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NRC issues first U.S. construction permit for a BWRX-300 small modular reactor

148 points · 184 comments · papa-whisky

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CobaltFire · 1790739034 · focus · HN ↗
This is a 10th Generation Boiling Water Reactor. Here's some relevant links:
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BWRX-300" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BWRX-300
<a href="https://www.gevernova.com/nuclear/carbon-free-power/bwrx-300-small-modular-reactor" rel="nofollow">https://www.gevernova.com/nuclear/carbon-free-power/bwrx-300...
Interesting point: no pumps; convection flow for 100% of the operational envelope.
1. rainworld · 1790770586 · focus · HN ↗
  No recirculation pumps. Feedwater is pumped as usual.
testing22321 · 1790741363 · focus · HN ↗
Place your bets now.
Time until first power generated, and actual final total cost.
I’ll go 15 years and $10 Billion.
1. mpweiher · 1790753387 · focus · HN ↗
  How certain are you of your prediction? What odds would you give me if I bet against you?
  10:1?
  100:1?
  Background:
  The BWRX predecessor, the ABWR, holds the record for the fastest construction time of a commercial nuclear power plant ever: just slightly over 3 years to first criticality, 4 years total to commercial operation.
  Fun fact: it was the success of this first Gen III reactor that caused EDF to predict the EPRs would also only take 3 years to build. Which proved...optimistic. For the EPR. But proven for the ABWR.
  <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_boiling_water_reactor" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_boiling_water_reactor
  <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashiwazaki-Kariwa_Nuclear_Power_Plant" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashiwazaki-Kariwa_Nuclear_Pow...
  <a href="https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/nuclear-construction-time" rel="nofollow">https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/nuclear-construction-ti...
  The BWRX is also passively safe: cooling occurs via natural circulation, no pumps needed.
  So if it takes 15 years I give you $100, if it takes less you give me $10000?
  Deal?
  1. roryirvine · 1790765297 · focus · HN ↗
    Sadly, the ABWR has also proven to be unreliable and uneconomic.
    Hitachi spent most of the 2010s trying to get a couple of them underway in the UK (which has a generally favourable regulatory environment) but eventually pulled out after 12 years with £2bn spent and nothing built.
    Maybe the BWRX will have better luck - but I'd not want to stake any money on it myself.
    mpweiher · 1790787251 · focus · HN ↗
    > Sadly, the ABWR has also proven to be unreliable and uneconomic.
    Citation needed.
    > Hitachi spent most of the 2010s trying to get a couple of them underway in the UK
    That's not evidence of them being uneconomic or unreliable.
    > (which has a generally favourable regulatory environment)
    Excuse me? The regulatory environment that is responsible for the 7000 design changes at Hinkley Point C and thus most of the eye-watering delays and cost overruns? The regulatory environment that required the £ 700 million "fish disco" that will save a few salmon at a cost of around £ 280000 per fish?
    A series of "radical, root-cause solutions" is required to simplify the UK's nuclear regulatory system in order to speed up the construction of new nuclear projects at a lower cost and on time, an independent taskforce has concluded.
    <a href="https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/radical_reforms_needed_to_UK_nuclear_regulation_says_taskforce" rel="nofollow">https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/radical_reforms_...
  2. jfengel · 1790769735 · focus · HN ↗
    I think that when people casually pronounce a bet like that, they generally mean even odds. If they meant something else they'd likely say so explicitly.
    mpweiher · 1790837186 · focus · HN ↗
    My apologies, I left out a step, or more precisely, folded two steps into one.
    The way it usually goes with anti-nuclear activists when they make pronouncements like this is as follows:
    1. It will take at least 15 years and cost 100 gazillion dollars
    2. Are you sure?
    3. Yes, this is 100% what will happen. It is 100% certain, because nuclear does not and cannot work.
    4. OK, then let's put some money where our mouths are. Your 100% certainty means you should be willing to give me infinite odds, because any money I put up is automatically yours. Completely risk free income for you. But I am happy to reduce those odds to just 100:1, so I put up $100 and you put up $10.000.
    6. <crickets>
    crote · 1790842217 · focus · HN ↗
    Okay, let's follow that logic. I am willing to bet $1 that there will be construction delays and that there will be cost overruns. How many millions are you willing to bet that there will be absolutely zero delays and overruns?
    If those reactors are so fantastic, surely you wouldn't hesitate at a chance to get some free money - no matter how little?
    mpweiher · 1790849981 · focus · HN ↗
    What you did there has nothing to do with logic.
    Something not being 100% certain does not imply the opposite being 100% certain.
  3. guywithahat · 1790779535 · focus · HN ↗
    Sure but the ABWR was built in Japan, and the largest impediment to safe and profitable nuclear reactors is regulatory. The Trump admin have made substantial efforts to simplify the process to approve nuclear reactors however we have yet to see whether that's enough, or whether they'll be able to hit their 12-18 month licensing approval goals.
    mmooss · 1790785482 · focus · HN ↗
    > the largest impediment to safe and profitable nuclear reactors is regulatory
    I don't know any evidence of that. My understanding is that it's a highly complex technology, many components unavoidably take a long time to construct, and it may be fundamentally uneconomic.
    Has anyone, anywhere in the world profitably (subtracting subsidies) constructed one?
    mpweiher · 1790786577 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes. Most nuclear power plants are (highly) profitable and not subsidized.
    mmooss · 1790786902 · focus · HN ↗
    That's counter to everything I've read. Any evidence?
    guywithahat · 1790788176 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm not who you responded to but my recollection is that most reactors are decades old. The old ones do well. but the new ones are unprofitable/have issues. ABWR, for instance, is unprofitable.
    mmooss · 1790789625 · focus · HN ↗
    Thanks. Do you know if that that includes initial costs like construction - have they paid for themselves?
    mpweiher · 1790840030 · focus · HN ↗
    What is your source for ABWR being "unprofitable"? Anything beyond "people are saying"? Because I sure couldn't find any. So I asked Google. This is what Google said:
    When isolating the existing, completed Advanced Boiling Water Reactors (ABWRs), they are highly profitable—provided they are actually allowed to operate.
    mmooss · 1790889061 · focus · HN ↗
    Regardless of whether you are right or wrong, LLMs are mechanisms that report 'what people are saying'.
    mpweiher · 1790890949 · focus · HN ↗
    1. If what you claim were true, if LLMs represent "what people are saying" it would still mean that the claim people here were making about "what people are saying" is false.
    2. What you claim is false. The processes are quite different.
    3. I did not present the Google answer as "the truth". I presented it only as what it is: "what Google said". In the context of "I couldn't find any online corroborations of the previous poster's claims".
    If you confuse "this is what Google said" with "this is the truth", that's a you-problem.
    4. What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. -- Hitchen's Razor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor
    The claim that ABWRs are "unprofitable" has now been asserted several times without any evidence whatsoever. Therefore, the only thing I actually have to do to dismiss that claim is say "wrong".
    mmooss · 1790922163 · focus · HN ↗
    If you lay it out like that, does it make what you say more true?
    > the claim people here were making about "what people are saying" is false.
    You were the one using that phrase.
    > I did not present the Google answer as "the truth".
    Oh baloney.
    mpweiher · 1790924753 · focus · HN ↗
    > If you lay it out like that, does it make what you say more true?
    No.
    It was just as true before as it is after.
    > You were the one using that phrase.
    I was using that phrase to describe what people were doing. Do you understand the difference between doing something and describing that thing that people are doing?
    >> I did not present the Google answer as "the truth". I presented it only as what it is: "what Google said".
    > Oh baloney.
    That is literally what I wrote: "Because I sure couldn't find any. So I asked Google. This is what Google said:"
    Again, if you can't tell the difference between "this is what Google said" and "this is the truth" then that is most definitely a you-problem. On three levels:
    - first, they are literally and undisputably different words.
    - second, believing that those two different sets of words mean the same thing is..."interesting".
    - third, even if you yourself believe that these words mean the same thing (which, again, "interesting"), assuming that others partake in that interpretation is at best presumptuous.
    mpweiher · 1790802164 · focus · HN ↗
    You might need to adjust your sources.
    Do you have any evidence for your claim?
    This meme that nuclear power plants are unprofitable and require subsidies has been spread wide and far by the anti-nuclear lobby, but is still false.
    As an example, when the Greens started to come into government in Germany, they tried to force nuclear operators out of business by creating onerous safety rules just for the purpose of forcing them out of business.
    It didn't work.
