sigh
As useful as that graph is, it makes me sad to see the US isn’t even on there. 
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The US has approved a single design for a small, modular nuclear reactor developed by the company NuScale Power. The government’s Idaho National Lab was working to help construct the first NuScale installation, the Carbon Free Power Project…
With the price of renewables dropping precipitously, however, the project’s economics have worsened, and backers started pulling out of the project.
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hmm, definitely didn’t expect that.
Lame
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that’s disappointing news, hopefully the idea of SMR’s don’t die with NuScale
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A seemingly thorough survey of attempts so far…
This is a bummer. So I guess NuScale is just another brick in the wall? 
So I guess monoliths are the way to go when it comes to nuclear power.
I’m honestly surprised Molten Salt Reactors are not more of a thing
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First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in operation
A new reactor at Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear power plant is now in commercial operation… It is the first new nuclear reactor to start up in the United States since the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar 2 was commissioned in 2016.
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Ohhhh sweeeet!
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Mainly unaligned countries. Argentina I know has a new core under construction they are adding to an existing plant which is neat.
Sabine has a new video on nuclear power. It’s a bit long, and the first 10m24s might be a bit ‘basic’ for you folks, so I’ve linked to the start of the “cost” section, which is the meat and potatoes of the whole video. Enjoy!
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Sabine is great!
Thanks for sharing, checkin it out t now
Sabine misses the point though, here is the real reason why baseload power is unlikely to exist in the future. And no, it is not for environmental reasons.
[Edit]After watching through the Sabine video again without skipping around, I do want to correct the above statement, Sabine actually does a pretty fair and balanced assesment. Still recommend the above video though, to better understand the challenges Baseload in general and Nuclear in particular faces.[/edit]
I have said it before, Nuclear is a fantastic technology with a lot of great applications that, unfortunately, no longer fits with the much cheaper and mass manufactured small scale generation of solar, wind and batteries.
Thorium based mass manufactured SMRs is the most promising upcoming tech and that might fill some niche needs at say, factories requiring large quantities of energy, but it needs to get it’s shit together before 2040 or the world will have moved on, just like it did with Ethanol ICE engines.
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tl;dw:
Sabine’s video explains why Nuclear is more — and is getting more — expensive (in the West, at least).
Tony’s video points out a widespread accounting mistake that makes new fossil fuel, nuclear and hydro power plants unsound investments.
Both seem to be based.
Small Nuclear Thorium Reactors are Coming to Europe
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The “Just Have A Think” YouTube channel recently posted a video about SMRs.
One of the comments, however, was particularly informative. The commenter in question, perryallan3524, claims to be “an experienced nuclear plant engineer who is very pro-nuclear”.
Here is a link to the video with the comment in question highlighted so it should appear at the top of the comment section.
Below is a quote from perryallan3524’s comment. Note that the original comment seems to still be in the process of being edited, so what appears below may differ to what is on YouTube. I suggest using the link above and reading the original. This quote is provided in case you prefer not to:
You are so correct that the entire concept of SMR’s was fatally flawed from the start just on the economics alone; and the mass production dreams were only ever a fantasy.
I’m an experienced nuclear plant engineer who is very pro-nuclear and has researched the history of nuclear power plants… and the fact is that the answers were known decades ago.
For starters the concept of “mass produced” SMR’s with main components transported to local sites with minimal field assembly was 1st proposed in 1955 in the annual conference on the potential of nuclear power plants (held in Europe that year - not sure which country).
The 1st ever demonstration SMR was a 22 MWe thorium fuel cycle based BWR in Elk River Minnesota (USA) which many people were talking about could be erected in many small communities in the USA. Online 1964, Shutdown 3.5 years later in 1968 due to major design issues.
However, it had already been deemed uneconomical as a power plant just due to staffing cost alone.
For the record the USA built 17 commercial nuclear power plants in the 1960’s - 1970’s which would be considered SMR sized today. All of them were shut down decades ago as they were not economical to operate against the large nuclear power plants built at the same time (I am unsure of the details for the rest of the world; but, understand that the same pattern followed in other countries unless there were unique locations where building larger plants did not make any sense).
As an aside: did you note that Elk River was a thorium fuel cycle (there is nothing new about thorium and the current proponents are not talking about its historical issues identified from the USA’s failed attempts to develop it as a fuel source). The USA went whole hog into developing thorium as a nuclear fuel source in the 1960’s - 1970’s to see if it would work. Along with all the test reactors it was run in around the world the USA built and operated 2 test molten salt reactors and the Shippingport demo/test power plant (PWR 60 MWe) which showed a successful breeding thorium core could be designed and put into most of the existing PWRs in the world -).
The USA then built 4 commercial thorium fuel cycle power plants of BWR, PWR, and HTGR designs. In all cases thorium did not work out (there were both technical and economic issues with thorium fuel cycle reactors) - and at least 3 of the reactors were converted to U235 fuel which worked better and was cheaper. Note if thorium is such a good choice now why are we not putting it into PWRs at this time - as at least we know that the reactor designs work well and we now have passively safe PWRs?
