Energy Transition Crisis - Episode 7: Small Modular Nuclear Reactors

Chapters:

00:00 Episode 7: Small Modular Nuclear Reactors
03:19 The Case for Assembly Line Manufacturing
06:57 Not just Small & Modular. Don’t forget Advanced!
11:06 SMRs and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation
13:36 Western SMRs: A nascent industry
15:41 SMR Case Studies
20:06 Our Future
22:29 Energy-as-a-Service is likely to be a trend

As we’ve seen in the last two episodes, there’s a massive disconnect between nuclear energy perception and nuclear energy reality. The public’s perception is that nuclear power is still unsafe, as evidenced by the Fukushima accident. Critics of nuclear power cite core meltdowns, hydrogen explosions, weapons proliferation risks, and nuclear waste disposal as their biggest objections.
In reality, nuclear power is already the safest form of baseload power generation in existence. The coal mining industry has killed 820 times more people than the nuclear power industry.
And all the problems of core meltdowns, hydrogen explosions and nuclear waste disposal were solved decades ago. But those solutions were never adopted and commercialized, thanks to government bureaucracy standing in the way of progress.

So the primary problems the public perceives about nuclear power have already been solved. But that’s not to say nuclear energy is without very real problems! The much less often mentioned problem of cost and schedule overruns on nuclear powerplant construction projects is very real, and it would be foolish to assume we can build 50x more new large-scale nuclear plants between now and 2050 than have ever been built before, and get that done anywhere close to on-time and on-budget. That’s just not realistic.
The solution is to manufacture nuclear reactors on assembly lines, in factories, with state-of-the-art quality control. This formative trend is known as Small Modular Reactors, or SMRs.
And there’s even a ray of hope on the government bureaucracy front: In January 2023, U.S. regulators approved the first SMR design for operation in the United States, in a move that signaled U.S. regulators might finally be coming around and opening their minds to advanced nuclear technology adoption.

A modern automobile would cost at least a million dollars if you had one custom designed and built to your personalized specifications. Custom-building anything using one-at-a-time construction techniques is very expensive. But thanks to the efficiencies of scale inherent to assembly-line manufacturing, our automotive industry produces millions of vehicles at affordable prices.

We need to do the same thing for the nuclear reactor that Henry Ford did for the automobile. Or perhaps a better analogy would be to say that we need to adapt the world-class leadership that both North America and Europe have shown in aircraft manufacturing, and apply that talent to mass-producing civilian nuclear power reactors in factories, just as we mass-produce airliners in factories today, under the tightest safety standards.

The nuclear power industry’s track record for getting large bespoke construction projects done on time and on budget couldn’t be more abysmal. The 2018 bankruptcy of Westinghouse in the wake of cost and schedule overruns at the Vogtle project in Georgia proves this. So, in order for Nuclear to solve the coming energy crisis, we need to take a completely different approach. SMRs eliminate the need for bespoke on-site construction, and could offer the nuclear power industry the same gift of economy of scale that the automobile industry received from Henry Ford’s invention of the assembly line.

Another advantage of SMRs is that they can be designed so that the SMR itself contains all the nuclear waste, meaning that when the building the SMR occupies is demolished someday, the rubble won’t need to be treated as low-level nuclear waste. This difference alone will dramatically reduce the cost of nuclear plant decommissioning, and therefore, reduce the cost of nuclear-generated electricity. It also has the side benefit of centralizing nuclear reactor recycling at the reactor manufacturer’s facilities.

[frederickkennedy]

Government bureaucracy is the single most threatening problem of our current and future situation. Without solving this issue we will never be able to make real progress, but how do you fix such a daunting problem? Watching this series made me think about how so much advancement in technology happened during a small period of time and how there hasn't been many big technological advancements since the 40's and 50's...

[adrianmiller]

Excellent docuseries Erik! Will share amoungst my peers.

[fver]

This is an amazing and exceptional series by an equally exceptional thinker on the topic! Thanks Eric and team.

[Slavey]

Thank you very much creating these videos. I cannot agree more with everything I've seen on your channel so far.

[almaidurr]

Amazing series ! The nuclear part was explained so good! I learned a lot of interesting details about this industry. Good luck with the project !

[tristan]

Sorenson is right, we need to get on LFTR or similar now. I've also seen videos on accelerator driven reactors, which use a proton beam to drive neutron spallation in a target and provide neutrons to drive a subcritical reactor. The claim is that it could burn waste or anything else with passive safety because if the accelerator stops the reaction does too. Advances in accelerator technology are needed, I think they talked about a 100MW beam.

