[vablings]

I think you have a misunderstanding of what a SMR is supposed to be.

Nuclear power plants are eye watering levels of expensive. The require massive scale and cost with lengthy approvals and requirements, the fundamental idea of SMRs is to move that cost and approvals into a smaller scale so that multiple standard units can be produced and deployed in a turnkey situation, they still will be expensive but the time to deploy and cost will be significantly reduced.

We also know SMRs work very well, considering the majority of the US Navy is powered entirely with SMRs and have been for a very long time. Off the top of my head ship power has been exported to local areas for disaster relief

Solar is absolutely fantastic and your average person should not be hawking at solar for your home to offset your power bill. The problem with solar is that you need power 24/7 and solar will not make power in the night.

I don't think the likes of Westinghouse, Siemens, Rolls Royce and GE are duped. They are trying to solve a very hard problem!

[Arodex]

>The problem with solar is that you need power 24/7 and solar will not make power in the night.

Ok, question: for the cost of one nuclear power plant, how many batteries can you have?

For the cost of the R&D of one next generation nuclear reactor design, how many next generation battery and solar panels technologies can you develop?

[slibhb]

This is such a silly argument. Battery and solar technologies are progressing regardless of people building nuclear. It's simply not the case that we can stop investing in nuclear and use that money to accelerate battery/solar.

The best energy strategies are all-of-the-above.

[Arodex]

This isn't a silly argument, this is a problem of allocation of resources.

We could have had mass solar deployment since the 70s. We chose not to, and allocate the money elsewhere. Nuclear will take away billions in public money, put it into the hands of nuclear industries, to get electricity at twice the going rate, maybe, in twenty years. A white elephant and a waste of effort.

[slibhb]

We don't live in a command economy. Nuclear and solar both great and our only stance should be encouraging both.

[vablings]

That's exactly the point of SMRs. Do away with the huge capital allocation of public funds to overspend and overrun on infrastructure projects.

[hollerith]

Can you explain how that would have worked with the much less efficient and much more expensive solar panels available in the 70s?

[Arodex]

All the R&D and industrial capacity building we have done since the 70s could have been accelerated if we had invested in it as much as we invested in nuclear, or oil, or gas, or coal. With public money.

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-hidden-ways-the-g...

[vablings]

> Ok, question: for the cost of one nuclear power plant, how many batteries can you have?

Not that many. Sizewell C the latest nuclear project in the UK is projected to cost around 50 billion and expected to last for 60 years. We can cut that estimate short to say oh well, About a billion a year for the next 50 years.

Assuming that you can purchase storage at $70/kwh with 50 billion you could purchase around 715GWh of battery storage, at the same output of Sizewell C that means you could output 3.2GW for 200+ hours! wow.

One problem. The batteries will realistically only last somewhere between 10-20 years. A moderate 15-year estimate would be more realistic. Now obviously it's very hard to calculate and account for a reduction in pricing increase in capacity etc... But with today's technology you would have to buy the pack 3.33 times over

So now you go into 0.300 * 715GWh gives you 214.5 GWh and now with that 3.2GWh load it could run for just shy of 3 days. This is like the entire capacity storage of China right now.

So yeah, to answer your question 214.5 GWh of storage

[p2detar]

> For the cost of the R&D of one next generation nuclear reactor design, how many next generation battery and solar panels technologies can you develop

This is a horrible argument. Yeah, let’s not spend money improving technology. We wouldn’t have increased Solar panel efficiency if we followed such ill advice.

[Arodex]

>We wouldn’t have increased Solar panel efficiency if we followed such ill advice.

We didn't for decades. The photoelectric effect is known since the XIXth century. Solar panel research could have had far more money behind it since the 70s and the first oil crisis. It was a choice not to. And the current US and Swiss governments are choosing to prop up some industries -coal, nuclear- at the expense of others, with public money that don't grow on trees.

[bryanlarsen]

I think you have a misunderstanding of economies of scale.

There are two ways of achieving economies of scale:

1. make things bigger

2. make more of them

Making things bigger generally is more effective when n is small. You need fewer sites, fewer approvals, each of the steps in the process is done fewer times.

When n is large, you can build and optimize a factory for them and achieve economies of scale that way.

Nuclear plants got large to take advantage of economies of scale because n is small. Nobody's building millions or even thousands of SMR's.

[crote]

> We also know SMRs work very well, considering the majority of the US Navy is powered entirely with SMRs

And what's their cost per MWh?

Considering they are fueled by highly-enriched uranium: are you okay with most of the world being handed the capability to build nukes?

[vablings]

> And what's their cost per MWh? We do not know but its likely expensive

>Considering they are fueled by highly-enriched uranium: are you okay with most of the world being handed the capability to build nukes?

There are SMR designs that do not use highly-enriched uranium.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69b2f41497f6f...

" The RR SMR uses PWR technology and industry standard LEU fuel and builds on operational experience from existing PWR reactors."

I cite this as RR is the most advanced out of all the other companies working on this afaik