Anyway back to SMRs (regardless of fuel source): By the end of the 1970’s it was known that the concept of SMRs were dead unless it was for some kind of geologically isolated area where they only needed a small power plant and transmission line construction was impractical.
If you double the size of a nuclear power plant it only takes about 40% more materials and in many cases the plant staff size does not even change. At some point the staffing size does increase modestly.
As for the failed NuScale Idoho plant. 6 SMR reactors of 77 MWe output was the claimed plans (462 MWe). What is interesting is that only the 50 MWe version was licensed by the NRC and there was an expectation that the NRC would quickly license the 77 MWe version which they thought could be done during the early site preparation period: Utah Utilities & NuScale was well into the “Pre-License review” of the 77 MWe design and had received good feedback. But the License application was never submitted after they received the construction quote and the pre-licnese review was terminated.
The quote came in at about $9.5 Billion to construct, with an estimated $1 Billion+ inflation adjustment during the construction period.
In reality this would have been about the same price to build a single Westinghouse AP-1000 (about 1150 MWe) and the staffing for the plant would have been about the same.
As for the $55 raising to $89 per MWhr for electricity cost. That was after $4 Billion from the US government for SMR development grants - so the real cost rose to well over $100 per MWhr (where a single unit AP-1000 could be built for significantly less than half of that).
Note on AP-1000 construction cost: Yes a lot more was spent at VC Summer and Voglte. But the USA (and Europe with the EPR) had not built nuclear power plants in so long that no contractors and very few workers understood how to build them - and also a number of suppliers shipped fake certified components and materials to site that could not be used - or had to be tore out and replaced. Massive cost and schedule delays, and lots of lessons learned. The Idaho NuScale project used the same contractors to quote that had learned their lessons with the Vogtle AP-1000s which is why they could quote so much better (and if those contractors are used before they forget - the next USA nuclear plant will be built much cheaper and much more closer to schedule than Vogtle 3 & 4).
By the way China built 4 AP-1000’s with an average construction time of about 6 years. They had a delay and cost overrun on their 1st one as they were not used to working with the Westinghouse design - but once they understood it - no noticeable delays or cost overruns (and Chinese construction standards and contractors for nuclear are just as good - if not better - than their western counterparts. No shortcuts, no fake materials, and the workers understand high quality nuclear construction standards and practices). I did a consulting job for one of the Chines AP-1000 plants; and was impressed.
China is now building 6 more AP-1000s (they have a licensed copy) and at least 2 other countries are starting construction on AP-1000s- and at least 15 more AP-1000s are in the planning stage worldwide.
The Westinghouse AP-300 benefits from the fact that the controls and many smaller components are exactly the same ones being produced for the AP-1000’s which provides a cost savings both up front and for repair parts and service down the road. No other SMR proposal can claim the same advantage.
As for mass production - it will never happen for a nuclear power plant.
At a minimum you need a proven plant design that is known to work economically for many decades - and in the history of nuclear power plants most initial designs did not work very well at all. There is not a single SMR plant that has a proven plant design - and it will be many decades after one goes on line before we know (we only have great PWR designs now based on the lessons learned of over 4 decades of operation of about 100 unique PWR power plant designs worldwide (76 different light water designs in the USA alone). A lot of design ideas that looked good in concept did not work out and there are many early shutdown plants as it was too costly to modify the plant to a different design. Now we can pick out which design idea worked for each component, structure, and system.
The design of the components and overall plant must be identical for each plant. Never going to happen as each nuclear power plant site must be designed for “worst case” LOCAL earthquakes, flooding, storms, etc. No one wants to pay for a plant that is designed to handle all the worst case conditions that exist somewhere in the world. It would be massively overbuilt and expensive.
As for mass production. I put the number at a minimum of 500 identical units a year - for at least 10 years to make it economical to even build an automated plant. We don’t need that many nuclear power plants (even if only 50 MWe each).
Those sketches and concepts of building skids in a frame and assembling them onsite has been tried at least twice for fossil plants. Total cost and schedule disaster. One of those ideas that looks good as a concept, but requires a level of quality and dimensional control that so far has not been demonstrated to exist. It’s cheaper to just build a normal seismically designed metal framework for the site, bring in the preassembled major components (Like has always been done) and field built connecting piping and wiring.
By the way, we disagree about the cost of solar and wind. I will post separately on that.
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Funny meme
I know you didn’t write the comment, but this is a good hour documentary into thorium and molten salt reactors. I’m a little skeptical about thorium not working given the research covered in this video
im sorry, what…
“Geo Thermal is creating 200x the volume radio active waste that nuclear reactors do per watt of power”
Im going to need sources for that claim sir… That claim does not even pass the smell test.
Ok, im going to say on record, do not bother watching that video, even if you are Pro Thorium and Pro Nuclear. Its not very well documented, and uses more than a few editing and writing techniques to create an “obvious” conclusion.
It also uses several extreme anti nuclear arguments to devalue legitimate concerns. So rather than adding to a nuanced and challenging discussion this video encourages you to reduce concerns to a joke, and leads to Thorium as the only logical conclusion.
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