    The plants were so profitable that they could afford even the most ridiculous additional safety requirements. So they had to make them illegal.
    Furthermore, you can look at France. EDF has been immensely profitable, despite having to sell a large amount of electricity at discounted rates.
    Here's an explainer.
    <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY
    mmooss · 1790810266 · focus · HN ↗
    Your comment is interesting: It fits well enough in one group's political talking points - anti-regulation, anti-liberal, revisionist information, absolute and not weighing costs and benefits - that it makes me quite skeptical. Add a YouTube video as a source and it crosses a threshold for me.
    That doesn't make it wrong!
    > Do you have any evidence for your claim?
    No; you agree it's a well-known claim. I've never heard what you say (that I recall). Including the GGP claim that most aren't subsidized.
    mpweiher · 1790833335 · focus · HN ↗
    How you want to diffame the information I presented is up to you.
    I note that you have no actual information to counter it. Nor do you have, by your own admission, any information to back up your claims.
    The "YouTube video" is by a professor for nuclear science from the University of Illinois.
    <a href="https://cpmi.illinois.edu" rel="nofollow">https://cpmi.illinois.edu
    Professor David Ruzic, head of that department, to be precise.
    <a href="https://npre.illinois.edu/people/profile/druzic" rel="nofollow">https://npre.illinois.edu/people/profile/druzic
    <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Hv__SVAAAAAJ&hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Hv__SVAAAAAJ&hl=en
    And yes, misinformation about nuclear energy is widely disseminated and thus "well known". Are we really at the point that Trump's "people are saying" is the standard for evidence?
    I think we can do better.
    ViewTrick1002 · 1790841425 · focus · HN ↗
    Given that the nuclear industry would shut down overnight if having to pay its own insurance costs it’s quite hard to take you seriously when you say it’s not subsidized.
    mpweiher · 1790844187 · focus · HN ↗
    That turns out not to be the case.
    ViewTrick1002 · 1790850050 · focus · HN ↗
    The Price-Anderson act and equivalents around the world tells a different story.
    In Sweden in 2022 the right wing coalition which won promised new nuclear would appear if only it was allowed. Quickly they abandoned large scale nuclear in favor of SMR, PowerPoints reactors are always cheap.
    Four years later, we are at:
    - The state takes essentially all financial risk, even borrowing the money because Vattenfall refuses to put it on its own balance sheet.
    - The state provides a huge direct taxpayer handout.
    - The state takes the construction risk. Cost overruns means taxpayers put in more.
    - The state subsidizes the entire final waste repository.
    - The state subsidizes roughly the entire accident liability. - The state guarantees the electricity price for 40 years.
    That rather proves the point about what happens when new nuclear meets actual financing conditions.
    And right wing coaltion just lost the latest election two weeks ago. Seems like we didn't get any new nuclear after all.
    mpweiher · 1790851017 · focus · HN ↗
    That also is almost entirely untrue and has virtually nothing to do with your original claim.
    ViewTrick1002 · 1790851398 · focus · HN ↗
    Which bullet is false? Be specific.
    mpweiher · 1790886638 · focus · HN ↗
    I am not going to participate in your Gish Gallop.
    If you answer on point to the point, we can have a discussion.
    Otherwise: gish along...
    ViewTrick1002 · 1790890628 · focus · HN ↗
    I’ll take that as confirmation that you can’t identify a single false claim.
    Which is unsurprising, since all six are based on publicly available information.
    mpweiher · 1790923163 · focus · HN ↗
    That would an incorrect conclusion.
    As I wrote before: your "claims" are mostly irrelevant, largely just opinion, and I won't engage in your Gish gallop.
    Of course, you could have understood that the first time I wrote it.
    But feel free to further demonstrate your lack of understanding.
    mpweiher · 1790850948 · focus · HN ↗
    > whether they'll be able to hit their 12-18 month licensing approval goals.
    The very license TFA is about took 14 months.
    The NRC completed its review in 14 months—four months ahead of schedule—after concluding that TVA’s application met applicable safety requirements.
    <a href="https://thebreakthrough.org/press/release-the-nrc-approves-construction-permit-for-tvas-clinch-river-small-modular-reactor" rel="nofollow">https://thebreakthrough.org/press/release-the-nrc-approves-c...
2. moring · 1790757503 · focus · HN ↗
  The point of small modular reactors is not the cost of the first one, but that the cost goes down with each subsequent one. The cost of the first one is expected to be high. IMHO this is very well explained in "How Big Things Get Done" by Bent Flyvbjerg.
  1. mpweiher · 1790761255 · focus · HN ↗
    Smaller reactors = more reactors.
    More reactors = riding the cost curve more quickly.
3. jacquesm · 1790759454 · focus · HN ↗
  Profitable power or just power?
  If the former: it might never happen.
  1. mpweiher · 1790762135 · focus · HN ↗
    Nuclear reactors are highly profitable:
    <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY
    Lowest LCOE by far is "nuclear LTO (Long Term Operation)".
    <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020" rel="nofollow">https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...
    Yes, the plants are big and expensive, but once built, they are cheap to run and last pretty much forever.
    SMRs lower the up-front cost, the time to build, the risk, and the financing costs, which are the biggest component of the construction costs.
    Initially at somewhat higher cost per kWh, but there is plenty of headroom there. And the various nuclear startups have cost projections that range from 2-3 cents to below 1 cent / kWh.
    jacquesm · 1790763680 · focus · HN ↗
    They are highly profitable when subsidized and you ignore decommissioning costs.
    1 cent / kWh cost is fantasy land.
    mpweiher · 1790786516 · focus · HN ↗
    This is incorrect.
    jacquesm · 1790845270 · focus · HN ↗
    You will need to do better than that. All of the public figures support my position, if you are unable or unwilling to document your assertions which you make with great conviction and which contradict the evidence you will need to bring some of your own. Nuclear power has its uses but it isn't cheap unless you start picking your figures very selectively. That's fine if you want to convince yourself that you are right but it doesn't really help: it makes you look like a rabid supporter of something without an eye towards the realities and in the long run that works against your cause, not for it.
    Finally, if there is one thing the war in Ukraine has shown it is that nuclear power plants in times of war are an immediate risk and that any future nuclear power installations should take this risk into account during the construction and operational phases.
    mpweiher · 1790849840 · focus · HN ↗
    That is incorrect.
    What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. -- Hitchen's Razor, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens%27s_razor
    You made a claim that you did not support with any evidence whatsoever. Twice, actually.
    So it is you has to "do better than that", not me.
    In fact, I actually did go to the trouble of disproving your first unproven claim with actual data, which was more than I had to do. A simple "wrong" would have sufficed there as well.
    You just wiped that away with another completely unsupported and also wrong assertion.
    And if "all of the public figures" support your position, it would be trivial to actually cite that evidence. [Narrator: it won't, because they don't].
    Nuclear power is cheap, as the IEA data clearly shows, in addition to all the real-world evidence.
    And your point on the Ukraine war is also the exact opposite of the truth: if you actually look at the evidence, or ask the Ukrainians, you will find that nuclear power is what is keeping the country afloat, energy-wise.
    Which is why Ukraine has started construction of at least two more nuclear reactors during this war:
    <a href="https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/work-under-way-for-first-westinghouse-ap1000-in-uk" rel="nofollow">https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/work-under-way-f...
    And has ordered a total of nine AP-1000s
    <a href="https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/interview/1169371.html" rel="nofollow">https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/interview/1169371.html
    But hey, what do the Ukrainians know about nuclear power in Ukraine?
    hvb2 · 1790767030 · focus · HN ↗
    > Lowest LCOE by far is "nuclear LTO (Long Term Operation)".
    That's some serious cherry picking you're doing there.
    It also says: "The LCOE calculations also do not capture other systemic costs or externalities beyond plant-level CO2 emissions such as, for instance, methane leakage during the extraction and transport of natural gas."
    So we can just gloss over the nuclear waste problem. Which is especially interesting since the fossil plants will get a heavy hit due to their CO2 footprint.
    Because of how hazardous it is, every country treats that as a national issue thus offloading the cost to taxpayers. Besides, I'm only aware of a single country (Finland I believe) who is far along on an actual permanent storage location. The US for example still doesn't have one, until that exists the real cost simply isn't known.
    > And the various nuclear startups have cost projections that range from 2-3 cents to below 1 cent / kWh.
    Startups have cost projections, sure. That's marketing material until they've actually built something. I'm sure SMRs will soon be reality and we can see how much of it is actually true. Until then, take everything you read with a grain of salt.
    mpweiher · 1790786501 · focus · HN ↗
    > That's some serious cherry picking you're doing there.
