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US Regulators Will Certify First Small Nuclear Reactor Design (arstechnica.com) 157

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has announced that it would be issuing a certification to a new nuclear reactor design, making it just the seventh that has been approved for use in the US. But in some ways, it's a first: The design, from a company called NuScale, is a small modular reactor that can be constructed at a central facility and then moved to the site where it will be operated. From a report: The move was expected after the design received an OK during its final safety evaluation in 2020. Small modular reactors have been promoted as avoiding many of the problems that have made large nuclear plants exceedingly expensive to build. They're small enough that they can be assembled on a factory floor and then shipped to the site where they will operate, eliminating many of the challenges of custom on-site construction. In addition, they're structured in a way to allow passive safety, where no operator actions are necessary to shut the reactor down if problems occur. Many of the small modular designs involve different technology from traditional reactors, such as the use of molten uranium salts as the reactor fuel. NuScale has a much more traditional design, with fuel and control rods and energy transported through boiling water. Its operator-free safety features include setting the entire reactor in a large pool of water, control rods that are inserted into the reactor by gravity in the case of a power cut, and convection-driven cooling from an external water source.
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US Regulators Will Certify First Small Nuclear Reactor Design More

US Regulators Will Certify First Small Nuclear Reactor Design

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  • Goverment handout (Score:5, Informative)

    by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Monday August 01, 2022 @05:51PM (#62754062)

    For anyone wondering, this is the PDF [azureedge.net] that's handed out to government entities that just covers the high level aspects of their product. Has a few figures in it that are worth noting. If figure if everyone's going to be debating this here, might as well have some from the company numbers.

  • NRC reserving right to review location (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Monday August 01, 2022 @06:04PM (#62754106) Homepage

    The question is will this be a huge hurdle or just a formality? The main reason why nuke plants take so long and cost so much to start is regulatory issues about approving design.

    If the new review for location is a formality, simply making sure they have appropriate water consideration and electrical hook ups, that NuScale already knows about, then this is a huge win for both NuScale and Nuke power. We could see Nuclear power plants popping up all over the place, especially at say, large factories that have large electrical requirements.

    But if the NRC is going to have massive requirements for the locations that NuScale will not expect and deal with before hand, this will kill the business entirely. No nuclear revival, just same old same old.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by CrimsonAvenger ( 580665 )

      The main reason why nuke plants take so long and cost so much to start is regulatory issues about approving design.

      No, the reason nuke plants take so long and cost so much is that as soon as the plan to build one becomes public, the lawsuits by the anti-nukes start flying.

      And the lawsuits continue until the builders give up on the nuke plant...

      Remember, the first nuclear power plant took less than four years to go from an idea to an operational plant. There is NO good reason why it should take 20+ years

    • The main reason why nuke plants take so long and cost so much to start is regulatory issues about approving design.
      A modern nuke costs to build about 20 billion dollars.

      So, you want to tell me more than 30% - or let it be 50% - if that is what you want to say with "main reason", costs 6 to 10 billion dollars?

      Did you ever do the math?

      To spent 10 billion dollars on paper work, during an 5 years approval process, you would have to spent 2 billion every year. Assuming a very well paid paper workers occupied in

      • You are missing the impact of financing and risk. If you add five years to a 5-year lead time, and double the risk that the project gets cancelled, and have a break-even point 20 years after going online, $1 initial cost results in $9-15 in additional financing costs.

        • And all your example costs have nothing to do with: paper work and regulations, like the pro nuke idiots here on /. claim.

    • ...We could see Nuclear power plants popping up all over the place, especially at say, large factories that have large electrical requirements...

      On the one hand, that's a very attractive prospect. There would be a lot less transmission loss, and the resulting redundancy should make the grid more resilient.

      On the other hand, it's scary - it enormously increases the attack surface, and it increases the chances of mistakes and negligence causing a major nuclear incident. Also, if nuclear plants become widely distributed and commonplace, attitudes toward them will become less cautious, and complacency will tend to breed carelessness. This development is

      • Actually the opposite tends to be true in terms of procedures. The only thing you increase risk on is the number of locations; risk per reactor drops by likely two orders of magnitude due to inherent safety and standardization.

