[mjlawson]

I'm no expert here, but I wonder about the economics around the 13MW of heat that it outputs. There are certainly applications around the world where that could be hugely beneficial. Take Reykjavik[1] for example. How much are they paying for their system now on a yearly basis? How would they like an extra 5MW of energy along with it?

[1] https://vahterus.com/resources/cases/10-mw-heat-pump-system-...

[danans]

> I wonder about the economics around the 13MW of heat that it outputs.

I'll take a stab, if only to start a discussion:

13MW is about 450MBTU/hr.

Natural gas is about $7/MBTU. Assuming 80% efficiency of gas to heat conversion, you would need 562MBTU/hr, or a cost of about $80/hour.

If the heat from this nuclear device is sold at the same price per unit heat, it will make $80*8760=$700800/year.

If read correctly, the reactor can make either 5MW of electricity or 13MW of heat, but not both, so it wouldn't make a lot of sense to sell the 13MW of heat. At best sell some of the waste 8MW to make a few extra marginal bucks.

[nine_k]

Natural gas is only $7 / BTU if you are near an LNG terminal. "Remote areas" usually are not. Think about a military base, a relief effort camp after a major natural disaster, of a mining site in the middle of Canada or Siberia, stuff like that.

[Panzer04]

I imagine the heat could be captured and you do both, but you'd need a system to do that, which is probably more expensive.

[zeristor]

I’d guess they have enough geothermal power for the time being.

[Someone]

That Reykjavik doesn’t use energy to make heat; it uses it to pump it from A to B.

In addition, I guess the heat it pumps is geothermal (FTA: The new setup is expected to provide over 40 GWh/year of free ocean heat.)

A benefit of using this kind of reactor might be that the source of heat could be moved closer to where it’s needed, If so, but I don’t expect that to offset the advantage of the current heat source giving you heat for free.

[jonstewart]

TFA even mentions Alaska and Saskatchewan...