    Please identify the cherry picking.
    > The LCOE calculations also do not capture other systemic costs or externalities beyond plant-level CO2 emissions such as, for instance, methane leakage during the extraction and transport of natural gas."
    Absolutely! When you consider full system costs, nuclear gets much, much better.
    With fossils, you have the minor externalities of climate change and other emissions, which are not taken into account.
    With intermittent renewables, you have the costs of their intermittency. Those system costs tend to rise with penetration, and dwarf the LCOE.
    For details in a model, see:
    <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544222018035" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422...
    And this also plays out in real life: electricity prices are highest in countries with high intermittent renewables penetration. The correlation is quite strong. And the inverse correlation, from high penetration to low electricity costs simply does not exist. There are no countries (or states) with high penetration of intermittent renewables and low electricity prices.
    > So we can just gloss over the nuclear waste problem.
    The opposite is true. Nuclear is actually the only power source that has to account for its waste already in the LCOE cost. And it also turns out that the waste is one of the benefits of nuclear, at least compared to other sources of electricity: there is very, very little of it, we know how to store it safely without problems, it actually goes away by itself and it is valuable fuel.
    [Costs from 2-3 cents to below 1 cent]
    > Startups have cost projections, sure. That's marketing material until they've actually built something.
    Nope. Those numbers are usually the sorts of things they have to present investors to make their business case. People tend to vet those numbers pretty carefully before investing millions or billions of dollars. Also, if you lie in those numbers that turns out to be fraud and you can go to jail.
    In other news: "Prediction is difficult, especially about the future" -- Yogi Berra.
    kphorn · 1790777594 · focus · HN ↗
    Agree that if you run them for 40 or 60 years (1 renewal + 1 extension) it gets very affordable. Similar to data center, the economics are great if you take out construction costs. The problem is 40-60 years has proven to be a very long time in political and economic contexts, so on a practical basis many many plants are shut down prematurely and dont fulfill that useful life, increasing the cost of capital (bonds etc) to build the new plants and therefore LCOE.
    Totally agree that if you get a stable, reliable operating reactor it's very cheap. When people, politics, and the rest get in the way the actual costs drastically increase.
4. rayiner · 1790770690 · focus · HN ↗
  what is the timeline and cost for 300 MW of solar plus the battery back up to make it 24/7?
  1. testing22321 · 1790775651 · focus · HN ↗
    For fun, Gemini says between 1.1 and 3.8 billion, and 3-5 years.
    That number will decrease every month too.
    borodi · 1790777725 · focus · HN ↗
    The gemini solar project in Nevada is 700 MW power + 4 hours of batteries at 380MW and cost 1.9 billion. Took 2 years and that was in 2022
    rayiner · 1790777838 · focus · HN ↗
    Is 4 hours of battery an equivalent comparison to a nuclear plant?
    borodi · 1790778737 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm not anti nuclear or anything like that. It's just the financial comparison one has to make. Currently competing with solar + batteries is hard since unlike SMRs which hypothetically will get cheaper, they are getting cheaper at a quick rate and don't have the history of cost overruns that nuclear does.
    rayiner · 1790784425 · focus · HN ↗
    I understand. My point simply is that the relevant price comparison is nuclear versus solar + enough batteries to make the solar plant equivalent to a nuclear plant. The battery system is the lynchpin of efforts to substitute solar for nuclear, and the cost/timeline of that should be factored in. But usually we just see an apples-to-oranges comparison of nuclear by itself and solar by itself.
    boelboel · 1790781146 · focus · HN ↗
    Somewhere like Arizona I would say it's pretty equivalent, In PNW or midwest region it's not equivalent at all.
    vablings · 1790786787 · focus · HN ↗
    4 hours at full tilt is pretty good, assuming that for the same volume you can store double the power in the next 15 years that means that you can replace those cells at end of service life and end up with 8 years ect.
    mpweiher · 1790850723 · focus · HN ↗
    When looking at costs, you have to also take into account the lifetime of the plants.
    The current US plants are all getting extensions to 80 years of operation, and experts see no problems with going to 100.
    How many times do you have to fully replace the panels in that timeframe?
    How many times the batteries?
    And what about seasonal storage?
    triceratops · 1790873783 · focus · HN ↗
    > How many times do you have to fully replace the panels in that timeframe?
    3 times. The panels will be even cheaper by then and will likely be robotically installed.
    > How many times the batteries?
    Maybe 4 times? Same as the panels; they'll be cheaper and easier to replace.
    > And what about seasonal storage?
    Might be unnecessary with enough overbuilding and grid interconnections. Or there might be cheaper storage technologies. Or batteries might become cheap enough that fewer duty cycles for season storage become economical.
    Timon3 · 1790881794 · focus · HN ↗
    > How many times do you have to fully replace the panels in that timeframe?
    You don't have to replace them. After 30 years the panels will still be producing >80% of their initial output.
    Of course it might be economical to replace them with newer panels, since solar tech is getting better every year. 30 years ago solar cost roughly $8/W of peak capacity (adjusted for inflation), and today were somewhere around $0.1 to $0.3 per watt. Assuming $0.25, that's a 32x increase.
    Imagine in 30 years we replace them with solar panels 32x as cost-effective as today's (and same for batteries, whatever the factor might be). How competitive does the nuclear plant look?
  2. Timon3 · 1790826402 · focus · HN ↗
    This reactor isn't going to provide 300 MW 24/7, so why is that a fair benchmark?
  3. myrmidon · 1790860019 · focus · HN ↗
    For 1.2GW in panels and 20GWh of batteries you'd currently pay about a billion for the panels and 2-3 billion for the batteries (price for a turn-key solution, not just cells). Assumptions:
    - 25% capacity factor for panels
    - 3 days of storage (at 300MW)
    - $120/kWh for storage
    - $1/W (peak) for panels
    I'd argue that such a setup is a big upgrade over the reactor since you have much higher peak power; you basically get more dispatchability at a comparable capacity factor (90%-ish). I suspect maintenance to be cheaper as well.
    But an actual solar setup would probably install more panels and less storage (giving you cheaper power at a lower capacity factor).
    Edit: The problem in practice for the nuclear reactor is that it has to be competitive with almost the panels alone, because otherwise your consumers are just gonna go "I wont buy nuclear energy 24/7, I'll just use much cheaper solar electricity whenever the sun shines, pay maybe for a few hours of batteries and fall back to gas when I really need to (very cheap per peak MW, but not per MWh)".
    If you want to be fully paid for constant power output, you have to be fully competitive at all times, not just when the sun is down.
5. idiotsecant · 1790771368 · focus · HN ↗
  I'll take that bet. Care to formalize?
  1. amanaplanacanal · 1790780056 · focus · HN ↗
    Probably the best way would be for you to pick your numbers, and payout to whoever gets closest.
6. m4ck_ · 1790783563 · focus · HN ↗
  Id want to see who’s funding it before betting. If it’s all private capital, that sounds fair. If its backed by direct government investment or better yet, rate payer increases, my money is they fart around for a decade or so and then the project goes belly up due to poor planning and ballooning costs. and the execs walk away much richer.
preisschild · 1790751984 · focus · HN ↗
The BWRX-300 footprint is so large they might as well just build large nuclear power units again and get 3-4x the power
1. nine_k · 1790754444 · focus · HN ↗
  I don't think that the footprint is the key factor. Likely the total construction cost is. A large reactor may have a better cost per kWh, averaged over decades of its lifetime, but a smaller reactor likely has a more affordable upfront cost.
  1. jillesvangurp · 1790762848 · focus · HN ↗
    The key point with small modular reactors vs. reactors like this is that construction happens in factories rather than on site. Theoretically, you might get some economies of scale from series production in a factory that is much harder to get doing bespoke construction projects. Which is why historically, nuclear projects tend to blow through their cost estimates and why having larger reactors makes that a bit more tolerable. Of course until somebody actually does this and scales to hundreds/thousands of reactors production, this is all theoretical.
    This particular reactor is already estimated at over 5 billion $ I think. That's a lot of money for just 300MW and it probably could end up being a wildly optimistic estimate as well. I think effectively much of the construction is still on site and not in a factory. Hence the need for a construction permit. So, you get all of the downsides of complex on site construction such as including high cost, permitting overhead, lots of bureaucracy, associated delays & uncertainty, etc. without the upside of actually delivering a lot of power like you would with a larger reaction. Calling it "modular" might be overstating things a bit.
