Future Energy Pathways

[SolarisKenzo]

An interesting video about the ITER fusion reactor, the biggest of its kind in the world, currently being built under supervision of EURATOM and with the participation of the EU, China, Usa, Russia, India, Japan and Korea.
The program, overbudget and behind schedule, is extremely important and is an extraordinary piece of research by itself. Unfortunately and despite all the green-nonsense, ITER will not allow fusion to replace fission. Nuclear power is and will be for many decades (at least) the best way to produce electricity.
The director of ITER also pointed out that "ITER is not a power plant and never will be, it will be a research reactor, an experiment. A research project nothing more...".

 

[John Fedup]

Interesting idea from Yamaha, hydrogen fuelled outboard motor. Useful for Australia given its huge solar and wind production of electricity that can be used for producing hydrogen. A reasonable sized vessel should be able to accommodate a large enough storage tank.

Yamaha to Showcase Hydrogen Fuel System at Hutchwilco New Zealand Boat Show | BoatTEST

 

[SolarisKenzo]

Interesting project, i follow it also because european version of BWRX-300 is one of the designs selected by the EU, but I do have some doubts on SMRs themselves.
I understand that small reactors will be easier to build than large reactors... but they are also much smaller.
Are we sure that 5 or 6 SMRs are going to be cheaper, easier and less troublesome to build than a large Gen 3+ reactor?

EPRs (European Pressurized Reactors) are 1720MWe, these SMRs are 200MWe to 300MWe... 7-8 or them to equal the output of just one reactor...
I assume that SMRs will not substitute already existing power plants but instead offer an alternative to coal/oil/gas plants used in industrial districs or small towns... right?

OPG gets go-ahead to build first SMR in Canada

The Province of Ontario has approved Ontario Power Generation to start construction of the first of four small modular reactors planned at the Darlington New Nuclear Project site. ;

www.world-nuclear-news.org

 

[John Fedup]

Interesting project, i follow it also because european version of BWRX-300 is one of the designs selected by the EU, but I do have some doubts on SMRs themselves.
I understand that small reactors will be easier to build than large reactors... but they are also much smaller.
Are we sure that 5 or 6 SMRs are going to be cheaper, easier and less troublesome to build than a large Gen 3+ reactor?

EPRs (European Pressurized Reactors) are 1720MWe, these SMRs are 200MWe to 300MWe... 7-8 or them to equal the output of just one reactor...
I assume that SMRs will not substitute already existing power plants but instead offer an alternative to coal/oil/gas plants used in industrial districs or small towns... right?

OPG gets go-ahead to build first SMR in Canada

The Province of Ontario has approved Ontario Power Generation to start construction of the first of four small modular reactors planned at the Darlington New Nuclear Project site. ;

www.world-nuclear-news.org

Certainly cost will be important wrt big reactor versus SMR. Much of fabrication for SMRs is done in a factory and assembly is done on site, this is where the cost advantage is hopefully comes from along with using an already approved nuclear site. OPG will likely build new generation CANDUs as well. From a Canadian prospective, an SMR is attractive for remote locations as long transmission lines are extremely expensive to build and service in the North.

 

[SolarisKenzo]

Certainly cost will be important wrt big reactor versus SMR. Much of fabrication for SMRs is done in a factory and assembly is done on site, this is where the cost advantage is hopefully comes from along with using an already approved nuclear site. OPG will likely build new generation CANDUs as well. From a Canadian prospective, an SMR is attractive for remote locations as long transmission lines are extremely expensive to build and service in the North.

Understandable, but let me point out a "problem" I've recently thought about while attending an EU-SMR-Alliance conference.

Of course various designs and in particular those selected by the EU Commission were presented, all of them very interesting.
Nuclear industry in Europe has its own lobby, called Nucleareurope (very powerful one, representing almost 1.1 million direct and indirect jobs, having Europe more than 110 large reactors and almost 100 research reactors.) and this lobby was talking about advantages of SMRs but also disadvantages.

Factory-building is certainly good, large numbers will also bring down the price ( EU expects to deploy 100 to 250 SMRs and AMRs), but they also pointed out a problem.