[jamespayne]

It’s not impossible to analyze and resolve apparent problems. You can deal with what you know about and have some control over. However you are basically out in the cold when dealing with special interest groups like organized criminal political groups, greedy corporations and corrupt union organizations. Of course you only encounter the worst of these special interest after you’ve done the due diligence and created a viable system. They’re not interested in daydreams. They’re interested in income streams. Develop a viable system and the criminal minds will take notice. Good presentation by the way.

[TotalIgnition]

Interesting technologies, looks promising

[h.e.hazelhorst]

Maybe the whole concept of Thorium-based SMRs should be re-packaged and marketed as a way to process the highly-reactive nuclear waste. With solving the energy crisis as a side effect!

[ricpow]

Great summary of the advantages of SMRs and the state-of-the-art. I am surprised there was no mention of the GE-Hitachi BWRX-300 which is currently being constructed in Darlington Ontario by the Ontario Power Generation company and for which 3 additional orders have been placed.
The comments about WWIII, US hegemony, and Chinese domination are perhaps necessary to spur the American society and US government into action, but are questionable in a fact-based documentary.

[toth]

Fantastic video on this early but monumental industry. As beneficial and ground baking as this will be for the species, the monetization of this will be a catalyst for new generations wealth

[paulbernstein]

As you say, this information must go viral as people need to learn the truth about nuclear

[MyKharli]

Desperate nuclear industry failing fast as other energy costs crash while nuclear costs skyrocket .

[MariaSantos-uubk]

'My 6-Point Plan for Energy Transition, ' serves as a beacon of hope and guidance in navigating the complex landscape of transitioning to clean energy. Erik Townsend lays out a comprehensive 6-point plan to address the imminent energy crisis and eliminate fossil fuel dependence by 2050. The episode encourages us to unite beyond political divisions, emphasizing the urgency of understanding the importance of energy in our lives. It's a call to action, urging us to come together, challenge political narratives, and actively participate in shaping a sustainable future.

[oppressorable]

Most current smr design are actually not all that small or modular. Neutron economy is a problem and site prep are not that much less than large reactor.

After the US spent so much effort and capital to iron out the design of the ap1000, i don't see why you wouldn't pump them out by the dozens.

[alexmackenzie]

Great work, cant belive there are so few views

[Parture]

Assembly lines work for millions or thousands of units, not for a couple dozen per year.

[jimgraham]

One has to ask why the nuclear regulatory and compliance process is so slow and expensive. Its not just about public safety, it is also about mollifying interests that stand to lose commercially, mainly coal.

Aviation has thrown off government regulation essentially being self regulating. Something that hasnt changed even after the 737 max fiasco.

There needs to he a happy medium, safe, inexpensive government oversight designed to facilitate more tgan obstruct with companies trusted to look after and be legally accountable for the details. Jail time for wilful negligence would be a good incentiviser.

[Whoamiohmy]

Okay, so if I understand you correctly, you believe that nuclear power is our best chance to get out of the energy transition crisis in the near future, and deep supercritical geothermal is the second best, however, that is technologically still far away, which leaves us with nuclear being the best contestant at this point in time.

Also, if I understand you correctly, you have three points for the future best-case scenario of the course of nuclear

1. Fast breeders burning away depleted uranium (U-238)
2. These so-called burner reactors burning away actinides
(The two of which reducing the nuclear waste problem from uranium + actinides + daughter elements to just daughter elements, thereby reducing the nuclear waste problem from a couple of millions or even billion years problem to a couple of hundred years problem)
3. Introducing the thorium fuel cycle with small modular reactor SMRs based on the Th232 - U233 cycle. Since Thorium has a much more favourable nuclear cross section than U-238, therefore building breeder reactors would be possible at a few ten to few hundred megawatt scale instead of the few gigawatt scale in case of U238 fast breeders. And since U233 is much more difficult to bring into a prompt supercritical reaction, and has a much shorter half-life than Pu239, therefore breeding vast amounts of U233 is a much smaller risk for nuclear proliferation. So the designs are smaller, therefore much safer, and proliferation risk for nuclear weapons is much smaller with the Th233-U233 fuel cycle than with the U238-Pu239 cycle.

So my main points of questions/possible problems are

1. If you are worried about China or the BRICS taking over NATO in the nuclear field, look no further than fast breeders. Specifically, the Russians have already figured this out and have completed testing their new BN1200 fast breeder molten salt reactor in September 2022.