  • Need to start cranking these out rapidly. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday August 01, 2022 @06:04PM (#62754110)

    If every town about 10,000 people had one or more of these we might have a nation that is a lot less susceptible to power grid failures, and we could close down a lot of coal and gas power plants a lot sooner.

    Being able to manufacture these in a factory and shipping them out where needed should make it possible to greatly speed up the process of production compared to traditional reactors, and the small size of them means they should be a lot more acceptable in more places than a giant reactor would be.

    We are already spending billions to pay companies to put chip plants in the U.S., let's spend what is needed to stand up a large SMR factory ASAP.

    We should also make offers to send a few to every Native American reservation, and remote indigenous towns in Alaska that would like one. Free power is the least we can do for them.

    P.S. hopefully they are making these with some kind of EMP hardening as well.

    • > we might have a nation that is a lot less susceptible to power grid failures, and we could close down a lot of coal and gas power plants a lot sooner.

      Energy that doesn't come from the Middle East would also make western countries much less dependent on political conditions in the Middle East, with less desire to intervene.

      • Energy that doesn't come from the Middle East would also make western countries much less dependent on political conditions in the Middle East, with less desire to intervene.

        That'd be a disaster for US foreign policy & the military industrial complex.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vlad30 ( 44644 )
      There are suggestions that these could be drop in replacements for coal plants using the infrastructure already in place. https://www.iaea.org/newscente... [iaea.org]
      • If they can find a way to solve the basic problem with solid fuel uranium reactors for this - the low outlet temperature - there's no reason it wouldn't work. But uh... if there was any easy way to solve that problem, nuclear power plants wouldn't still require enormous bespoke turbines to deal with (relatively) low-temperature steam. Compact molten salt reactors would be perfect for this though because they naturally have much higher outlet temperatures. To the point, in fact, that early in their experimen

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Klaxton ( 609696 )

      NuScale plans to build the first reactor in 2030 and the projected cost of electricity is already higher than wind and solar. Those prices are continuing to drop, so by 2030 it is very possible that the SMR won't be at all economical for most purposes.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MacMann ( 7518492 )

        Yep. that's possible. It's also possible you are wrong. We can't know unless we try. If it works then we can produce energy at costs lower than wind and solar for all time. That's a payback that is incalculable. If is a failure then we learned a few things about materials, nuclear fission, and what doesn't work for energy. What's that worth? A billion dollars maybe? We can't really calculate that value either because we see a lot of materials research end up being used in all kinds of new ways. Som

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Klaxton ( 609696 )

          We can know a lot of things aren't economically viable even if we don't try them. NuScale went public recently, a very risky investment.

          >> costs for all recent nuclear projects have vastly exceeded original estimates. It cited cost overruns at the embattled Plant Vogtle in Georgia, the project “most like NuScale in terms of modular development” where costs “now are 140% higher than the original forecast.”

          https://www.power-eng.com/nucl... [power-eng.com]

        • We should try to develop better wind and solar instead. We can't know unless we try. If it works then we can produce energy at costs lower than wind and solar for all time. That's a payback that is incalculable. If is a failure then we learned a few things about materials, wind and solar, and what doesn't work for energy. What's that worth? A billion dollars maybe? We can't really calculate that value either because we see a lot of materials research end up being used in all kinds of new ways.

          We should tr

        • Yep. that's possible. It's also possible you are wrong. We can't know unless we try.

          What a bullshit version of a canned response!

          We pretty much know what it's going to cost [westerninvestor.com] from comparable projects, it's not like this is unicorn tech being built in vacuum for the first time. Money quote:

          Each of the 300 MWe SMRs cost between $1 billion to $1.5 billion and can provide enough electricity to power approximately 240,0000 homes.

          A 300W-solar power farm would require 1.5 million solar panels and cost approximately $300 million [...]

