[timeimp]

I, for one, want Gen IV small-modular nuclear reactors built.

They solve all our climate change-related challenges AND they eat the waste of older generation reactors.

I fail to see why we're not investing in more nuclear over solar and wind (whose components are not usually recycled)

[rgmerk]

This has almost nothing to do with the topic at hand, which was a commentary on the value of a functioning market for electricity (I hesitate to call it a "free" market because any electricity market ends up having a lot of rules).

I personally think Gen IV nuclear reactors have stuff-all chance of competing in such a market, but if somebody believes otherwise and wants to put up the dollars to try, all power to them.

[fragmede]

I wouldn't say that a technology which would dump a ton of supply, affecting, if not disrupting the market, has "almost nothing to do with the topic at hand". it's unfortunately a bit of a fantasy and years out from being possible due to a natural disaster setting the industry back by yet another a decade but it's totally relevant for a threaded forum.

[rgmerk]

SMRs are going to have relatively high capital costs and (hopefully) low but non-zero operating costs. They will probably have similar ramping characteristics to coal. As such, they will probably operate like coal - generating most of the time when able to and get their lunch eaten by zero-marginal-cost solar in the middle of the day.

One thing SMRs will absolutely not be used for is as peakers, which is where market design matters is most important for keeping the lights on at an affordable cost.

[mythhabit]

Both France and Germany have nuclear plants with load following capabilities to the tune of 5% change per minute. That is 50-100MW change every minute for a single powerplant. It might not be peak-peak, but it is certainly going to handle the vast majority of all electricity generation with very small delay.

[rgmerk]

Sure, I get that you can ramp nuclear plants, technically, but it’s highly unlikely to be economically attractive to build new ones with the intention of ramping them a lot.

If SMRs are built, I’d expect many of them to be accompanied by batteries (either co-located or elsewhere on the grid) to be used as an alternative to ramping.

[offices]

Too much supply is just as bad a problem as too little & nuclear doesn't have the rapid startup needed to adjust the grid for sudden demand that the markets are intended to accommodate.

[kwhitefoot]

> I hesitate to call it a "free" market because any electricity market ends up having a lot of rules).

Markets without a lot of rules are not free, they are inevitably controlled by the biggest players or cartels.

[ok_dad]

It’s money. Look at the cost of nuclear, the real cost with mining, development, construction, maintenance, and decommissioning. It’s way more than the market can bear, and it won’t get any cheaper. You also need a guaranteed pipeline of nuclear operators and an iron clad corporate safety culture to ensure there aren’t any mistakes ever.

I love nuclear tech, but it’s just not feasible today compared to other tech.

[cyberax]

Small modular reactors have almost nothing but disadvantages compared to the good old large-scale PWRs.

The ONLY advantage of SMRs is that they are easier to build because only a handful of companies in the _world_ possess technology to build reactor vessels for large-scale PWRs. And none of them are in the US.

[pstuart]

We have yet to see, as they've yet to truly enter the market.

So far, the record's not been good for large plants -- they tend to go way over budget and schedule. Case in point: Vogtle.

[Animats]

NuScale's price has already gone 60%-70% over budget, and they haven't even built anything yet.[1]

[1] https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Are-Sm...

[pstuart]

The factors cited were inflation and higher interest rates, which are going to be universally applicable.

Cost overruns at Vogtle and others had inflation as a partial factor but the bigger issues, per the DOE:

"Work began with incomplete designs and managers repeatedly failed to realistically schedule tasks. Experienced workers were in short supply and defective work often had to be redone. Workers quit for other jobs and the COVID-19 pandemic led to high absenteeism."

So a pass on Covid impact but the rest is the result of building a huge bespoke power plant. SMRs change all of that to units of mass production.

I'm sure there's still issues to solve there but if nuclear has a future competing against low cost renewables then that SMRs seem to be the only way forward.

[cyberax]

Rosatom is exporting nuclear power plants within budget and (mostly) on time.

It's simply a question of expertise and experience. The US and Europe have ignored nuclear power for so long, that most expertise was lost long ago. And each new nuclear power plant becomes a unique snowflake.

[cinntaile]

Nobody in the western world is going to buy Russian power plants any time soon.

[cyberax]

Of course. Russia needs to be isolated.

I'm just saying that it's _possible_ to construct reactors within reasonable timeframes. Russia and China can do that, so can other countries.