    Probably cheaper, faster, and easier to just plonk down 5GW of solar, wind, or battery (or combinations of those). Especially if you calculate in the 200-300% time and dollar budget that many nuclear projects seem to end up having. Maybe this one will be different. A lot of people have a lot riding on Nuclear projects breaking this trend. But then that has been the case for decades.
    mrngld · 1790769989 · focus · HN ↗
    If the argument is, in part, about footprint then enough solar and battery capacity to output 300MW around the clock with the same uptime/reliability as a nuclear plant is surely going to cover a lot more ground.
    I only bring that up because footprint was a point further up the thread.
    There's still a fair amount of site work that has to happen here in the small modular concept, but I think when parts of it happen continuously in a factory you're largely immune from a lot of the jobsite nonsense that happened from contractors milking the job for every dollar they could get, plus economies of scale that you do get in a factory setting (citation: industrial revolution).
    myrmidon · 1790772482 · focus · HN ↗
    Nuclear reactor uptime is gonna be 90% at most, which is rather easy (battery capacity for several days) to beat even with just solar + batteries (in equatorial and most mid-latitude regions, at least).
    roryirvine · 1790780965 · focus · HN ↗
    And this BWRX design is based on ABWR which turned out to be only 70% in practice.
    You don't get much useful notice for unplanned nuclear outages either, whereas both wind and solar output can be forecast with reasonable accuracy 24h in advance.
    idiotsecant · 1790771252 · focus · HN ↗
    The expensive part is not assembly, it is validation and documentation of that design and the lack of ability to spread those costs over multiple units. Site built units are fine so long as the design is sufficiently decoupled from site conditions that it can be exactly reproduced.
    preisschild · 1790771857 · focus · HN ↗
    You cant make every part in the factory anyways. You need lots of on-site civil engineering. And many parts of large (+1GWe) reactors have also been manifactured at off-site factories and then shipped on-site by barges.
    pfdietz · 1790776988 · focus · HN ↗
    One issue here is that the structures containing the "nuclear island" are just as expensive as that island. Containment buildings are civil construction and are not cheap.
    This suggests one should move to reactor concepts that don't need such large structures. The containment building size is dictated by the need to contain a certain volume of pressurized steam in an accident. This is perhaps the strongest motivation for reactors cooled with molten salt.
    preisschild · 1790869079 · focus · HN ↗
    Agreed. The less nuclear-grade concrete you need the better.
    mixdup · 1790772937 · focus · HN ↗
    This one may be $5 billion, but the next one will probably be (made up number) $3 billion, and the next one $1 billion
    Part of the point of these projects in particular is to get the machine spinning. Once it's running you start getting some of the economies of scale
    ViewTrick1002 · 1790775436 · focus · HN ↗
    This assumes learning rates never seen by nuclear energy. Within generations we've seen small learnings, and between generations the nuclear energy has been all negative learning by doing.
    mixdup · 1790776834 · focus · HN ↗
    But that is literally why they want to get to assembly line levels of throughput. Dozens of identical reactors instead of dozens of bespoke reactors that can't use learnings from the last one
    Also not said is the fact that going into more standardized designs you lower the operational cost because operations can be standardized. Today every single facility has different training from the next. Even at the same facility, if it's got new + old reactors, operators can't move between them without training on both
    kphorn · 1790777886 · focus · HN ↗
    This is the biggest anticipated benefit of SMR. The US has 30+ licensed reactor designs. France has 3. Korea has 3. The economics of French and Korean reactors, built repeatably, are drastically improved over US reactors. If the NRC does its job and actually says "we know more about nuclear power than the local state energy commission and operator" then we the US can achieve those levels of repeatability and cost. We want safe reactors, we dont want infinitely customized reactors that are tailored to every state and operator's preference for how they want to polish fittings and lay out the pipes etc etc.
    ViewTrick1002 · 1790841304 · focus · HN ↗
    How many hundreds of billions or trillions should we waste to get ”learnings” when renewables and storage is already the cheapest energy source in human history?
    This line of thinking seems to start with that we must have new nuclear, for some reason, and then try to rationalize it.
    leonidasrup · 1790864521 · focus · HN ↗
    Hundreds of billions have already been spend on learning renewables in Germany.
    <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321765366_How_expensive_is_an_energy_transition_A_lesson_from_the_German_Energiewende" rel="nofollow">https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321765366_How_expen...
    triceratops · 1790873400 · focus · HN ↗
    Can't unspend that money. GP is asking whether it's worth spending additional money.
    leonidasrup · 1790883996 · focus · HN ↗
    It makes quite sense to ask, how much did get Germany for the money it spend.
    In term of decarbonization of electricity production and independence of imported fuel for electricity production, it got less then France for comparable amount of money.
    But this is quite clear as the first and foremost goal of German Energiewende was denuclearization of German electricity production, not decarbonization of electricity production.
    ViewTrick1002 · 1790931253 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    ViewTrick1002 · 1790931312 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    xvilka · 1790773131 · focus · HN ↗
    In China you get the economy of scale for building nuclear power plants precisely because they are standardized. Thus, pivoting to SMR is unnecessary, since they produce significantly less energy.
    throwaway2037 · 1790812930 · focus · HN ↗
    > In China you get the economy of scale for building nuclear power plants precisely because they are standardized.
    Is this really true? Or how can we know it is true? For example: Why is the reason not explained by incredibly cheap construction labor costs compared to other rich countries?
    Related: UAE had zero nuclear power plants before the Barakah nuclear power plant[1] opened starting in 2020. They built 4x Korean APR-1400s for only 32B USD. That seems incredibly cheap. How did they do it? I assume (near) slave labour prices for construction workers, like most other stuff built in that country.
    [1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant
    ZeroGravitas · 1790855284 · focus · HN ↗
    How you raise finance is incredibly important for nuclear costs.
    Higher lending rates can easily double the final cost and they multiply with any time delays.
    That particular build had government finance from both the host and the building government.
    throwaway2037 · 1790862687 · focus · HN ↗
    Brandolini, is that you calling? There is so much bullshit here that I don't know where to start. The waters are murky...
    > How you raise finance is incredibly important for nuclear costs.
    You really think the UAE, that has a sovereign wealth fund with assets of more than 2.5T (<-- trillion!) USD needs to borrow money to build nuclear reactors? Plus, Korea buys heaps of oil and gas from UAE. There are so many ways to "settle this bill".
    ZeroGravitas · 1790867267 · focus · HN ↗
    > You really think the UAE, that has a sovereign wealth fund with assets of more than 2.5T (<-- trillion!) USD needs to borrow money to build nuclear reactors?
    No, I'm answering your question as to why their build costs are surprisingly low. They didn't finance at the rate that other builds did and finance related costs can be 2/3rds of the total cost.
    throwaway2037 · 1791128959 · focus · HN ↗
    > finance related costs can be 2/3rds of the total cost of a nuclear plant
    Source? I asked ChatGPT, but I cannot find any reliable source that "finance related costs can be 2/3rds of the total cost of a nuclear plant". It sounds like more Brandolini bullshit to me. Most of the build period was during ZIRP!
    ZeroGravitas · 1791190905 · focus · HN ↗
    Try asking it something like:
    > Compare the expected cost of a nuclear plant at 0% and 10% WACC
    chermi · 1790877368 · focus · HN ↗
    Last I checked labor was 15-30% for such projects, so it could help but only so much
    throwaway2037 · 1791128999 · focus · HN ↗
    Again, I asked ChatGPT for some sources for your post, but I couldn't find any reliable sources. Can you provide a reliable source for your claim?
    coldpie · 1790775019 · focus · HN ↗
    Five billion is just not all that much money. One guy spent eight times that to change the moderation policies of one social media website. Microsoft spent 14 times that to buy a video game company that they've largely mismanaged. Those two purchases alone could've paid for 20 of these reactors, maybe more if economies of scale kick in. Don't even ask how much Facebook is flushing down the toilet on VR or how much we're spending every single day in Iran. We could choose to spend our money on things like clean energy, but we choose other things instead.
    pfdietz · 1790776795 · focus · HN ↗
    It is for 300MW.
    fragmede · 1790778081 · focus · HN ↗
    For the first one.
    pfdietz · 1790781457 · focus · HN ↗
    No factory for civil construction projects.
    coldpie · 1790779711 · focus · HN ↗
    Trying to minmax for the most cost effective renewable energy is fretting over spending nickles and dimes, while billionaires and megacorps are setting hundred dollar bills on fire. It's just not a productive place to be focusing your energy. We can afford both types of renewable energy, easily, we're just choosing to let others waste that money on garbage instead.
