A lot of the new nuclear technologies I am excited about are coming in the 30's, late 20's at best. Are there good reactor designs coming earlier?
And to define "good" it would be safer, doesn't have to be totally safe, just enough that it won't take 10 years just to make one. It's okay if waste won't change.
Posted Sep 1, 2021, 11:46 AM UTC
Apart from the Russian BREST and Chinese HTR-PM, I think the best bet I Seaborg Technologies Molten Salt Reactors.
As far as I know they are aiming to have a functioning full scale prototype by 2025 and then go commercial right after.
No, no ThorCon's ship-style molten salt reactor power plant is the best.
[Flame War Turns Nuclear]
jk really hopeful both can start to put power on the grid in SE Asia by 2025.
The Seaborg on is purpose built for a pram, for easy delivery via a sea and rivers. Just have it all made at one site and reap all the benefits or automation and standardization.
I'm not familiar ThorCon's concept, is it something along the same lines? I'll have to look it up.
[Flame War Turns Nuclear, Continues]
I'm certain that Seaborgs is both technically superior and prettier!
ThorCon's idea is using shipyards (several of their execs used to work in supertanker design) to build the entire power plant - not just a reactor - with security to withstand earthquakes, IEDs, even plane collisions. They believe by using shipyards with standard shipbuilding designs they can mass produce entire power plants, tow them to the destination, ballast them down, wire it to the grid, fuel up, power up and be putting power on the grid.
By using standard assembly line ship-yard fabrication, they believe they can not only get the price down (~penny/W capital cost and ~$0.03/kWh generating cost - cheaper than coal) but also be able to build like 100 of these 500MWe power plants per year just using existing shipyard capacity. The biggest challenge could be having/getting qualified engineers at the destination that can operate them.
If they can deliver dozens of nuclear power plants for anywhere CLOSE to the promises of ~$500million/each and generating power for $0.03/kWh and from order to delivery within a year, then that's not just a significant improvement over now, but paradigm shifting.
We could even expect the cost to reduce further from 0.03$/kwh. This is a new industry and as it matures the material, manufacturing and supply costs will also come down. Also with the amount of competition the cost reductions are likely to be sooner.
[Flame War Turns Nuclear]
Okay, I literally LOLed at that.
Anything coming in the mid-2020s is currently being built.
HTGRs (HTR-PM, China) - very soon
Lead cooled fast reactor (BREST-300, Russia). Maybe starting up in the 2020s?
Maybe some new sodium cooled fast reactors? And perhaps some prototypes for reactors involving molten salt.
[deleted]
Adding to the others:
The USNC MMR SMR (a 15 MWe HTGR) is aiming for first power in 2026 from a proposed demonstration build at Chalk River in Canada. They are in the site licensing phase at the moment.
The three I've been following for a while in the SMR/MSR space are Terrestrial Energy, ThorCon and Moltex. All have plans and are making progress to build reactors this decade.
Vogtle may start up by mid 2020's
Most MSRs will be commercial by late 20s or early 30s. By mid 20s chinas htgr, Russia's lfr and i guess nuscale's small lwr.
If we could increase our thermal efficiency beyond 33% that would be cool.
As the temp goes up we'll see some gains on the turbine side.
Apparently only 2% of run cost is the fuel cost. Is there any nuclear company working on increasing that to something like 50%?
ITER
Fusion has been 20 years in the future....
and has been since the 1950's.
It's a fool's errand.
Try this for size.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Fuel-loading-under-way-at-China-s-HTR-PM
The first commercialised pebble bed reactor will be fully operational within the next 2 years.
After that, China will begin to replace all supercritical coal plants with HTR-PM boilers.
In the time it'd take for the first commercialised MSR, China would have fully commercialised, and be halfway through rolling out their gen 4 reactor.
This is amazing, but there is the problem that my third world country might get debt trapped. I'm still really excited though.
It would probably alleviate your mind that China hasn't debt trapped anyone.
Honestly, go look it up. In every single case where a nation has be unable to service their debt to China, the debt terms have been renegotiated with better terms for the loaner.
Not that the Chinese are altruistic about it, but for the Road and Belt initiative (and their global ambitions) to be successful those taking part in it needs to appreciate it. If debt trapping happened, the project would stop after the very first case.
Good point
Besides, better debt trapped than energy poor.
https://www.habitat.org/emea/about/what-we-do/residential-energy-efficiency-households/energy-poverty
The cost of energy poverty is very high, and restricts even the basic ability to function in modern globalised society.