          The typical wind turbine delivers an optimal 2-3 MWe in power, and cost from $2 million to $4 million, so 300 Mwe would require at least 100 turbines at a total cost of between $200 million to $400 million.

          Take away message: right now there's almost 1 order of magnitude between solar/wind and nuclear. Oh, and don't get fooled by "small, modular 300 MW plant" -- many "traditional" European plants are in the ~500 MW range. A "small and modular 300 MW" is neither small, nor modular. The power plants TFA talks ab

          • Oh, and don't get fooled by "small, modular 300 MW plant" -- many "traditional" European plants are in the ~500 MW range. A "small and modular 300 MW" is neither small, nor modular. The power plants TFA talks about are in the 300-900 MW range, FYI. (Whether the "small and modular" here is just a marketing trick to wave away critique, along the lines of "no, no, no, no, no, we're talking about completely different tech here, not about what you've all come to know about and expect from nuclear tech" is up to anybody's judgement.)

            If you had read the story link or the PDF linked in the first post you would know that this 300 MW plant is made up of four 77 MW "modules" manufactured offsite. So yeah, pretty much the definition of small and modular.

            • If you had read the story link or the PDF linked in the first post you would know that this 300 MW plant is made up of four 77 MW "modules" manufactured offsite. So yeah, pretty much the definition of small and modular.

              Literally the first slide that talks about capacity (slide 3) shows that the 300 MW is made up of 4 modules. With 77 MW each. The 300 MW combo is the smallest one they present.

          • "running costs are zero, waste disposal is free, and we don't pay for any damages should something of epic proportions go wrong"

            I've never heard those assumptions, ever.

            • I've never heard those assumptions, ever.

              Point me to one where they take waste disposal and damage restitution into account.

              Point me to instances where a plant owner did full damage restitution for past accidents of scale.

              • I don't need to. I'm only saying nobody makes those assumptions. They choose to not address them in a lot of cases, but that's not the same thing.

                • I'm only saying nobody makes those assumptions. They choose to not address them in a lot of cases, but that's not the same thing.

                  We're talking about price comparisons to other sources of energy. Of course it is the same thing when you display "costs of nuclear" and omit the parts that are the most problematic. Splitting the costs between "building" and "operational" when the competition you're up against doesn't have "operational" costs worth mentioning is like splitting the price of a Ferrari between "what you pay upfront" and "what you pay on delivery", and comparing it to a Chevy Nova for which you "pay upfront" essentially most o

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It's highly unlikely that these will ever be cost competitive with wind or solar. You can't just ship one to a town and plug it in, it needs a proper facility and operators. NuScale designed them to be kept in an underground pool of water, so the pool itself needs to be built and maintained. The pool has to be able to vent steam in case of emergency so you can't seal it up too much.

          NuScale's reactors need refuelling every 2 years. Most likely the spent fuel will also end up in big pools, at the same site as

      • Modern societies need power 24/7, not at the whims of the weather. Using the UK as an example, on average an onshore wind installation produces about 6 hours of its nominal power output a day, and solar about 3 hours. So although the cost per MW is low, you need to overbuild by 300 and 700% respectively.

        Then you need to store the energy, because some weeks the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. An optimum wind/solar battery mix which will supply 1 GW continuously, and 1.5 GW intermittently on aver

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Klaxton ( 609696 )

          Good points, and variability is obviously a problem, but the UK isn't a very good representative example. A small set of islands that would fit comfortably into the landmass of Texas, and at a latitude well above Maine. In the USA there's a lot more solar and wind site opportunities that can be networked together for redundancy at 3 cents/kWh.

          Conventional nuclear has its own set of significant problems, and let us know when Hinkley Point C becomes operational. Guaranteed 11.3 cents/kWh for 35 years, far mor

    • A population of 10,000 isn't a town, it's a mid-sized village. A town is typically 100,000+ so by your calculations that'd be 10 or more nuclear reactors per town. The majority of people in the world live in cities. What sort of manufacturing scale were you thinking of?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Not going to happen. These need at least 30 years before large-scale deployment becomes possible. That is a best-case scenario.