    IncreasePosts · 1790780237 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not nickles and dimes. It's 5x more expensive than a conservative estimate on 700mw of wind or solar
    coldpie · 1790780431 · focus · HN ↗
    > It's not nickles and dimes
    Yes it is. So far, we've flushed enough money down the Iran war toilet to pay for ten of these, and there's no end in sight.
    pfdietz · 1790781418 · focus · HN ↗
    I call this the "bigger rat" argument.
    The rat, having been caught by the rat catcher, complains there are other, bigger rats. But he's still a rat.
    The uneconomical project, having been called out, complains there are other, even more expensive activities. But that doesn't change that the project is too expensive.
    coldpie · 1790782447 · focus · HN ↗
    Nah. Groups of people spending hours and hours debating whether it is smarter to buy the $1.95 or the $1.99 can of beans at the store is being silly. Just pick one. Or buy both! It's only two bucks and we spent $2,000 on flights to Europe last week.
    pfdietz · 1790782559 · focus · HN ↗
    What an absurd analogy. Of course it's worth spending time when deciding if billions of dollars are worth spending on something. It's worth entire individual lifetimes of effort if one can save that much money.
    coldpie · 1790782769 · focus · HN ↗
    I identified ways to save 30 times that much money in this thread. It is more productive for you to focus your efforts there.
    pfdietz · 1790782896 · focus · HN ↗
    So, it's not going to cost $5B? Better inform those building it.
    coldpie · 1790783372 · focus · HN ↗
    I just think it's silly to focus your efforts complaining about $5B being arguably somewhat inefficiently spent, versus hundreds of billions of dollars going straight into the garbage. There's far better things to focus on if you're concerned about money going to waste.
    mixdup · 1790780609 · focus · HN ↗
    I mean it is, there is a project in Georgia for a new 1.4GW natural gas plant that has a $3.3 billion budget
    But, the $5 billion here isn't purely an investment in 300 MW of capacity, it's an investment in starting up the nuclear reactor factory that can start churning these things out at $1-2 billion or whatever their goal may be
    Also, have to take into consideration the overall operating costs. Nuclear costs significantly more up front but over time costs much less to operate (and is much more predictable) because you don't have to buy and burn natural gas forever
    dalyons · 1790785597 · focus · HN ↗
    all cost modeling for nuclear takes this into account into the $/mwh of power. Fuel is cheap, but you have to pay back the enormous construction capex over time through power sales. Plus, staffing, security, insurance and maintaince are massive ongoing costs. Nukes remain the most expensive way to generate power.
    The only cheap nuclear watts come from facilities built a long time ago in a completely different cost environment, and had construction and insurance subsidized by the state.
    mixdup · 1790792729 · focus · HN ↗
    Natural gas plants all have security, insurance, maintenance, and staffing. Of course there are different levels of those but those costs are not unique to nuclear plants
    pfdietz · 1790796727 · focus · HN ↗
    Large natural gas plants have about 0.05 employees per MW. Nuclear plants have 0.5 to 1.0 employees per MW.
    mixdup · 1790797754 · focus · HN ↗
    imagine how that number can be decreased as the plants are smaller, standardized, and more numerous. you can likely get a lot more efficiency out of the workforce when an engineer or operator can work across a dozen of these in a 200 mile radius instead of just one in the whole country. plus you need fewer training staff etc
    pfdietz · 1790798562 · focus · HN ↗
    Making plants smaller increases the number of employees per MW. Standardized might reduce the cost of construction, but how would it reduce the number of employees needed?
    mixdup · 1790822398 · focus · HN ↗
    >but how would it reduce the number of employees needed?
    A standardized reactor design that doesn't need a bespoke training control room at every single site means fewer training staff. It means the same maintenance workers and compliance workers and everyone else can be utilized more because they can cover more facilities instead of just the single site they are certified on and work at
    dalyons · 1790798695 · focus · HN ↗
    or, you put a bunch of these small plants in one physical location and you get even more efficiency out of the workforce - only one facilties management crew, only one security team. Oh wait...
    pfdietz · 1790785635 · focus · HN ↗
    Those projected future savings are to be greeted with considerable skepticism. They are not locked in by contracts. They are the kinds of projections we've seen all too often fall apart in nuclear.
    The underlying mechanic here is that cost projections are being used to sell a technology. As such, there is very strong incentive to underestimate the costs. This applies to FOAK plants and to projected experience rates.
    SECProto · 1790787470 · focus · HN ↗
    The one thing that low carbon grids around the world share is high portion of nuclear (or hydro, which you can't build unless it naturally exists). Therefore, the only thing a SMR cost should be compared to is other nuclear reactors. Natural Gas may be cheaper (startup cost), may be more expensive (ongoing fuel), or will definitely be more expensive (carbon in the atmosphere doesn't go away), but regardless there is no reason to compare nuclear to natgas.
    pfdietz · 1790788673 · focus · HN ↗
    > The one thing that low carbon grids around the world share is high portion of nuclear (or hydro, which you can't build unless it naturally exists).
    This is an historical artifact. When that generating capacity was built, nuclear was the alternative to fossil fuels. It isn't today; renewables are now cheaper and faster to install.
    Your argument can be seen as a way to ignore the cost decline of renewables without at first glance doing so.
    SECProto · 1790790334 · focus · HN ↗
    I was responding to the thread, which is comparing nuclear to natural gas.
    Comparing to renewables is a different story - it can be done but it's much more complex (not dispatchable, seasonally variable) but certainly renewables makes sense in some or many places, (and in all places for a portion of the supply). I'm all in favour as long as it is actually done with the intent of getting to zero CO2, and doesn't just stall when it gets to the more difficult part of the transition.
    pfdietz · 1790796645 · focus · HN ↗
    > I was responding to the thread, which is comparing nuclear to natural gas.
    It's comparing nuclear to alternatives, one of which is natural gas. Others are renewables. One cannot make or justify a decision on nuclear without considering all the alternatives.
    leonidasrup · 1790864287 · focus · HN ↗
    Weather dependent renewables (wind, solar) are not an alternative to nuclear, even when they are perceived in this way by the public.
    From point of view of an electrical grid operator only wind/solar+fossil are alternative to nuclear, if you want to maintain stable electric grid without blackout or rolling blackouts.
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout
    pfdietz · 1790893003 · focus · HN ↗
    > Weather dependent renewables (wind, solar) are not an alternative to nuclear, even when they are perceived in this way by the public.
    This is a common misconception. The reality is that coupled with storage in a cost-optimized way renewables are no more expensive than nuclear for providing 365/24/7 power and likely considerably cheaper.
    <a href="https://model.energy/" rel="nofollow">https://model.energy/
    leonidasrup · 1790921851 · focus · HN ↗
    > This is a common misconception.
    I should have clarified it more precisely:
    Weather dependent renewables (wind, solar) without storage are not an alternative to nuclear.
    Now we can discuss more precisely the kinds of storage: pumped hydro, battery storage, H2 storage, thermal energy storage, the costs and space and material needs of each kind of storage.
    > <a href="https://model.energy/" rel="nofollow">https://model.energy/
    This energy model is not 100% renewables, Combined cycle gas turbine with CO2 capture is also included in the mix.
    pfdietz · 1790942080 · focus · HN ↗
    There are basically two kinds of storage needed: a sort term, high efficiency storage, and a longer term low-capex storage. For example, batteries for the former, and either e-fuels like hydrogen or low capex thermal for the latter.
    This optimizes cost because different properties of the storage drive cost in the two cases. For the first, there are thousands of charge-discharge cycles, so high round trip efficiency pays off. For the second, there are many fewer such cycles, so efficiency has a much lower payoff; instead the name of the game is minimizing capex.
    In practice the second will not be installed until later in decarbonization, especially if the storage is being used to counter rare dark-calm periods when neither wind nor solar are available for a prolonged period. But it can be done, and so little of the total energy flow would go through in that case that high per-kWh costs for that small fraction can be tolerated.
    leonidasrup · 1791029913 · focus · HN ↗
    The original argument was that renewables are alternative to nuclear:
    > It's comparing nuclear to alternatives, one of which is natural gas. Others are renewables. One cannot make or justify a decision on nuclear without considering all the alternatives.
    Renewables (solar, wind) alone are not alternative to nuclear, without energy storage. This additional energy storage can be: short term energy storage, long term energy storage, or fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are solar energy stored in ancient times.
