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#307069 - 06/23/18 07:46 AM
Re: small (SMR) and very small (VSMR) nuclear reactors
[Re: jgw]
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veteran
Registered: 02/27/06
Posts: 8227
Loc: North San Diego County
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Some of these design are claimed to be so small they would actually fit into a big truck! But you could never run that truck on the highway, because of all the radiation it would leak. These things are very safe but they are going to leak gamma rays and neutrons. You need to put them a dozen feet underground and a 100 feet from anyone's living or working area. What they do have is some failsafe designs so in the event of runaway because of several failures at once, the hot fuel melts a plug and all the fuel ends up in a safe reservoir under the reactor. For THAT to fail, gravity would have to fail.
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#307070 - 06/23/18 03:25 PM
Re: small (SMR) and very small (VSMR) nuclear reactors
[Re: jgw]
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 11/24/06
Posts: 14568
Loc: Florida
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These things are, in theory (and probably in reality) SAFE! So perhaps they are safe. But are they necessary? Is there something they can do better and cheaper than wind or solar power?
_________________________
"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."— Oscar Wilde
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#307074 - 06/23/18 07:34 PM
Re: small (SMR) and very small (VSMR) nuclear reactors
[Re: jgw]
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enthusiast
Registered: 05/22/06
Posts: 2308
Loc: Port Angeles, WA
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They can provide power irregardless of weather, etc. I just spent a couple of hours reading about safety and radiation. It seems as if radiation is not even considered a problem. Even the union of concerned scientists seem to give it a pass. Canada seems to have decided that a 1000 foot buffer is good enough and is, as far as I can tell, there just to make people feel better.
Our own military, it seems, is going all out to develop vsmr's as are other countries. Russia, for instance, is very active in this stuff.
As far as I can tell nuscale will be building a 12 unit in Idaho in the near future. It will be interesting how that works out. I also noticed that nuclear is mentioned being used to smooth out the power generated by wind (wind power, a couple of years ago, came very close to destroying the entire grand coulee power grid due to the unevenness of supply for which it had never been designed to deal with).
If this stuff works out then the high tension lines from grand coulee to the rest of Washington, will, over time, become a thing of the past?
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#307076 - 06/23/18 11:22 PM
Re: small (SMR) and very small (VSMR) nuclear reactors
[Re: pondering_it_all]
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Pooh-Bah
Registered: 11/24/06
Posts: 14568
Loc: Florida
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For the price of these reactors they can build storage facilities to even out the load. Scaling batteries up might be better than scaling nuclear reactors down...
I'm just not a big fan of nuclear energy.
_________________________
"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."— Oscar Wilde
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#307098 - 06/25/18 07:17 PM
Re: small (SMR) and very small (VSMR) nuclear reactors
[Re: jgw]
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enthusiast
Registered: 05/22/06
Posts: 2308
Loc: Port Angeles, WA
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Nobody actually knows how much these things are going to cost as nobody has, as far as I know, build a manufacturing facility to produce them. Apparently the costs will reduce dramatically once they are in production. Before that happens, of course, everything will need to be tested. Nuscale is now passed the major test and they say whilst there are several others to get through that process will actually take less time for all the rest as for the first one that is passed. I think the plan is for nuscale to complete all tests, build a manufacturing facility and produce 12 of these units for a facility in Idaho. This also seems to be coming quickly so we might be able to see how they work and what the true costs are. The current speculations is that the costs are going to be competitive with current natural gas generation facilities. The real benefits are that these things can be put virtually anywhere and are delivered by truck. They last between 10 and 20 years, can be buried underground, and can be refueled without turning them off and there is minimum waste. http://smrstart.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/SMR-Start-Economic-Analysis-APPROVED-2017-09-14.pdfI should add that Canadam Russia, China, and India are also working pretty hard on these things.
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