Mobile Nuclear Reactors Will Change Everything

🚚 Microreactors are changing the way we think about nuclear energy and what it can do. These tiny power plants will be in the remote wilderness, saving lives after disasters, and supporting military zones.

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[stevenjbernard]

Microreactors could be used not only for electricity but also as a source of hot water for district heating, reducing the cost even further.

[WvlfDarkfire]

So you're aware, westinghouse has a much smaller reactor, but it's classified still. This one was only recently declassified and applied to commercial applications. Government only uses them for subs and some aircraft.

[greezyhammer]

Heat pipes with no moving parts VS exposing fast-spinning turbine blades to a high neutron flux.
Hard choice.

[nibiruresearch]

The Norway ship owner Ulstein is building a new ice breaker and rescue ship with a molten salt reactor as energy source. It will never need to be refuelled during its life time. Small modular reactors are the future.

[CodeRedCollections]

I will have the pleasure of building one hopefully soon on the Westinghouse team as a welder!

[nixielee]

It's insane that we gave up on this tech just because of a few accidents. It's efficient, clean and powerful without a meaningful downside. Clearly this is how humanity evolve and take the next step.

[bjarnenilsson]

Not to mention data centers (esp the mega scale ones used by the larger public cloud providers). These have a major common issue when a new site is to be picked: The local power grid can't supply enough power due to insufficient transmission capacity. But if a few micro reactors can be brought in and be operational in a month instead of a decade, and run continuedly for +5 years that problem suddenly becomes a lot less complicated. Ofc now you get the NIMBY rowd that will rase loud objections to a "mini chernobyl", never mind that these reactors are many decades newer with a completely different design, even vaguely close to them, but these problems can probably be solved by throwing enugh money (ie legal staff) at them.

[Mark_Ocain]

Nuclear reactors, even small ones, have a lot of cost involved. Not just maintenance, security and safety costs but eventual decommissioning costs at EOL can run into huge spends. The idea sounds great but the power doesn't come cheap.

[FrankJDurante]

Just listened to this one and the SMR's .... I see both of these being appropriate for remote and distributed generation creating micro grids and pairing these with green (wind/solar), we can truly get to distributed generation close to loads

[TheSwissGabber]

After a certain shrinkage the required security detail on site is going to cost more then reactor :D.

[Zuconja]

03:32 military conflict zone is definitely not a good place for any kind of nuclear reactor.
03:40 there's already a proven solution for that, floating nuclear power plant, just like Akademik Lomonosov.

[arxaaron]

Exciting developments, but I'll be holding hope for a 30year LFTR micro design. :-)

[MuantanamoMobile]

ROSATOM's floating nuclear power plants like the Akademik Lomonosov is another interesting portable alternative.

Since the reactors employed are smaller in size and power than most commercial land-based reactors, mostly derived from nuclear ship and submarine power plants, the power output is generally a fraction of a conventional nuclear power plant, usually around 100MWe, although some are planned to have as much as 800MWe.

They are also working on the Shelf-M reactor, a low-power NPP (ASMM) designed for local electricity supply to facilities in remote areas with an undeveloped power grid. The planned installed capacity is up to 10MWe. The estimated service life of the station is 60 years with refuelling every eight years.

[arcanealchemist]

my concern is how easily these could become orphan sources. the soviet union used RTGs extensively, for somewhat similar reasons, and when they collapsed those reactors became one of the largest contributors to orphan nuclear material in history. to my knowledge, they are still out there too, not all have been located.

using nuclear energy in military activities is also a concern when you consider that would make nuclear material a target for other militaries. if a military is using one nuclear reactor to power a large encampment, that's a clear target for bombings or sabotage. and a successful strike would essentially become a dirty bomb. obviously not good.

I am in general pro nuclear energy. but I really don't know that going to microreactor scale is reasonable considering the risks. at scales beneath what a small modular reactor can do, I think using renewables is probably viable.

[Human_]

This will be the future of energy (especially for military uses). Ai (especially for maintenance and regulation) Will only further this technology.

Space technology and space exploration will benefit greatly as well.

[davidjernigan]

Seems like this should not be hard with all the work the army and air force did on small reactors during the 60s and 70s

[musikSkool]

Wait, it "Will" change everything? Awesome, when is the release date?

[MichaelMartin-rgif]

Yeah, OK. I like the very good idea of gravity fed water to the cooling system and the meltdown pit below the reactor. Boston Dynamics models looked good.

[MrPaparr]

Nuclear electricity is the most expensive form of energy and this Micro-reactors would be priced well over 8 million Dollars easily and if You add the maintenance costs for 30 years it will reach at least 12 million Dollars in total, and if you use this 24/7 for 30 years you can use it for 262800 hours and once you divide 8, 000, 000 to 262, 800 = each KW/H is around 30.00USD which is extremely high

[PaintmanJohn]

ON A POSITIVE NOTE - Here is the energy source to generate HYDROGEN. JUST BOIL WATER ...
On a NEGATIVE NOTE - Deploying all these nuclear reactors is a SECURITY nightmare.
HOW do you keep them SECURE from people wanting to steal your fuels?
OR WORSE - wanting to detonate and create a nuclear BROKEN ARROW ?