    China is currently building many new coal plants as an backup for solar and wind power plants.
    Germany is building new gas power plants, in future possible running on H2.
    <a href="https://themunicheye.com/germany-approves-new-gas-power-plants-34453" rel="nofollow">https://themunicheye.com/germany-approves-new-gas-power-plan...
    boxed · 1790782120 · focus · HN ↗
    Sure. But the comment you replied to was that we spend more on things that remove Watts from the system.
    nine_k · 1790782938 · focus · HN ↗
    > to change the moderation policies of one social media website
    That guy wanted a particular US president elected; in this regard, the investment has likely already paid off.
    With a nuclear power plant, the stakes are way lower, and the payoff is much, much more distant.
    LgWoodenBadger · 1790786724 · focus · HN ↗
    It is when you can get a 210MW S9G, along with an entire state-of-the-art fast attack submarine for 2.8 billion
    throwaway2037 · 1790812337 · focus · HN ↗
    I thought this was a sarcastic reply, so I checked the facts myself. I was stunned. You are spot on.
    For those unaware, the submarine is Virginia-class[1] and is powered by a 210MW nuclear reactor called the "S9G"[2]. And yes, as of 2019 prices, each boat cost 2.8B USD. There are 28 of these subs active in the US Navy. This isn't some new, experimental reactor design. The US is pumping these out of their shipyards. Sheesh. 5B+ USD for a measly 300MW reactor... (without the nuclear sub!) looks way too expensive. What am I missing?
    [1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia-class_submarine" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia-class_submarine
    [2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S9G_reactor" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S9G_reactor
    crote · 1790841721 · focus · HN ↗
    You're missing the fact that a submarine tends to be submerged in the ocean, and that it is fueled with highly-enriched uranium.
    Naval reactors and civil reactors look roughly the same at first glance, but as the folks at Three Mile Island found out the hard way, there are some rather crucial differences.
    throwaway2037 · 1790862924 · focus · HN ↗
    Weirdly, the "submerged in the ocean" part could be good for SMR to deflect the effects of a tsunami. This part is the most important: "it is fueled with highly-enriched uranium". Really, it makes me think, if the US military allowed it, what is wrong with a bunch of SMRs built in a low population density area using highly-enriched uranium? (For other readers, normally commerical nuclear reacors use low enrichment uranium: 3% to 5% uranium-235.)
    ViewTrick1002 · 1790841133 · focus · HN ↗
    That is 210 MW thermal. Which would produce about 70 MW electricity.
    $2.8B for 70 MW is insanely expensive.
  2. throw0101a · 1790768728 · focus · HN ↗
    > A large reactor may have a better cost per kWh, averaged over decades of its lifetime, but a smaller reactor likely has a more affordable upfront cost.
    What are the civil works costs for a small(er) reactor versus a large(r) reactor?
2. sandworm101 · 1790757425 · focus · HN ↗
  From thier website: "The BWRX-300 power block is small enough to fit within two international football pitches."
  And after some digging, the core alone is 4.2m INNER diameter and over 27m tall. That is smaller than average but this is a far cry from the sales pitch of reactor modules being mass produced in a factory to be delivered to site by truck.
  <a href="https://www.gevernova.com/content/dam/gevernova-nuclear/global/en_us/documents/carbon-free-power/005N9751-BWRX-300-General-Description.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.gevernova.com/content/dam/gevernova-nuclear/glob...
  1. mpweiher · 1790759289 · focus · HN ↗
    The label SMR applies to a wide range of reactors.
    The BWRX-300 is at the upper end of that range and I don't think claims of factory-production of the whole unit were ever made for this reactor.
    That said, even the much larger AP-1000 had fairly large modules made in a factory. In fact as far as I understand that was one of the problems with the Vogtle builds, because doing that only really makes sense for a larger number of units, not for just two unites.
    preisschild · 1790772060 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, exactly. But even those sub 5 MWe microreactors that are often shown in those truck demos require lots of shielding that has to be done on-site beforehand.
    mpweiher · 1790860700 · focus · HN ↗
    So you figured out this glaring hole in their plans that all the idiot companies doing SMRs missed?
    Maybe not.
    For example, Aalo Atomics has split the construction process in such a way that the on-site pour that happens after the reactor is delivered from the factory is (a) very simple (b) standardized, and (c) non-nuclear. In addition, the site work that is required is very repetitive, so you get a positive learning curve, again without the slowness of nuclear construction.
    Copenhagen Atomics has heavy thorium salt shielding inside the nuclear core and a "Cocoon" that is delivered in 12 prefab parts installed on a regular concrete pad. So on-site construction is making the non-nuclear concrete pad, installing the pre-fab cocoon on pad and then placing the reactor core inside the Cocoon.
    Westinghouse apparently ships the entire eVinci microreactor pre-assembled with shielding.
    X-energy puts the reactor in a hole underground.
    etc.
  2. T-A · 1790766770 · focus · HN ↗
    Going by the last table at
    <a href="https://www.icetransport.com/blog/what-are-the-maximum-oversize-load-dimensions-on-us-highways" rel="nofollow">https://www.icetransport.com/blog/what-are-the-maximum-overs...
    ("Oversize/Overweight Permit Limits by State (Standard Freight Loads") that should be deliverable by truck with a permit.
    mrngld · 1790771505 · focus · HN ↗
    That discusses 'superloads', I hadn't heard it called that before but it's accurate in the sense that things like self-propelled modular transporters (or towed equivalents) can move just about anything just about anywhere IF the road infrastructure all along the route is amenable to it.
    Pictures don't do them justice, they're amazing to see in person. I think a typical SMR is on the small end of what's possible to move by road.
    crote · 1790841942 · focus · HN ↗
    So are wind turbines. "Deliverable by truck" in this sense means "physically fits on a closed-down highway", not "you'll randomly pass it on your commute".
  3. alightsoul · 1790784378 · focus · HN ↗
    The reactor vessel is technically always factory made, and the containment building (pit?) structures are built as separate prefabricated modules that are just lowered into the containment building, like a prefabricated building is assembled on site
3. UltraSane · 1790757434 · focus · HN ↗
  Land is very cheap compared to how much normal reactors cost to build.
4. bpodgursky · 1790780809 · focus · HN ↗
  The footprint is irrelevant compared to the top competitor (solar).
5. jordanb · 1790786415 · focus · HN ↗
  The logic for a "small" reactor is that it's one that can rely on passive cooling in the event of a shutdown so that it doesn't have to be actively cooled to avoid a meltdown.
  The "modular" part is the idea that you then produce more of them lowering unit cost and install many more than is typical at a site.
  This also potentially allows you to have more control of plant energy output and respond faster to grid needs.
  Recall that the fukushima meltdown was caused after the cooling failed. The reactor building survived the tsunami and the reactors were shutdown. The problem is the diesel backup generators used to run the coolant pumps were flooded.
6. throw0101c · 1790857961 · focus · HN ↗
  > The BWRX-300 footprint is so large they might as well just build large nuclear power units again and get 3-4x the power
  There's other factors to consider.
  For example: in some areas there were small/medium coal-fired plants built right by the coal mines, and so have some grid infrastructure already present. You could replace the coal-fired component with an SMR and have a good portion of the rest of the infrastructure as-is (not have to spend effort / political capital on more grid pylons, which many folks oppose).
  Or, for a smaller regional area, having more smaller units allows for more HA since each individual unit can be serviced independently. E.g., in Canadian Maritimes there is a big CANDU, which serves just fine when online, but when it goes offline it needs to be backstopped. Their demands need (say) 'only) 1.2 GW, and instead of 1x1.2GW, having 4x3GW allows for more HA.
  1. roryirvine · 1790868914 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, this is the Rolls Royce sales pitch for their similarly-sized (470 MWe) SMRs - they can be built on the site of decommissioned 1st gen reactors or paired to directly replace old coal-fired plants.
    It might work out reasonably well, depending on how long they take to build and bring into service in practice. It's unclear if it'll be competitive in the medium term with the alternative of just turning those sort of sites over to battery storage, but it's probably worth a try.
    throw0101c · 1790887668 · focus · HN ↗
    > If it can be done quickly enough (RR claim 4 years) then it'd be a useful fillip while the renewable buildout is ongoing and the system is still grid-constrained.
    Japan managed to begin a new (BWR/PWR) nuclear reactor build and have it in commercial operation in ~5 years:
    * <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_reactors#Japan" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...
