Small Modular Reactors Explained - Nuclear Power's Future?

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#nuclearenergy #renewableenergy #explained #undecidedwithmattferrell

[HBSurferHO]

I work in the Nuclear Industry with about 75% of the operators being my company's customers. SMRs are smart as hell. The have no meltdowns, No waste, no emissions, can burn current nuclear waste for fuel, can eliminate power lines through forests, and are totally scalable. We should be running towards this technology.

[alanday]

Having served on Nuclear submarines, I have first hand seen the benefits of smaller versions of the nuclear reactor.

[Ratkill]

The thing with Fukushima was, they had an external pool for the spent fuel rods. I believe all US nuclear reactors have that pool underground. Fukushima also had only a 30ft floodwalls, the tsunami was over 40ft in height. Chernobyl was built with cost savings, lack of a reactor containment building (to prevent the blast and nuclear fallout from escaping to the outside environment) and the fuel rods had graphite tips. It wasn't until after Chernobyl that the Soviet Union had put in containment buildings around the RBMK reactors.

[ateisme]

Very small issues, you forgot Finland, they started with permanent storage, and the waste is much less than fossil fuels and can be handled or even reused in future designs.

[brandonhultgren]

We should name the small nuclear reactors Pylons. Then when we exceed the capacity of a region’s pylons there should be an automatic warning of “MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS.”

[cheegum]

SMR's have existed for a very long time. They're known as nuclear submarines.

[christophecarrie]

Be careful when comparing cost/ kWh! In case of renewable, you must integrate the storage capacities, and extra costs for medium voltage network, then you can compare apples with apples.

[chrisbraid]

It’s interesting that the choice of Nuclear power plant design had more to do with who’s state got to make them than any safety considerations. The Nuclear Weapon material producer was a secondary consideration … thank you Dick Nixon ! ! !

[Sparrow]

bugs me that back in 2009, something similar in the 'Toshiba 4S' was hyped in the press. Reminds me of the old graphene joke: it can do everything except leave the lab.

[josebatista]

We can finally achieve that world from the Fallout games where everybody's lawnmower is powered by a fission reactor.

[matthouben]

The LCOE is a bad benchmark when comparing intermittent (e.g. solar, wind) to non-intermittent sources (e.g. nuclear) as the LCOE does not take into account the provisions that have to mitigate the intermittency. So additional costs (like storage or backup) that are required by intermittent power sources are not taken into account with the LCOE.

A better way would be comparing complete systems: so nuclear vs. solar and wind with storage and backup facilities.

[ericwilson]

It is insane that we have not adopted thorium cycle reactors. Even things like the pebble bed reactor would be incredible. In addition this would enable the hydrogen economy.

[jamesstephenson]

molten salt reactors can burn other things besides thorium. They can "burn" spent fuel rods and reduce the storage time to 300 years. PWR reactors only use about 5% of the uranium that's in one, molten MSR's use 95% of the fissionable material in the salt and it's safe after 300 years.

[EricMeyer]

Couple things you forgot to mention...
1. nuclear energy is the largest source of carbon-free electricity in North America in Europe.
2. Nuclear energy has a much smaller land footprint (200-300 times smaller) and mining requirement (10 times less) than wind and solar.
3. Sweden and France decarbonized their electricity grids in under 15 years with nuclear (fastest in history other than hydro).
4. No one has ever been killed from nuclear waste from commercial reactors.

[christmassnow]

I think that since existing nuclear stations are still maintained and kept operational, SMR and other solutions will always find places for implementations, which will improve the status of nuclear power compared to other sources. In addition, nuclear waste being still radioactive means that it still releases lots of energy in some form of radiation. Eventually, someone will find a practical way to generate energy even from this nuclear waste.

[thedropleteffect]

Thanks for sharing Matt! Your video on SMR's was unbiased and professional.

[geekdomo]

I was stationed on a nuclear cruiser USS South Carolina CGN37 for 3 years. We travelled all over the world and never stopped once for gas. That being said we did lose power once or twice in the middle of the ocean when the reactor scrammed. Its kinda unnerving working/sleeping 18 feet away from a reactor for 3 years. I ultimately feel its a very safe and efficient way to make power.

[jordonhope]

Here's another trade-off nobody's talking about... if a well-executed SMR strategy is employed, long-distance high voltage transmission lines will be a thing of the past. High-voltage over lines are expensive to build, dangerous and expensive to maintain, inefficient, environmentally damaging, and take up huge swaths of land that should be wilderness. SMRs put the power WHERE you need it.

[Joel-ewzm]

Plant Votgle (waynesboro GA that you mentioned) is all the reason to shift focus from single one-off mega reactor projects, to modular standardized factory reactors installed in parallel at a site. I used to live nearby in Augusta, GA, and if you even mentioned that project (Savannah River Site), people would roll their eyes

[davidpiepgrass]

I think it's worthwhile to talk a bit about how nuclear reactors work. For example, cooling features are super important. Why? Because when atoms split, they produce two new atoms which tend to contain too many neutrons, and so they are unstable and will "decay" at some point in the future, meaning that they emit radiation, which takes them closer to a stable state but also creates heat. IIRC, a reactor in long-term operation still generates 1% of its average power output at one hour after shutdown. So if you've got a 2000 MWth reactor, it needs to dissipate about 20MW of heat for a long time after shutdown, whereas a 250MWth reactor only needs to dissipate 2.5MW of heat, 8 times less. Even if the 200MWth reactor is also 8 times smaller, its surface area will be about 4 times smaller, so heat dissipation is easier.

Now, traditional water-based reactors can only be 33% efficient (using huge, expensive low-pressure turbines) while new tech like Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs, not to be confused with SMRs) runs at much higher temperatures because salt is used instead of water for primary coolant, and so they can reach 45% efficiency pretty easily using standard turbines like those used in coal plants. This reduces the amount of heat required for a given power level (250MWth is only 83 MW electric if it's water-cooled, but a basic MSR at 83MW electric is 183MWth). This makes heat dissipation easier by generating less heat in the first place. Another benefit is that the temperature difference with the outside environment is increased: if it's 20°C outside, then a molten salt at 620°C can dissipate heat about twice as fast as pressurized water at 320°C. However, to be fair, this is counterbalanced by the fact that water can also dissipate heat by boiling, while molten salt will not realistically ever boil (its boiling point is around 1500°C).

Heat dissipation is important because it prevents meltdowns. In the case of MSRs, the fuel is already melted; in that case heat dissipation is necessary so that the steel reactor chamber doesn't melt (at about 1200°C). Since MSR power generation is inherently more efficient, MSRs can waste a lot more heat on inexpensive-but-reliable safety systems. For example they can simply allow passive airflow to cool down the reactor at all times. In this way, waste is used as a safety feature: you can verify that your air ducts are working properly by keeping them open at all times, so their effectiveness can be measured at all times. There's no need to even make it *possible* to close them. MSRs are also nice because they run at low pressure, and because fission automatically stops at high temperature, but that's another story.