Is Small, Fast, & Cheap the Future of Nuclear Energy?

Corrections:
13:06 Last Energy has said it's under $100M

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[Grozloo]

It's kind of surprising an idea like this hasn't happened sooner. We have been using small reactors in subs and ships since the 50s.

[TheBluealan]

Thanks for another interesting video. If they could call them Atomic Small Modular Reactirs (ASMR) everyone might relax a bit about it.

[dmcdan]

At one time the industry did attempt to standardize. The nuclear plant I work at was one of two SNUPPS (Standardized Nuclear Unit Power Plant System) units built. There were originally 5 that were to be built, but the others were cancelled for various reasons. We share a majority of components with the other plant, which saves time and money. If something breaks, we normally can get it from them. We then send ours to the vendor to be fixed and it gets shipped to the other plant to re-stock their inventory, and vice-versa. Works great! So excited about SMR’s, recycling spent fuel and the future of Nuclear in providing carbon free energy!! 😊

[pschweitzer]

Three Mile Island was actually a bit of a success story. Yes there was a serious meltdown accident but there were no injuries, deaths, direct health effects, or adverse effects to the surrounding environment.

[EngineerLewis]

Rolls Royce is also addressing this challenge in the UK with a modularised smaller fast build nuclear plants. We have a huge standard nuclear plant being built right now in the UK (by the French Nuclear experts) and this is a 10 year build. But the small scale modular systems are much more interesting as they lower the costs and time to first electricity.

[erdossuitcase]

I worked in construction of nuclear power plants in the 1980’s. A significant part of the high costs were due to the regulatory agency sending down new specifications constantly. Even if something was already installed, they would want it ripped back out and replaced with a slightly different alloy

[ronwest]

Thorium or a small salt-based reactor was something a co-worker said would be a good idea. He was really into this subject. He talked about building these in shipping containers for ease of installation.

[PedroRafael]

I started reading and learning about SMRs in 2018, when they were being discussed in Europe as the solution to green energy. It's cumbersome to deal with nuclear waste, but in fact it's one of our best options to stop burning fossil fuel. Thank you for sharing this, as I was not aware that commercialisation had already started. +1 for the climate :)

[peterbaxter]

The need for water cooling is also an issue in a warming world and the fact that nuclear plants in countries like France, a major user of nuclear technology, have to shut down in hot weather suggests that a large number of nuclear plants, no matter their size, is a poor idea. With the increase in numbers of reactors, we will run out of fuel for a conventional U238 plants in about 17 years. The amount of cheaply accessed uranium is limited. Then comes the massive cost of decommissioning large numbers of small plants. I don’t think using small nuclear reactors is a solution unless they are molten salt or similar and the cost of those is prohibitive.

[Xeroof]

3:36 I think you need to clarify this. There are 413 'land-based' nuclear power plants. The US's naval ships are often also nuclear powered, and as far as I'm aware, there have been zero accidents or deaths because of those. And they would most certainly qualify as nuclear power plants.

[eventhisidistaken]

They produce 20 MW, and cost about $100million. What I don't know is the annual maintenance and operational costs and lifespan of the reactor. But I know on larger reactors the operational and maintenance costs are a small fraction of the up-front cost, maybe assume $2 million/year to operate and maintain, - assume a 50 year life span, and 5% interest rate (municipal bond type rates assuming we tame inflation soon), this amortizes out to an energy cost of $0.008 per KWH, call it $0.01. Add the cost of waste storage to that and the cost of the land where it sits, and the end of life costs. The storage cost must be factored in. You need to also front enough money so that the storage costs can be paid indefinitely - basically a 24, 000 year annuity. My guess is that's the largest cost in all this.

[elchupacabra]

Great video, and I agree entirely, do not let perfect be the enemy of good. There will never be a one size fits all answer to energy production. This is an excellent step in a great direction. As well, if we hypothesize that our space age tech is going to continue at the pace it has been going, the ability to store or completely rid ourselves of nuclear waste somewhere non terrestrial will make itself available long before our long term terrestrial storage ever becomes a problem. I had also always wondered about the idea of miniature nuclear powered generators for homes, neighborhoods, and even vehicles.