    They did this every year beginning in 1980 up to 2004. Economies of scale and production efficiencies are applicable to nuclear reactors as much as widgets.
exabrial · 1790779787 · focus · HN ↗
Hell yes!
PowerElectronix · 1790780599 · focus · HN ↗
What a waste of money, manpower and space.
1. nsxwolf · 1790780632 · focus · HN ↗
  Why do you say so?
  1. allears · 1790783669 · focus · HN ↗
    Here's a quote from everybody's favorite AI:
    The most useful comparison: cost per MWh
    Rather than comparing construction bills directly, levelized cost of energy (LCOE) incorporates construction, financing, operating expenses, fuel, and the amount of electricity produced.
    Lazard's 2026 estimates are approximately:
    Utility solar: $40–$88/MWh Utility solar + storage: $61–$105/MWh Nuclear: $141–$276/MWh
    These are unsubsidized estimates and represent a range of project assumptions rather than guaranteed costs. Lazard specifically notes that its nuclear estimate is based on the publicly available costs of Vogtle 3 and 4, while its solar-plus-storage figure incorporates both generation and storage.
    killerstorm · 1790787160 · focus · HN ↗
    There's not much sun in the northern areas in winter. Storage might cover 12 hours worth of usage, not 6 months of usage, including all the heating.
    PowerElectronix · 1790798059 · focus · HN ↗
    The northern areas are closer to the equator than half of europe, where sun power seems to do just fine all year round.
    killerstorm · 1790801482 · focus · HN ↗
    ?
    Are you confusing "uses solar power" with "could rely solely on solar power"?
    And norther areas of what, exactly? I mean that there are areas where nuclear power would be useful (as it can displace coal/natgas).
  2. PowerElectronix · 1790798880 · focus · HN ↗
    Nuclear is a dead end. The technology is dangerous, a terrorist/war target, extremely expensive, makes you dependant of uranium producers and enriching facilities (or, facility as we are not buying from China or Russia), requires a source of water to cool the exit steam back to water to be pumped into the reactor so you are also dependent on the weather, and leaves you with nuclear waste in custody for centuries.
    For the same money you can install solar and storage for more than twice the power, way lower maintenance, no nuclear waste left after the business and can produce power from dawn till dusk without needing the favor of uranium exporters or a river nearby.
idontwantthis · 1790784321 · focus · HN ↗
A nuclear power plant is essentially a coal power plant with free fuel. Today, if you literally built a coal power plant with free fuel it would not be cheaper than solar. My question: If you built a small modular coal power plant, would that be cheaper than solar? It necessarily has to be cheaper than nuclear.
1. bpodgursky · 1790785161 · focus · HN ↗
  When I google "what percent of a coal plant operations is cost of fuel" the response is:
  > The cost of fuel typically accounts for 70% to 75% of a running coal-fired power plant's variable operating expenses.
  I'm not going to do deep research here but it sounds pretty right. And I don't think solar is 4x cheaper than coal yet, especially solar + battery to spread out the load over non producing hours.
  1. idontwantthis · 1790787359 · focus · HN ↗
    Your assumption isn't right and I suggest you do do the research. New solar plus storage is competitive with existing coal, and is much cheaper than building new coal.
2. vablings · 1790785994 · focus · HN ↗
  A nuclear power plant is a coal power plant except.
  It has incredibly strict requirements for safety, we are talking SOP & Risk assesment for climbing up a 3ft ladder
  There is a requirement for literally thousands of pounds of concrete to shield the reactor
  The employees have to be highly qualified and trained.
  The construction materials have to be validated, tested certified and then tested again during install to ensure conformance.
  You must deal with spent fuel
  They are not the same and cannot be retrofitted eitherways
  1. idontwantthis · 1790786845 · focus · HN ↗
    That's my point I'm trying to find a good argument for why modular nuclear is a good idea.
    Can modular coal (which doesn't need all of that) beat solar? If not, then I don't know why modular nuclear would be able to.
    vablings · 1790787233 · focus · HN ↗
    Modular nuclear is a great idea, sadly right now and in the foreseeable future solar is absolutely king in terms of cost/kWH, we should build what makes sense for our needs with regards to power in the USA then worry about other tech later considering the state of our grid.
    idontwantthis · 1790787403 · focus · HN ↗
    But why is it a great idea if solar provides more power, more cheaply without any danger whatsoever?
    bobthebuilders · 1790787528 · focus · HN ↗
    Solar gives power in the wrong time, making the duck curve a thing, and requiring conflict prone minerals storing dangerous amount of powers to smooth out. On net, this is probably worth it, but solar isn't free as you claim.
    jonah · 1790787983 · focus · HN ↗
    There are so many other methods aside from lithium batteries for grid scale energy storage.
    One of my favorites is pumped storage hydro.
    <a href="https://www.energy.gov/cmei/water/pumped-storage-hydropower" rel="nofollow">https://www.energy.gov/cmei/water/pumped-storage-hydropower
    unrented7977 · 1790795712 · focus · HN ↗
    Pumped hydro is fantastically expensive, not all that efficient, and only works with extremely specific (and rare, aiui) geography. It also comes with the same ecological disasters as dams, displacing entire ecosystems or towns and producing a ton of methane emissions from the now-submerged and decaying plant life.
    There's no such thing as a free lunch.
    crote · 1790842714 · focus · HN ↗
    A lot of the duck curve can be solved by tiny changes on the demand side. Uranium isn't exactly conflict-free either. Grid storage can also be done with sodium ion batteries or iron redox batteries - even better than the current EV-spinoff lithium ones.
    Sure, solar isn't free, but most of the problems it faces aren't exactly insurmountable. In fact, we are already seeing those solutions being deployed in the world - mostly for economic reasons.
    viraptor · 1791110739 · focus · HN ↗
    > and requiring conflict prone minerals storing dangerous amount of powers to smooth out
    Sodium batteries are available these days. No rare minerals, non-flammable, almost fully recyclable.
    kayfox · 1790792553 · focus · HN ↗
    It can provide power when solar and wind are not generating, and while doing so also provide base generation that allows the grid to be robust against fluctuations in solar and wind.
    dalyons · 1790801867 · focus · HN ↗
    except it cant do that without going bankrupt. Nuke power costs too much, you have to be selling it at 100% 24x7 to have any chance of paying back the capex.
3. legulere · 1790786018 · focus · HN ↗
  Uranium mining, milling, conversion, enrichment and fuel fabrication are all not free.
  Because of protection from radioactive radiation, you have higher costs handling anything in a nuclear reactor compared to a coal plant. Then you have the issue of runaway nuclear reactions, hydrogen buildup etc.
  1. idontwantthis · 1790786897 · focus · HN ↗
    See reply above. That's my point.
    By "free" I mean that you need so little fuel over the lifetime of the reactor the cost is negligible compared to all the other extensive costs of building and managing the plant.
4. GeoAtreides · 1790788016 · focus · HN ↗
  There are between 6 to 9 orders of magnitude difference between coal energy and nuclear energy... and between 4 to 5 orders of magnitude difference on waste generation
5. BugsJustFindMe · 1790797103 · focus · HN ↗
  The comparison to solar is incomplete, because nuclear and coal aren't sunlight-dependent. You need to compare solar + energy storage. I know that solar generation is cheaper. Is it still cheaper with storage?
  1. dalyons · 1790802048 · focus · HN ↗
    the answer to your question is a quick google away, plenty of studies. the answer is roughly;
    yes solar+storage is cheaper than new coal
    maybe solar+storage is cheaper than existing coal, they are similar, depends where you are
    yes solar+storage is (much) cheaper than new nukes
    no solar+storage is cheaper than old paid off nukes
  2. iknowstuff · 1790870528 · focus · HN ↗
    Nuclear costs $16B/GW
    Solar $1B/GW. $1B buys 5GWh of storage.
    You do the math
6. mpweiher · 1790850855 · focus · HN ↗
  You need to take into account
  a) backup/firming, both day/night and seasonal.
  b) lifetime of plant.
  c) land use.
  1. ViewTrick1002 · 1790853438 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  2. ViewTrick1002 · 1790854588 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  3. [deleted] · 1790927889 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  4. ViewTrick1002 · 1790927957 · focus · HN ↗
    That’s exactly why I prefer whole-system modelling over simple LCOE comparisons. Backup, seasonal balancing, transmission, lifetime and integration costs all need to be accounted for.
    What I find interesting is that the system studies I’ve been looking at, from Australia to Denmark and Finland, still don’t find new nuclear improving the least-cost outcome.