[fodkodrasz]

That is mostly because there are no more large scale nuclear investments, lot of knowhow has been lost, everything is custom built now on every level of implementation (which SMRs promise to solve), and because people care about the initial investments, not for the TCO. Oh, and politically motivated NIH red-tape for getting some votes on the cost of whole society.

[cinntaile]

Nuclear benefits from stable output, but the world we're in doesn't require stable output so the economics become difficult.

[fodkodrasz]

This is not true.

[cinntaile]

You really refuted my argument there.

[asynchronous]

Since they’re small they can be placed far closer to urban hubs and other places that suck electricity. The last design plans I saw one could fit within a single city block, buried under ground with only 1 story exposed.

[cyberax]

> The last design plans I saw one could fit within a single city block, buried under ground with only 1 story exposed.

This is a completely unrealistic plan, designed to lure investors.

An SMR meltdown will produce enough radioactive contamination to make a small city unlivable, at least for a while. So you'll need a full containment building. You'll need emergency generators, coolant pumps, etc.

Then you have a question of security, an easily accessible reactor will provide a great target for terrorism. So you'll need a perimeter around it with armed guards.

Then there's a question of control. A working reactor requires at least two trained nuclear engineers on duty at all times. So each reactor will likely need around 15 highly specialized engineers. That will have to live within a commuting distance.

Sounds bad already. But that's not all. There's also a question of inspections, something like the NRC can be reasonably expected to regulate several hundred reactors. They are not prepared to inspect many thousands of reactors. And the last thing I personally want is a "self-regulating" nuclear industry.

Any _realistic_ SMR power plant will look just like a regular large nuclear plant, except that it'll have multiple reactor units instead of just one large reactor.

[kwhitefoot]

There are designs for modular reactors that are inherently safe. Using subcritical reactors and a particle beam. See Aker Solutions: https://www.neimagazine.com/features/featureaker-s-ads-uses-...

Haven't seen any news from them recently though.

[cyberax]

They are not "inherently safe". Reactors that produce power (in large quantities) are dangerous because fission products are radioactive, and they produce energy even after the chain reaction stops. So once cooling is lost, these fission products can melt through the reactor vessel and escape the confinement.

Also, accelerator-driven reactors are just bonkers. They make no freaking sense for power generation. They are being investigated because they can produce very energetic neutrons, in quantities that are large enough to transmute some long-lived nuclear waste.

[kwhitefoot]

Are you implying that they do not produce more energy than they consume? Conventional commercial reactors release only a tiny fraction of the energy available in the fuel. Accelerator driven reactors make it possible to release more of it. They can also make effective use of thorium.

[stephen_g]

Part of the reason is because they none have actually been built yet, and there would take even longer to perfect them. You could say that that is a reason for that is under-investment, but you can't say things like "they solve all our climate change-related challenges" about something that doesn't exit yet...

[RandomLensman]

Nuclear so far is very expensive and hasn't shown a great price trajectory. It remains unclear if new designs would realize better price points if they were to become reality.

[bee_rider]

Invest in both, I don’t think nuclear is the future but wouldn’t mind being wrong.

To pay for it, raise taxes on fossil fuels.

[jillesvangurp]

Invest proportional to the risk. Nuclear is a very risky investment. But it might pay off. The financial risk level is why it is so dependent on state subsidies and tax payer money. Without that, nuclear operators would be going bankrupt and no sane investor would risk their money on it. The risks include lengthy delays, cost overruns, policy issues, safety related cost, and much more. Some of those things might be fixable. But there are no guarantees. And without prices for nuclear energy coming down substantially, the resulting technology is not viable in the market. It might happen but it's not looking like that would happen before there's a few more tw more renewable capacity online in the next few decades.

Solar, wind, and other renewables are very popular investments right now. There are very clear learning effects visible when implementing them resulting on year on year cost reductions. These investments have a very reliable ROI. A very predictable and quick implementation. And they are easy to scale. That's why so much new capacity is coming online vs. the absolutely pitiful amounts of nuclear being added to the grid. The price gap is basically an order of magnitude and growing. You get about 10x more capacity in renewables for the same money. The realized capacity gap also is much larger for the same reason.

[baq]

It doesn’t look like we have any alternatives in the next three decades until fusion is viable :wink:

[bee_rider]

Yea it always seems like there’s some technology right around the corner that’s a better plan than the renewables we could be installing right now. Might as well use petrochemicals for another couple quarters!

[anjel]

They make nifty hard targets in military conflicts as a certain dictator who likes invading sovereign countries recently innovated.