First SMR in North America to Be Operational in 5 Years | Hacker News Reader

First SMR in North America to Be Operational in 5 Years

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13 pointsPaulHoule11 comments

It's a 300 MW reactor for CAD $7.7 billion. For context, we used to build GW scale reactors for 3/4th that amount (inflation adjusted). We can build GW scale solar for a third of that amount already.

The big thing with SMR reactors is that they are self contained, much safer, and much quicker and easier to build. I can see these being used to power entire datacenters in the future.

The first of anything will always be expensive. The real test is whether we get good learning curves for SMRs, that's (to me) their main advantage.

My point was comparing conventional nuclear reactors to SMRs. We used to build them for cheaper till we decided to fumble around (and in Germany and Austria's case, shut them down).

Ahh I see. Yeah, we really screwed the pooch on standard nuclear. We knowingly forced ourselves off the learning curve, and now people point at that as evidence it doesn't exist for nuclear.

There are multiple causes of that fumbling around, and many/most irrational. But in the end Chernobyl and Fukushima really did happen. Now, even with that, there should be a learning curve for the additional technology due to the increased safety. We just never had a chance to climb that curve. And by "we", I meant the West. China appears to be making huge strides.

Yes, but it turns out that when you stop building stuff (and intentionally hamstring other kinds of building for other reasons) you have to spend a bunch more treasure to figure out how to do it again.

We could have always just not stopped building them- done a reactor every 5 years just to keep that institutional knowledge alive- but that's too long-term for any modern democracy.

>We can build GW scale solar for a third of that amount already.

No. China can (by dodging all the regulatory hurdles we've so wisely imposed, of course), but we can't.

So we have 2 options- we can either pay 0.5x the money to China, gain zero institutional know-how, and in 20 years when the prices have quintupled need to re-learn how to build reactors anyway... or we can spend 1x now to do it up front, then never need to worry about that ever again, and as a bonus don't need to hedge our bets on future technology for storage.

Going with solar is irresponsible, and its TCO higher, when you're thinking beyond the short-term.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those anti-nuclear types. I'm just saying that the West has simply forgotten how to build nuclear powerplants without significant cost. It's so bad that when Abu Dhabi were choosing plant builders for their Barakah power plant, they chose KEPCO over every Western company. In fact, KEPCO won on all counts including timeline and cost efficiency. Their nearest competition was Chinese and Japanese, not even a single Western operator was close. Barakah is 5600 MW for 32 billion.

The Czech Republic has also recently selected KEPCO for building their new nuclear plant, 18 billion for 2000 MW.

> its TCO higher

https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Power-Play-The-Economics-...

In 2023, the estimated LCOE for advanced nuclear power was $110/MWh and is expected to stay similar until 2050.

For solar PV, the estimated LCOE was $55/MWh in 2023 and is projected to drop to $25/MWh by 2050.

Solar electricity requires a huge loss of land that could be used for growing vegetation instead. Also you can't store the power produced by solar.

World Nuclear News has a breakdown of the full project budget:

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/what-is-the-budg...

If it delivers on time and within budget, the final generated cost per kilowatt hour will a bit lower than wind/solar + battery storage.

OPG will be recouping the cost of the unit(s) from customers' bills over the 60-year generating life of the units and says the projected cost of about 14.9 cents per kWh would be comparable with alternative renewable energy sources. OPG points to Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator evaluating the new nuclear project against viable non-emitting alternatives which found that replacing the project with wind, solar, and battery storage would require 5,600 to 8,900 MW of capacity at a cost of 13.5–18.4 cents per kWh compared with the 14.9 cents.

The best Canadian solar and wind resources aren't as good the best available in the continental United States, so that probably helps the project to compete with renewable options. The big question is if this nuclear project will deliver on time and within budget when so many have been late and over budget.

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