    And they’re not assuming another Vogtle, Flamanville or Hinkley. They generally give nuclear much more optimistic NOAK or adjusted future costs.
    So I’m curious: what system-cost study are you relying on that reaches the opposite conclusion?
throwaway2037 · 1790811686 · focus · HN ↗
First, the Wiki page[1] for this reactor design has so little technical information. Frankly, it is a disappointing. For example, no where on the page does it explain that "300" means 300MW nameplate capacity. I had to Google for that info.
The canary in the coal mine is already happening in Canada.
From Wiki: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BWRX-300#Canada" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BWRX-300#Canada
```
    &gt; On December 1, 2021, Ontario Power Generation (OPG) selected the BWRX-300 SMR for use at the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station.  The final investment decision in May 2025 to proceed with the build of a BWRX-300 was based on a forecast cost of Canadian $7.7 billion (US$5.6 billion), with an estimated cost of Canadian $13.2 billion (US$9.6 billion) for the three further units on the same site.
```
Yikes. Estimated cost of 15.2B USD for 1200MW of capacity. I am taking bets: How much will this project overrun its estimates? My guess: 25-50%. I don't get it. Why are these better than just building one big reactor with 1000MW+ of capacity?
Also, it looks like Darlington Nuclear Generating Station originally planned to build 4x 1200MV Advanced CANDU reactors. These were cancelled and replaced with a plan to build 4x BWRX-300 reactors.
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BWRX-300" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BWRX-300
1. 486sx33 · 1790812837 · focus · HN ↗
  [dead]
2. newsclues · 1790813481 · focus · HN ↗
  <a href="https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1006993/ontario-delivers-darlington-refurbishment-project-ahead-of-schedule-and-under-budget" rel="nofollow">https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1006993/ontario-delivers-...
  Canadian nuclear industry is very good.
  1. api · 1790813810 · focus · HN ↗
    When I read about how CANDU (heavy water moderated reactor) works I started wondering why we ever build any other kind of large scale reactor.
    Runs on natural uranium. Can burn waste too, and plutonium, and even thorium. It’s like a flex fuel reactor. It’s very safe and reliable.
    Why do we bother with any other design? Except maybe fast breeders or fission fusion hybrids but those are whole new directions.
    throwaway2037 · 1790814001 · focus · HN ↗
    It can also be continually refuelled without shutting down.
    thisislife2 · 1790838485 · focus · HN ↗
    One design limitation that I have heard about it is that is can be used as source for weapons grade Plutonium for nuclear weapons development. Both the CIRUS and CANDU reactors supplied to India and Pakistan, respectively, in the 1960s and 1970s, were used in the nuclear weapons program of both countries. Canada specifically requested Pakistan to not use the Plutonium it derives from the CANDU research reactor, but it declined after yet another war with India where it was trounced badly. India even went on to customise the CANDU reactor clones it developed to even produce Tritium, as a by-product, from it ( <a href="https://ccnr.org/india_tritium.html" rel="nofollow">https://ccnr.org/india_tritium.html ) which apparently is important to develop hydrogen bombs and increase the yield of nuclear weapons in general.
    philipallstar · 1790852575 · focus · HN ↗
    > Canada specifically requested Pakistan to not use the Plutonium it derives from the CANDU research reactor, but it declined
    This is the most Canada and Pakistan thing in history.
    throw0101c · 1790857483 · focus · HN ↗
    > One design limitation that I have heard about it is that is can be used as source for weapons grade Plutonium for nuclear weapons development.
    Which nuclear reactor technology, whether it uses natural or enriched uranium, cannot potentially be used for weapons development? AIUI, anything that starts with uranium leads to or through plutonium.
    api · 1790858127 · focus · HN ↗
    Isn't that true of a lot of reactor designs though? You can produce plutonium in a BWR, PWR, etc.
    leonidasrup · 1790863266 · focus · HN ↗
    You can also synthesize plutonium in particle accelerators without a nuclear reactor, but only in very small quantities and very slowly.
    " Plutonium (specifically, plutonium-238) was first produced, isolated, and then chemically identified between December 1940 and February 1941 by Glenn T. Seaborg, Edwin McMillan, Emilio Segrè, Joseph W. Kennedy, and Arthur Wahl by deuteron bombardment of uranium in the 60-inch (150 cm) cyclotron at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. "
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Discovery" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium#Discovery
    There are interesting designs for Subcritical reactors. A nuclear fission reactor operating without achieving criticality, but with additional neutrons from a particle accelerator.
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subcritical_reactor" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subcritical_reactor
    pfdietz · 1790876877 · focus · HN ↗
    Cyclotrons are poorly suited to making plutonium. The neutrons per energy increases dramatically with higher energy particles; a 1 GeV beam of protons on a thick uranium target makes 60 neutrons per proton. The nuclear reaction here is called "spallation", where the protons shatter nuclei into many fragments, including free neutrons.
    leonidasrup · 1790884413 · focus · HN ↗
    "On August 20, 1942, a trace quantity of this element was isolated and measured for the first time. About 50 micrograms of plutonium-239 combined with uranium and fission products was produced and only about 1 microgram was isolated."
    So small were the amounts of early produced plutonium, than new methods to study it had to be used.
    <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ultramicrochemistry/" rel="nofollow">https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ultramicrochemist...
    Of course we have now military plutonium production reactors.
    pfdietz · 1790909364 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, they had to do it that way, because they had no better way at the time.
    Today, if you wanted to make Pu with an accelerator you'd use energies nearly 2 orders of magnitude higher. At such high energy, the particles lose energy mostly in nuclear collisions, not to ionization.
    newsclues · 1790849215 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/decouple/id1516526694?i=1000756149587" rel="nofollow">https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/decouple/id1516526694?...
    Found this podcast on the topic to be interesting
  2. throwaway2037 · 1790814220 · focus · HN ↗
    I agree. For their entire history of building and operating commercial reactors, they have only built CANDU variants. In this regard, yes, they are spectacular. However, this is a brand new non-CANDU design.
3. john01dav · 1790836675 · focus · HN ↗
  > Yikes. Estimated cost of 15.2B USD for 1200MW of capacity. I am taking bets: How much will this project overrun its estimates? My guess: 25-50%. I don't get it. Why are these better than just building one big reactor with 1000MW+ of capacity?
  It's my understanding that they want to be able to mass produce these kinds of smaller reactors, to drive the cost down over time.
  So, the 1st one isn't competitive. But, hopefully, the 100th or 1,000th will be.
  1. throwaway2037 · 1790863052 · focus · HN ↗
    Please review this comment after 5, 10, 15, 20 years. I doubt that Planet Earth will have 1,000 SMRs built by this time, nor will the 1,000th be wildly cheaper than the 1st.
    xattt · 1790864381 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    throwaway2037 · 1791129117 · focus · HN ↗
    My hot take: They should have built 2+ CANDU 9 reactors. Multiple installations already exist, and it is a very good design.
4. Tade0 · 1790846466 · focus · HN ↗
  Also, at 300MW it isn't exactly small - that's the same order of magnitude as regular reactors.
  Anyway 30% is my number, but the more pressing issue is time. How long until they actually fire it up?
  1. throwaway2037 · 1791129205 · focus · HN ↗
    > Also, at 300MW it isn't exactly small
    For a major, modern commercial powerplant (coal, gas, nuclear), yes, it is small.
5. pfdietz · 1790876714 · focus · HN ↗
  > Also, it looks like Darlington Nuclear Generating Station originally planned to build 4x 1200MV Advanced CANDU reactors. These were cancelled and replaced with a plan to build 4x BWRX-300 reactors.
  <a href="https://www.theenergymix.com/rip-smrs-is-it-the-end-of-the-line-for-small-modular-nuclear-reactors/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theenergymix.com/rip-smrs-is-it-the-end-of-the-l...
  > Despite the public spending largesse, and after heroic promotional efforts by Ontario Power Generation and the federal and Ontario governments, there are no reports of private investment in the Darlington SMR—not even after Prime Minister Mark Carney’s high-profile Canada Investment Summit last week—and none have been ordered in Canada or elsewhere.
pfdietz · 1790875373 · focus · HN ↗
In other news, SMRs appear to be fading away in Canada.
RIP SMRs: Is It the End of the Line for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors? [in Canada]
<a href="https://www.theenergymix.com/rip-smrs-is-it-the-end-of-the-line-for-small-modular-nuclear-reactors/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theenergymix.com/rip-smrs-is-it-the-end-of-the-l...

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