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Small modular nuclear reactors get a reality check in new report (newatlas.com)

submitted 6 months ago by machinin@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[T]he report's executive summary certainly gets to the heart of their findings.

"The rhetoric from small modular reactor (SMR) advocates is loud and persistent: This time will be different because the cost overruns and schedule delays that have plagued large reactor construction projects will not be repeated with the new designs," says the report. "But the few SMRs that have been built (or have been started) paint a different picture – one that looks startlingly similar to the past. Significant construction delays are still the norm and costs have continued to climb."

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (8 children)

Exactly. I live in Utah, which is perfect for nuclear:

desert close by with a mountain between the desert and dense population
lots of coal power, and unique air quality concerns due to inversion
perfectly set up for mass transit - about half (more than half?) of the population lives in a narrow corridor, so cars could be replaced with electric trains and buses
no access to the ocean, geothermal is probably expensive due to hard rock, no tides, hydro couldn't be done at scale, cold winters make battery storage hard, etc

So why don't we do it? FUD. We should have a nuclear base with solar and wind helping out, but instead we have a coal base and are transitioning to natural gas. That's dumb. And it's hilarious because we sell electricity to California when their backbone isn't sufficient.

It's probably not the best option everywhere, but it's a really good option in many areas.

[–] GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago (4 children)

So why don't we do it? FUD.

A consortium of Utah's utilities (UAMPS) literally just pulled out of its commitment to backing NuScale's modular reactor in November 2023. It was a problem of cost, when the construction looked like it was going to become too expensive, at a time when new wind construction is dropping the price of wind power. It basically just couldn't compete on cost, in the specific environment of servicing Utah.

geothermal is probably expensive due to hard rock

I wouldn't sleep on geothermal as a future broad scale solution for dispatchable (that is, generation that can be dialed up and down on demand) electrical power. The oil and gas fracking industry has greatly improved their technology at imaging geological formations and finding places where water can flow and be pumped, in just the past decade. I expect to see over the next decade geothermal reach viability beyond just the places where geothermal heat is close to the surface.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 0 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Yeah, I just saw that news, which apparently happened end of last year. The public wants nuclear (or at least a non-coal base power), but projects keep getting delayed or scrapped due to local lawsuits or local governments pulling financial support.

Geothermal is cool, and apparently there's an active project. It should produce 400MW, which is pretty significant, but still a pretty small fraction of total capacity (~9.5GW).

If the Blue Castle project ever finishes, it'll supply ~1.5GW power. That, with geothermal, could take up ~1/4 of the total energy generation, which would be a really good start. I'd also like to see hydrogen production as a "battery" source (produce from solar, burn at night). Looks like that's under development as well.

Lots of interesting things are happening now, I just wish they started 10+ years ago...

[–] frezik@midwest.social 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Scrapping the NuScale project had nothing to do with lawsuits. Governments pulled their financial support because projected costs were exceeding what was contractually promised, mostly due to pandemic-related supply chain and inflation issues.

This is typical of nuclear. The industry wants to believe its problem is regulation. It's not, at least not if you want to have better safety guarantees than the Soviet Union did. Its problem is that to be safe, nuclear is expensive, and there doesn't appear to be a way out of that.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago

Yes, NuScale wasn't scrapped due to lawsuits, I was more referring to the delays to Blue Castle, which was delayed for 3-ish years due to lawsuits.

NuScale is a pretty small operation promising something like 300-400MW. Blue Castle is a lot larger promising ~1500MW.

nuclear is expensive

Initially, yes, but amortized over the life of the plant, it's pretty cheap. It has a high upfront cost and relatively low operating costs. And one of the big operating costs (waste disposal) won't be an issue here, the larger issue is water access for cooling, and that's political (farmers don't want to give up water rights).

My main concern is seismic activity, since if we get an earthquake, it'll likely be very violent. That increases initial costs, but doesn't really impact ongoing costs. Utah just doesn't like throwing large sums of money around, hence the political pushback.

We're still >50% fossil fuels, so I'll support anything that replaces that. I like hydrogen (in development), geothermal (in development), solar (expanding), and wind (seems to be slowing), but that's not going to be enough. Even if all of those were operating today, we'd still be using significant amounts of fossil fuels. I think we will still need nuclear, we have the space and demand for it.

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