A new report has assessed the feasibility of deploying small modular nuclear reactors to meet increasing energy demands around the world. The findings don't look so good for this particular form of energy production.
[T]he report’s executive summary certainly gets to the heart of their findings.
“The rhetoric from small modular reactor (SMR) advocates is loud and persistent: This time will be different because the cost overruns and schedule delays that have plagued large reactor construction projects will not be repeated with the new designs,” says the report. “But the few SMRs that have been built (or have been started) paint a different picture – one that looks startlingly similar to the past. Significant construction delays are still the norm and costs have continued to climb.”
Does anyone know about the technology that nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers use? Why are they able to operate but we can’t use the same technology on land?
I’m pretty sure most military reactors use weapons grade uranium that’s enriched to mid 90%. Countries get sensitive when you start enriching uranium to the mid 90s.
Because military engineers overengineer these things from the most expensive materials available, and they also perform frequent maintenance on them, which is also expensive.
To add to this: A certain type of Soviet submarine used a lead-bismuth alloy as coolant for their reactor. The coolant solidifies at ambient temperature so it had to be heated indefinitely by some way or another or else it solidified and trashed the reactor. I don’t think any of them exist anymore since Russia wasn’t able to afford sustaining the giant navy after the Soviet collapse.
Just goes to show how insane nuclear submarine engineering is, or was at some point.
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Does anyone know about the technology that nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers use? Why are they able to operate but we can’t use the same technology on land?
I’m pretty sure most military reactors use weapons grade uranium that’s enriched to mid 90%. Countries get sensitive when you start enriching uranium to the mid 90s.
Because military engineers overengineer these things from the most expensive materials available, and they also perform frequent maintenance on them, which is also expensive.
To add to this: A certain type of Soviet submarine used a lead-bismuth alloy as coolant for their reactor. The coolant solidifies at ambient temperature so it had to be heated indefinitely by some way or another or else it solidified and trashed the reactor. I don’t think any of them exist anymore since Russia wasn’t able to afford sustaining the giant navy after the Soviet collapse.
Just goes to show how insane nuclear submarine engineering is, or was at some point.
Military budgets. You can use the tech, but no civilian can afford it.
I was a nuclear operator in the Navy. Here are the actual reasons:
There’s more but that’s just off the top of my head
Because if the electricity produced on these vessels was ten times the normal price, it would still be peanuts in the grand scheme of things.