Seems familiar...
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| Science & Technology |
| NuScale's small nuclear reactor is first to get US safety approval |
| 2020-09-03 |
| h/t Instapundit [Ars Technica] - One hope buoying nuclear energy advocates has been the promise of "small modular reactor" designs. By dividing a nuclear facility into an array of smaller reactors, they can largely be manufactured in a factory and then dropped into place, saving us from having to build a complex, possibly one-of-a-kind behemoth on site. That could be a big deal for nuclear’s persistent financial problems, while also enabling some design features that further improve safety. On Friday, the first small modular reactor received a design certification from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, meaning that it meets safety requirements and could be chosen by future projects seeking licensing and approval. The design comes from NuScale, a company birthed from research at Oregon State University that has received some substantial Department of Energy funding. It’s a 76-foot-tall, 15-foot-wide steel cylinder (23 meters by 5 meters) capable of producing 50 megawatts of electricity. (The company also has a 60-megawatt iteration teed up.) They envision a plant employing up to 12 of these reactors in a large pool like those used in current nuclear plants. The basic design is conventional, using uranium fuel rods to heat water in an internal, pressurized loop. That water hands off its high temperature to an external steam loop through a heat exchange coil. Inside the plant, the resulting steam would run to a generating turbine, cool off, and circulate back to the reactors. The design also uses a passive cooling system, so no pumps or moving parts are required to keep the reactor operating safely. The pressurized internal loop is arranged so that it allows hot water to rise through the heat exchange coils and sink back down toward the fuel rods after it cools. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #12 It’s a 76-foot-tall, 15-foot-wide steel cylinder SpaceX has been "hopping" those down in Boca Chica. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2020-09-03 22:44 |
| #11 Nice double entendre! |
| Posted by: Clem 2020-09-03 18:09 |
| #10 Thats pretty corny Skid. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2020-09-03 17:42 |
| #9 It’s a 76-foot-tall, 15-foot-wide steel cylinder Seems familiar... |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2020-09-03 15:47 |
| #8 The first time I saw a "death by a Thousand Legal Cuts" was a proposed reactor in eastern Oklahoma that was cancelled in 1982 after over nine years of studies, studies and more studies. (Oklahomans prevent completion of Black Fox Nuclear Plant, 1973-1982) |
| Posted by: magpie 2020-09-03 14:36 |
| #7 The industry has it self to blame for a lot of it. Always pushed bigger is better and every design custom leading to numerous over runs in budgets. That hasn't worked for decades now. Looks like someone is taking that to heart. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2020-09-03 13:50 |
| #6 Big takeaway for all of these new designs is that they are "Fail-safe", they require active measures to maintain a reaction environment, the moment that anything fails the reactor shuts down. instead of running away like Fukushima or Chernobyl. What about the truly small (on a reactor scale) molten salt reactors? Until Obama killed the nukes with "renewable" garbage and cronyism, thos appeared to have a lot of promise for safe local power generation, cutting down on grid vulnerability and the need for massive (and wasteful) long transmission lines. |
| Posted by: Theager Borgia1057 2020-09-03 12:43 |
| #5 SMR Inventec has a similar pressurized water reactor (PWR), bigger than the NuScale unit, that puts out 160-MW. It's not a 'miniature', it's about the height of a small municipal water tower and takes up around 4-1/2 acres. |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2020-09-03 11:35 |
| #4 Gen4 Energy out of Denver would have had a nice small 25mW unit too, had the former administration (whose name must NEVER be denigrated) not cut them off and given the funding to Bill Gates and X-energy. Imagine that..... |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2020-09-03 11:29 |
| #3 The pressurized internal loop is arranged so that it allows hot water to FIFY Couldn't let that obvious error go! |
| Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839 2020-09-03 11:19 |
| #2 ^Compared to what we've today |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2020-09-03 11:15 |
| #1 not that small weighs 700 tons and even if it is segmented into three pieces, that's three big loads |
| Posted by: lord garth 2020-09-03 11:13 |