[nmallory]

The renewable’s energy company I work for is working on small nuclear reactors to make micro grids. The. Small cities won’t have to rely on the grid from really far away. They’ve also said these reactors have improved in technology that it could lose all cooling capability and still wouldn’t melt down.

[Speak_Out_and_Remove_All_Doubt]

Another engaging, informative and positive video, thank you.
So at $123m each, how would their levelized cost of electricity compare?

[Personnenenparle]

Its important to note that deep underground storage of waste is deep enough to have no risk of ever getting back to the surface. Its incredibly deep and even complete collapse with water infiltration would be safe as that water would not even get back to the surface.

[Blend-]

I personally think that Last is on the right path with these ASMR’s. I worked at a major nuclear powerplant back in the 1990’s and we were bogged down with procedures and QC hold points, regs and rules and much of it was, honestly, ridiculous over kill. Much of it was indeed needed but much wasn’t. Also, the cost was for the documentation. For instance, a common 1/2” bolt you can grab at a hardware store for an inflated price of 1 dollar, the nuclear bolt needs to have documentation from the truck it was offloaded from, literally all the way back to the mine where the iron ore was mined thus upping the cost to 8 or 10 bucks or more.

[riderpaul]

Recycling means fast breeder reactor. That means plutonium. 99.3% of uranium is U238, which really should be converted to plutonium. It's crazy to just bury 99.3% of the fuel. Refining U235 is also a big part of the waste problem.

The real issue is security of the sites if they are breeding. Burying the reactor under a giant concrete slab could and making it really hard to get to and could make the security easier. Limiting the amount of fuel in each plant would also help. If they can make it a closed system that does not require any maintenance for 20+ years, that would be a game changer since it could be buried:)

[sncirdm]

The thing that tends to make nuclear power plants more safe than other forms of energy plants is the massive regulation that you have to have around them to ensure that they do not fail in a way that could cause a nuclear release. The small nuclear plants have also to be certified before they can be operated this will be hopefully equally stringent. Once you have that it will be very hard to update new features in ongoing updated designs because that will require full recertification. Say in 10 years you find that your initial design has accelerated aging of certain components. I imagine that for a cost benefit analysis it will be easier to just shut that plant down than attempt to fix it. The waste problem was similarly treated as we don't have a problem we just leave it in its fuel assemblies and after a certain period of time we bury it in deep underground repositories. But in the next section they say actually it would be better to reprocess the fuel so we can make new fuel and nuclearly burn some of the highly radioactive products to reduce their lifetime of the waste. Nuclear fuel reprocessing has not gone well anywhere in the world that has done this. The UK has stopped nuclear reprocessing and they now have a multi billion pound and 30 year project to try and clean up the Sellafield reprocessing site. The security issues around Nuclear sites are also never mentioned. In the uk I believe all Nuclear reactor sites have dedicated armed police forces. The real killer for me is that the lcoe is the highest for nuclear energy, if you took the money you spent on nuclear and also invested in energy storage the price overall would be much lower than for a small amount of nuclear power. You would not have the longer term radioactive waste problem or the societal distortions in having to protect your nuclear assets from small groups out to terrorise your society. A case in point now is the threat of an attack on a nuclear power plant by the Russian's. The bottom line is technology has to work within a faliable human society just thinking technology will solve the worlds problems by "better engineering" often leads to just bigger problems down the line. I am not a Luddite better engineering does make things better but often its the mistakes along the way where you learn the most. The risk reward for Nuclear power does not make sense for me now.

[chuckehlschlaeger]

In other comments, the LCOE calculation doesn't include the cost of loss of life, nor environmental habitat. Habitat is hard to calculate but solar farms would be a lot worse than small nuclear. Given how precise loss of life calculations are for different forms of energy, why isn't it included in LCOE?

[hagalathekido]

a point about the dgd facilities atlesat as finland has proposed them, the uranium is stored in metal containers (I think it said tungsten not sure), and they put those canisters in their slots which are sealed in with sement, once the facility is full they seal the entire thing in, and at that point it doesn't even matter if the whole thing collapses as long as those metal containers don't rupture the earth itself is more than enough protection and the rays virtually don't reach the surface. The facility doesn't have to last for 24000 years, but it has to be left alone for 24000 years.