I do not know which version of an SMR is best. We need a winning design that can be modular and be built in a factory . This should be our new version of WWII liberty ships. Find the right design and use the defense authority to mandate that 10 a year are put into service until all coal plants are gone!

I have not come across the kairopower design before, as I have not looked into SMRs much for some years, with the exception of the Chinese PBR, which is kinda medium sized and has been built, and Nuscale, which also seems fairly near deployment.

The Nuscale design seems 'good enough' to me, and if folk panic about waste, I would like to offer my back garden, where I would be quite happy to see it buried.

Sensible criticism has centered around construction costs, but the modular design and passive safety offers a good opportunity to take costs out IMO, although of course that depends on nutters not managing to get their hand on enough levers to make progress impossible, as the NRC has done for decades.

It turned out that the guy who was running it has now come out as totally opposed to nuclear anyway, something he did not have the honesty to admit whilst he was directing its regulation,

Global warming would like to thank you, Jaczko, for all you have done to enable it.

Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of casualties per year from enabling coal plants as the normal source of power, instead of moving to nuclear.

Hi EP.

I'd just like to add that the levelised costs purporting to show SNRs as still uneconomic relative to renewables have a major omission in my view.

So long as it is fairly close to where it is needed, then the correct metric is often electrical plus thermal output and efficiencies.

For my own country, the UK, whose figures I am naturally most familiar with this means that SNRs can be sited close in to major users of power, both industrial and residential, with no need to transmit much of it long distance, with district heating schemes being the way to go.

The realistic alternative for the UK is floating wind turbines, as we have magnificent wind resources and lousy solar.

But that means transporting the power long distances, probably as hydrogen, with consequent energy losses, although at point of use fuel cells can use the hydrogen for heat for hot water as well as power.

On a like for like basis though, and taking optimistic views of the cost of floating wind turbines, I think that once thermal as well as electrical power is taken into account, local nuclear wins by quite a margin.

The levelized cost figures we are typically offered do not account for that.

Fortunately in the UK at least we intend to deploy Nuscale's excellent design.

I am generally imagined here to be a fan of hydrogen, and that is the case, but only where it makes sense.

It seems unlikely though that building vast arrays of floating wind turbines hundreds of miles out to sea and transporting that energy to where it is needed as hydrogen is going to beat small nuclear right where it is needed, providing safety is adequate.

And it is.

EP:

Summer is not so much of an issue, as wind is typically low then, and so the system does not rely too much on it, and the massive roll outs of solar in Europe should cover it.

We did have a similar two week event in Europe in winter, a couple of years back, which had a major impact, and turbines in the UK were actually energy negative, as power had to be fed to them to stop them icing up!

That is when wind is typically strongest and most reliable, so that in winter here in the UK it can often provide more than 100% of our power needs, so not having it for a couple of weeks is a real issue.

I enjoy this facility, which provides hourly updates on demand on the UK national grid, and where it comes from:

https://grid.iamkate.com/

Looking at it now it is showing 30GW demand, and only 0.55GW of that coming from wind!

Solar is kicking in a respectable 8GW, and with the rise of agrivoltaics reducing or eliminating land use concerns, even in northerly Britain I can see that rising to cover most daytime energy use, which doesn't help much at night, of course, but being northerly long days mean that morning and evening peaks are covered much better than in, say, Los Angeles.

In the winter the situation is reversed, and the contribution of wind is (normally) massive.

Not really a major problem for the systems in contemplation, as they make heavy use of hydrogen to collect and transport energy, so you have inherent storage, unlike the unbuffered systems we had at the time. and have now.

But it will, in my view, still cost a shed load more than siting nuclear where it is needed.

Looking at the charts on my link, at the yearly figures, I have learn something.

It seems that I was confusing winter peak demand with average, and most of the time we use way less than the 60GW I erroneously gave

I can't easily spot my reference on the EIA website, but I remember being considerably surprised to find that summer usage was as high or higher than winter usage in the US, even at northerly latitudes.

Trying to dig out my references again has meant that I had to try to spell Massachusetts, which is rather cruel for a non resident.

In any case, high use of air conditioning means that in the US in contrast to Europe summer peak load is substantial everywhere.

I would certainly like to see a build out of nuclear in the US, but it is far less imperative than in Europe, as the US does have realistic alternatives, far more so than Europe, and in particular Germany.

Rooftop solar with the thermal heat utilized for hot water, and agrivoltaics mean that solar can be produced throughout the US locally to where it is needed.

Low residential housing densities mean that it is far more expensive to provide district heating in the US than in, say, the UK, so siting nuclear reasonably close to cities and using excess heat to warm water for houses is less cost effective.

Of course, the arguments for dedicated nuclear for industrial use, right on site, remains, and nuclear is many times more economic per KWh of power in material usage than solar or wind.

Compared to Europe or China, it is more difficult to make the case for extensive deployment of nuclear in the US, in my view, given the cost of solar and the huge onshore wind resources in the central plains.

But closing nuclear reactors for the sake of it, as in California, remains straight out nuts, of course!

Hey EP,

Now we might actually get something built, what is your take on the various SNR designs?

I was for years a fan of molten salt, but it must be borne in mind that I don't have technical chops, and apparently there remain considerable issues with corrosion.

I don't think you will disagree that Nuscale is 'good enough', but I would value your assessment and picks out of the ones relatively close to build.

Cheers EP

Interesting tech to deal with the high level 'waste' 'problem'

I dug around a bit to check progress.

' Elysium is designing a 10 MW thermal non-power demonstration unit. In 2022, we look forward to pursuing pre-licensing with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and furthering our siting efforts to support operation in 2028.'
https://www.elysiumindustries.com/technology
And for actual production:

' Moltex Energy plans to build the first 300 MW SSR-W and WATSS facility in Saint John, New Brunswick by the early 2030s.'
https://www.reutersevents.com/nuclear/moltex-elysium-reactors-put-used-fuel-work

Well, then, maybe Elysiums can consume the fuel coming out of the NuScales after dealing with the fuel stored at decommissioned sites, and Moltex can do the same for post-use CANDU fuel and whatever thermal-spectrum SMRs get built in Canada.