And I quote the wiki article here:

"The design has a breeding ratio of 1.2 to 1.3–1.35 for mixed uranium-plutonium oxide fuel and 1.45 for nitride fuel. Boron carbide would be used for in-reactor shielding. Thermal power should be nominal 2900 MW with an electric output of 1220 MW. Primary coolant temperature at the intermediate heat exchanger is 550 °C and at the steam generator 527 °C. Gross efficiency is expected to be 42%, net 39%. It is intended to be a Generation IV design and produce electricity at RUR 0.65/kWh (US 2.23 cents/kWh)."

Not only has Russia been continously researching and developing fast breeders since the late 1960s, but their previous 2 designs, the BN600 and the BN800 have been on the Russian grid for decades, the BN800 being the first one that achieved a breeding ratio of > 1.0 and being safe during operations. The BN1200 takes this one generation further, with better breeding ratio, better neutron economy, safer and cheaper operations and basically being the first Gen IV reactor that is currently registered for commercial use. Continuous operations on the Russian electric grid were first planned for 2020, which has been delayed, the current goal is 2025. So if you are worried about the BRICS taking over, well, when it comes to burning away depleted uranium, they are decades ahead of us unfortunately.

2. Could you be (assuming there are closely guarded trade secrets here) a little bit more specific about how these burners work? The technologies that come to mind in this field are spallation reactors, proof-of-concepts of which have been completed by CERN in the early 2000s. I would presume this would be the basis of these burners.


The only other thing that possibly comes to mind would be some laser-based technologies, for instance the relatively new superlaser project in Szeged, Hungary has one of its goals set on breaking down actinides with ultra-high output (Petawatt) laser pulses. They have just announced a major breakthrough in this last year. However, this latter one is still in its early experimental phases at the moment.


3. If the first 2 points do really work, the third one becomes relatively unnecessary in the near future. One kg of U238 contains about 84 million Megajoules of energy. Humanity has mined about 2.4 million tons of uranium since the birth of the nuclear industry in the 1940s. 2020 uranium consumption was 59, 200 tons. As far as I know, globally, we are only practically burning the 0.7% of uranium in the form of naturally occurring U235, while the 99, 3% U238 is basically just waste at this point. If we were able to recycle all used fuel pellets and burn all uranium (which is exactly what the Russian BN1200 is capable of doing by breeding Pu239) then the 2.4 million tons of uranium mined since 1940 holds roughly 2.4x10^9x84x10^12=2x10^23 Joules or 56 million Twh. Current global primary energy supply is about 173 thousand Twh. Even if I calculate with the 237, 000 tons of U238 you mention in the videos, I come to roughly 5.6 million Twh which is 33 years of global primary energy supply, which makes the thorium cycle redundant for the next few decades. Not that developing and maintaining these SMRs would not make sense now, since if we invest this now, it will be with decades worth of experience to roll out and mass-produce them when depleted uranium is all used up and the nuclear waste is reduced to a few hundred years problem, hopefully in the next 40-50 years. And I do agree that burning away all the nuclear waste should be our number one and absolute priority, especially to improve the PR of nuclear power. But massive mass-production and rollout of Th232 fuel cycle SMRs seems to be contraproductive if our goal is really to burn away as much as possible from the waste generated by the U238/U235 fuel cycle.

[davestagner]

This is really the best, most honest pro-nuclear coverage I’ve seen on YouTube. I know I sound like a nuclear opponent in my comments, but I’m not. If we can build enough SMRs, fast enough and cheap enough, to preserve the traditional base load model, I’m all for it. But I think it’s too late for nuclear now, no matter how well executed. By the time anyone can put any appreciable number of SMRs in the field, the field will already be taken by solar. Costs will continue to plummet as economies of scale do their thing and stupid regulatory hurdles and grid limitations fall to the onslaught. Dirt-cheap (because they’re made of dirt!) storage technologies will time-shift all that cheap solar power - flow batteries, iron-air batteries, thermal storage, compressed CO2, green hydrogen/ammonia, synthetic hydrocarbon fuels, and more. And again, economies of scale and brutal competition will drive costs downward, until solar+storage is the cheapest - and cleanest - and fastest - and easiest game in town. The Iron Hand of the free market will see to solar dominance as it becomes cheaper by far than anything else. If the grid is already more than 50% solar by the time the first SMRs can come online (and I think it will be), SMRs won’t be competing with filthy, increasingly expensive coal. They’ll be competing with clean, cheap solar. The only winning argument then will be cost, and it has to be a HUGE win.