this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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MODERATORS
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So, are those small modular reactors in the room with us now?
I'm not certain what you mean by that but if you are asking how small they would be and where they would be placed the normal recommendation would be you would want a warehouse sized facility with an Olympic sized swimming pool to submerse a standard container sized reactor. You would probably house one to three reactors per facility. You would probably want an exclusion zone of 1 mi. Minimum. Depending on the model a single reactor would be able to power roughly 50,000 to 100,000 homes. Ideally you would build one of these 20 miles from a city. Plug in the SMRs and after 15 to 20 years unplug them and replace with newer models ship them off to a long-term storage facility and eventually process them for fuel once a we have functional thorium salt reactors at scale.
They're saying they don't exist
I don't even know how to argue with that viewpoint. Are they denying that we have small modular reactors what? It's a technology that's been employed since the '50s. I literally have a link at the top of the post.
I like you. You're funny. I your original post you're making fun of people because they can't tell the difference between military small reactors and commercial SMRs. Now you're saying (correctly) that they're the same thing. Which is it now?
Right, but they don't exist commercially and are 10 years away by best estimate (I think I haven't looked lately). Also, Navy style reactors are not anything like SMR designs currently under development. They are much closer to current PWR reactors in use. I love the idea of more nuclear, hell that's what I do for a living. I just feel like SMRs are more vapor ware that's always "10 years away". I hope not, I know some really smart people who are currently working at Terrapower trying to make it a reality.
All of the three candidates that I'm aware that are currently trying to get department of energy clearance for commercialization are pressurized water reactors...
And what is the timeline for commercial deployments? And what is the timeline for commercial deployments at a scale that might make a significant contribution to overall energy generation? And how realistic are those timelines after decades of delays?
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nrc-certifies-first-us-small-modular-reactor-design#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Nuclear%20Regulatory%20Commission,use%20in%20the%20United%20States. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_naval_reactors
Uh huh. Let's see how that goes. And even if they do succeed with that. It'll still be decades until these things can make a significant contribution. Which was my point all along.
If people like you would stop naysaying then we could expedite the process
Correct.
They literally do exist and have for 70 years