"Too Expensive, Too Slow, and Too Risky"
Because they are still too big. They must be very small. Fuel efficiency is less important than creating economies of scale in manufacturing.
Because they are still too big. They must be very small. Fuel efficiency is less important than creating economies of scale in manufacturing.
I sort of suspect the answer to be no, but would like to hear arguments for yes.
You means, like most industrial plants anyway or even college campuses?
An “expensive fence” and 24/7 security guard are still ridiculously cheap compared to the price of the thing itself.
Nuclear power stations are an extreme, not typical, example
[1] unless you leave the nuclear reactor unattended in the hands of terrorists for days, they won't be able to extract any nuclear material (which would be the worse case scenario and only one comparable to terrorist stealing a vial of Ebola or Smallpox)
> Small modular reactors (SMRs), proposed as the future of nuclear energy, have purported cost and safety advantages over existing gigawatt-scale light water reactors (LWRs). However, few studies have assessed the implications of SMRs for the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. The low-, intermediate-, and high-level waste stream characterization presented here reveals that SMRs will produce more voluminous and chemically/physically reactive waste than LWRs, which will impact options for the management and disposal of this waste. Although the analysis focuses on only three of dozens of proposed SMR designs, the intrinsically higher neutron leakage associated with SMRs suggests that most designs are inferior to LWRs with respect to the generation, management, and final disposal of key radionuclides in nuclear waste.
Or build an underground parking lot, park the SMR in it, put a serious door in front, and use the space above it for something else.
Conventional construction underground, especially of something complex, is expensive. But much of the point of an SMR is that it’s built off site and then installed. Driving a container down a ramp or lowering one off a crane is straightforward.
Maybe you can avoid a thorium reactor if that size from being a valuable target. I have little idea about the social risks of somebody using the material as poison, instead of explosive, but I suspect it's incredibly overblown currently. (Wannabe thieves are probably way more effective going after something else.)
But well, don't expect very small reactors to be efficient or cheap. They maybe could be cheap heat sources, but electricity generation and distribution are full of scale efficiencies.
A reactor that small needs highly enriched fissionable material. Of course it would need guards, since it's a proliferation nightmare.
You may be vastly underestimating the amount of toxic waste produced by our energy production processes, renewable or not. (Wind, as I understand it, being the least nasty.)
> Ideally, the reactor would not need service until end-of-life (e.g. ~10 years). That way, it can be encased in concrete and buried.
This will blow up the level of radioactive waste that needs to be buried by about 1000x. Instead of a couple of kilos of long-lived isotopes after reprocessing, you'll need to bury THE WHOLE FREAKING REACTOR CORE.
Why the scare caps? The first word in SMR is “small.”
We currently wash out the industrial waste from processing and manufacturing our energy inputs and infrastructure. Also, nothing stops reprocessing those cores in the future. Next to a spent-fuel tank or tailings pool, a buried core seems preferable.
It's "small" only when compared to full-scale PWRs.
And mines and tailing pools, to say nothing of acres and acres of panels and wind farms.
Sorry, but this idea is about as stupid as they come.
And what "end of life"? Fuel will be exhausted in 3-5 years max. And I very much don't want disposable nuclear reactors. Modern PWRs are designed to last for 50 years and can probably last for 100.
TerraPower wanted to build "nuclear candle" reactors that can last for 50 years without refueling, but they had an inconvenient problem of requiring unobtanium for the reactor vessel walls (a material that can sustain 400-500 dpa, while the best steels can maybe push 150). "DPA" is "displacements per atom".
I was thinking that too. But they addressed that in the article
Why will this time be different, when nowhere in the world has any nuclear industry succeeded in lowering costs over the life of a programme?
The French, the article says, built 55 reactors, standardising the parts and processes but still could not control costs
Russia (Rosatom) did it with the exported reactors. China is on track as well, although their finances are not as transparent.
This is crazy bad faith at play here! Between the start of the French nuclear program and the end, two major international accident (TMI and Chornobyl) occurred and lead to massive changes in safety regulations. Of course it's going to have an impact on costs!
Also, in the meantime there had been a huge return on operation experience, which allowed to design plants that became cheaper and more efficient to operate (load following is much easier on the second generation than on the first for instance) but obvious lead to changes in design, but that's still part of the learning curve.
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/840500 (page 6, table VII)