Will SMRs have the same safety requirements than large reactors?
Will they need safe-zones, no entry areas, a minimum distance from civilian buildings?
Because this could be a huge problem: maybe not in Canada, but in Europe or the US it could be, especially in some areas.
This would limit their installation to current nuclear plants, next to large reactors.
If you need 2 km of safe-distance between a plant and residential areas... This could limit SMRs effectiveness by a lot.

 

[John Fedup]

Understandable, but let me point out a "problem" I've recently thought about while attending an EU-SMR-Alliance conference.

Of course various designs and in particular those selected by the EU Commission were presented, all of them very interesting.
Nuclear industry in Europe has its own lobby, called Nucleareurope (very powerful one, representing almost 1.1 million direct and indirect jobs, having Europe more than 110 large reactors and almost 100 research reactors.) and this lobby was talking about advantages of SMRs but also disadvantages.

Factory-building is certainly good, large numbers will also bring down the price ( EU expects to deploy 100 to 250 SMRs and AMRs), but they also pointed out a problem.

Will SMRs have the same safety requirements than large reactors?
Will they need safe-zones, no entry areas, a minimum distance from civilian buildings?
Because this could be a huge problem: maybe not in Canada, but in Europe or the US it could be, especially in some areas.
This would limit their installation to current nuclear plants, next to large reactors.
If you need 2 km of safe-distance between a plant and residential areas... This could limit SMRs effectiveness by a lot.

Site regulations for Europe and other densely populated areas could be an issue for sure. The Darlington and “The Bruce” CANDU sites could easily accommodate several SMRs and are remote, especially the latter. Potential northern locations are even more so. In Canada’s case our nuclear industry is working with the SMR vendor and large reactor projects will continue…..unless SMRs are substantially less costly and as reliable as the CANDUs.

 

[kato]

I assume that SMRs will not substitute already existing power plants but instead offer an alternative to coal/oil/gas plants used in industrial districs or small towns... right?

SMRs (about twice the size of what's intended today) were originally proposed in Germany in the late 60s solely because at the time their cost analysis included directly utilizing heat and steam production. This would have allowed to include a massive financial tradeoff in the cost calculation since environmental laws at the time required replacement of really old (as in pre-war, often pre-WW1) dirty coal plants that were being used for that purpose anyway.

Those projects then suffered in the planning stage from directly competing with electricity producers that were pushing their own full-size powerplants - both sides actively tried to undermine the other legally, with lobbying and in some cases shenanigans with suppliers. In the middle of the 70s rapidly escalating costs for construction then turned out several times above original estimates, making the original cost calculations completely void. In most cases new gas or coal power plants were then built on the planned sites instead during the 80s. A lot of the planned sites were also utilized for other power plants, e.g. for thermal waste processing.

Will they need safe-zones, no entry areas, a minimum distance from civilian buildings?

Example: In Germany since 1976 nuclear plants can't be built within less than 425m of a shore of the Rhine river. This is in order to limit contamination in case of a meltdown (the minimum distance is some sort of calculation on how far an initial explosion could carry larger chunks of active material).

 

[SolarisKenzo]

Site regulations for Europe and other densely populated areas could be an issue for sure. The Darlington and “The Bruce” CANDU sites could easily accommodate several SMRs and are remote, especially the latter. Potential northern locations are even more so. In Canada’s case our nuclear industry is working with the SMR vendor and large reactor projects will continue…..unless SMRs are substantially less costly and as reliable as the CANDUs.

I've always be very interested in CANDUs reactors, heavy water and natural uranium is a really interesting concept.
We have only a plant here in Europe with CANDUs, Cernavoda, should also be expanded now with 2 more reactors if I remember correctly.
I guess they do suffer being considerably smaller than european designed PWRs (the EPR being twice the most powerful CANDU reactor is of course out of scale, but even older models are considerably larger than the canadian ones).
Anyway, let's see how the BWRX-300 does, I do hope it works!
ESBWR always interested me, this should be basically a smaller version...