness. $Tillion at least. Where are you Galan? You can get a loan.

[@colinmegson7107]

Hinkley Point C might finally come in at US$18,500/kW. The biggest and most complicated design of Gen III+ NPP ever designed. Have you ever looked at the site. 12000 men will be there soon; 6 miles of tunnel under the Bristol Channel; Big Carl on site forever. Anyone who thinks the FOAK BWRX-300 will come in at that is crazy.

[@tobyw9573]

Pressurized radioactive coolant has too much risk.

[@alanbressler1423]

Excellent.

[@אסףבר-ל7ר]

What is Going on With Shipping ?😊channel

[@dastankuspaev9217]

Esbwr my favourite

[@levislevitas]

can never engineer yourself out of bad politics, fix the politics to make the engineering more viable. but you need people advocating for this, and i've not seen concrete proposals or push to get rid of certain reg rules that are huge cost drivers.

[@dan2304]

Uranium 235 based reactors are limited due to the limited supply of uranium. Fast breeder plutonium 239 based reactors and thorium reactors both have long term expansion capacity but the costs of electriity from both are such that where renewables are most economically viable nuclear is not competitive. Most of the population are not in the best renewables areas.

[@aliendroneservices6621]

I think you meant: "Fast breeder *_uranium 238_* based reactors..."

[@dan2304]

@@aliendroneservices6621 No the fuel to generate the reaction (alpha particles) either Plutonium 239 or highly enriched U 235 but in the presence of U 238 (spent uranium), also very high temperatures and very high neutron density which is the issues yet to be overcome with materials technology. Thorium 232 is a much better option than fast breeder technology both long term, fuel efficiency, and technically doable.

[@aliendroneservices6621]

@@dan2304 Thorium would be used exclusively in fast-breeder reactors. Alpha particles have nothing to do with any type of reactor.

[@dan2304]

@@aliendroneservices6621 Do explain what actually starts the fission reaction that generates the neutrons to continue the fission reaction. I think you need to do a bit more home work.

[@aliendroneservices6621]

@@dan2304 "To start a nuclear reactor, *_the initial neutrons come from a "startup neutron source,"_* which is typically a small amount of radioactive material like Californium-252 or a combination of elements like plutonium-238 and beryllium, inserted into the reactor core; *_these materials spontaneously emit neutrons to initiate the fission chain reaction_* when the control rods are withdrawn, allowing the reaction to sustain itself once started." (Google AI)

[@ianherd569]

They are small enough to fit in a submarine!

[@Withnail1969]

There are no small modular reactors

[@stephenbrickwood1602]

Let me get this clear, Canada is going to stop worldwide CO2 emissions by building nuclear power plants.? Canada has a 300% tariff on solar panels. ? Canada is going to stop exporting its fossil fuels. ? Canada is going to have Battery Electric Vehicles. ? 26million.

[@chapter4travels]

Nothing is going to stop worldwide co2 emissions but Canada can commercialize a few low-pressure/high-temperture nuclear reactor designs that can power us through this century. Terrestrial Energy, Dual Fluid Nuclear and Moltex Energy. The American NRC doesn't appear willing to regulate these new designs reasonably.

[@stephenbrickwood1602]

@chapter4travels do you mean climate change is going to happen, so just get through it ? But that will change worldwide economics and farming, and populations will migrate and die off.

[@chapter4travels]

@@stephenbrickwood1602 If you say so.