    • NYSEG can't keep the lights on during a normal rainy day. Imagine if they were in charge of running a Nuke....yikes.
  • and $27 wind. Even with the economy of scale of 12 modules and best case scenario, it is uncompetitive using the company's own numbers : "capital, operating, and decommissioning costs for its 12-module, 924 MWe plant design. Results demonstrated that the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of a NuScale plant will be $64 per megawatt-hour (MWh)"

    • At least it will produce electricity on dark, still nights. Perhaps what we need is a variety of sources.

      Best wishes,
      Bob

      • That's always been the case.

        Some sources are dependent on light. Others on wind activity. Others on tidal power. What we need is a combination of 1) blended sources so that any one source being in a valley of it's production cycle can be compensated for by other sources and 2) Better kinetic storage, be it battery, thermal, kinetic, etc. that can compensate for variances and demand and 3) Whole grid sharing where a state with surplus generation at the moment can help a city in another state with brief de

        • Compared to your suggestion, $65/ MWh suddenly sounds pretty appealing. Part of the reason that the average wholesale price of wind/solar is so low is due to production not always matching demand. A constant-price of 6.5c/ MWh for a high-reliability source would actually be a net benefit to the use of renewables. You didn't mention adaptive loads in your analysis. Some loads are very adaptive, others not so much.
    • Batteries not included.

    • Re:$64/ MWh 12 modules vs $23 solar (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MachineShedFred ( 621896 ) on Monday August 01, 2022 @06:32PM (#62754190) Journal

      Just because it's more expensive, doesn't mean it shouldn't be built. If you go by nothing but cost, you get wind and solar. And then you have a variable output problem because your generation is weather dependent, so you end up using fossil fuels to backstop it - largely natural gas / methane turbines because they are better at load-following and can be turned on in minutes.

      Or you can have some generation that is a bit more expensive in the mix, and far less variability which brings down overall cost of keeping the grid stable. Which is exactly what grid operators do today.

      So probably stop with the absolutist approach, and instead go for "what's the best mix we can come up with, which optimizes both price and grid stability, while reducing carbon output?"

      • The natural gas turbines are a pretty good backstop, though. If a solar/wind producer is selling their energy on a long-term contract, they need to be able to produce reliably. Having a few open-cycle gas turbines around lets them get better prices for their electricity and only have to burn hydrocarbons tens of hours per year.
    • The important thing to understand is that a large (huge, enormous) part of what drives the minute-by-minute price of a MWh, is supply and demand. On a calm, overcast day during peak demand, energy prices on the grid may shoot waaaaay past that $64 as operators struggle to keep supply up to match demand. And on a sunny day with low demand it may dip far far below $23. In other words: there may be a profitable market for wind at $27/MWh, solar at $23/MWh and nuclear at $64/MWh. Or instead of nuclear, even
      • When I watch ERCOT's site, I've seen dynamic pricing go from negative to $100/MWH. Earlier this summer I'd watch it go from around $40/MWH to $5000/MWH. Those were the days the wind stopped blowing and demand was around 80GW. Juice pricing can have wild swings in less than an hour as you say. As we move more and more to renewables in TX, I expect those swings will get worse.

        • As we move more and more to renewables in TX, I expect those swings will get worse.

          As we build our renewable capacity, the swings will get less. There will be less chance they will all be producing at their lows at the same time.

          There may be more times when the price goes negative though. Oh no the electricity is too cheap.
          Storage will solve both "problems"

          • Solar never works at night. You can over build 1000x times, and it still will never work at night.

            Negative pricing means that you have to pay people to take your electricity. Storage is not going to be able to solve those problems. We need days to weeks of storage, and we are building minutes annually.

    • Solar does not work at night, wind does not work without wind. You are a stupid fuck. Just for the record LCOE is a dishonest metric.

  • Funny (Score:3)

    by Voice of satan ( 1553177 ) on Tuesday August 02, 2022 @08:29AM (#62755506)

    Funny the difference of tone and quality of the comments between here and Ars. The nerds have left slashdot.

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