One has been approved by the NRC.
It’s a safer design than the traditional reactors, but I’d still like to see more innovative ones. But even this will beat the hell out of “renewables.”
27 thoughts on “Modular Nukes”
Comments are closed.
One has been approved by the NRC.
It’s a safer design than the traditional reactors, but I’d still like to see more innovative ones. But even this will beat the hell out of “renewables.”
Comments are closed.
I’m curious if this design could be used in naval vessels. The US Navy surface fleet could (IMO) really use a nuclear cruiser, but cost and complexity has limited surface nukes to carriers for the most part.
Reactors derived from naval vessels got us into this pickle.
I don’t think the power density achieved with the natural-convection cooling of this thing meets the shipboard propulsion specs.
Could be good for running weapons systems.
I think, according to Kirk Sorensen, the Navy took a look at liquid fluoride designs due to their simplicity, potentially low cost, and high power density, as a nuclear propulsion system that might even work affordably in destroyers.
Their real worry was that the Chinese might be thinking the same thing, becoming a true blue water navy, and force them to respond in kind.
Didn’t the Russians run a liquid fluoride reactor in one of its subs?
They ran a lead bismuth reactor in their Alfa class submarines, while the US tried a sodium cooled reactor. So far as I know, the only two fluoride reactors were the one in Oak Ridge and the US Air Force flying reactor experiment.
Agreed. Admiral Rickover’s demand for water-moderated reactors set the whole nuclear energy business back decades.
What other alternative reactor design? Only HTGR’s come to mind…?
/\ When the BWR’s and PWR’s became mainline technology, I mean.
This design is 75 feet tall, so doubtful it will fit in any ships.
So, you could put this in a Mars lake?
One of these would take the place of 12.5 Vestas V150 wind turbines, with their 492 foot diameter, 463,000 pound rotors. Except the nuke would run 100% of the time, whereas the V150s average 30 to 40%, depending on location. And the nuke would be infinitely safer.
If only we’d dump that stupid virtue-signalling policy of Carter’s, and resume reprocessing “spent” fuel, nuclear would be a genuine renewable energy source.
Plus one to that!
Plus two to that!
Plus three to that.
Seems to me much of the long lived nuclear waste “problem” is caused by NOT reprocessing. Carter truly was a fool.
–Do you believe nuclear power should be an option as we transition to alternative energy sources?–
What are the alternative energy sources?
I will make a list.
More use of solar energy in Earth orbit.
More use of solar energy in our solar system {other than Earth surface}. Ie, solar energy should work in Venus atmosphere, on Mercury, on the Moon, on Mars surface, and anywhere in solar system in open space out to Main Asteroid Belt.
2] harvesting orbital energy. Ie, hydrodam type thing of water imported to Moon. Transferring orbital energy some other way, such using mechanical tethers.
3] using geothermal energy of ocean floor volcanoes
4} mining ocean methane hydrates
5] fusion energy??
What else? Oh, yeah:
Wind power in Venus.
We have no shortage of hydrogen and methane in space, not a lot of oxygen {not already oxidized} so can’t really count that as energy source unless using in an atmosphere with oxygen {like Earth}.
what else? {other than nuclear fission which would better to use in space, as compared with on the Earth surface- and is large part of Earth geothermal energy]
Nuclear power is a renewable resource, in the form of fast breeder reactors. It can supply all of the energy we need for thousands of years, with far less environmental impact than solar, wind, or hydroelectric. It isn’t a “transition” source of energy. It is the source of energy for an advanced civilization. Solar, wind (but I repeat myself), biomass, etc, etc, are dilute, resource-hogging, non-renewable sources of energy befitting a hunter-gatherer “civilization.”
“It isn’t a “transition” source of energy. It is the source of energy for an advanced civilization.”
Yes, roughly agree with you about idea of nuclear fission being labeled as “transition” source of energy. I think it will be used for the foreseeable future- if not, forever.
I tend to think US should preparing to double the amount nuclear power {currently 19%} within 2 decades. But I would not suggest it’s the only power source the US should use {within two decade or within a far future but should focus on dramatically increasing it}. I think countries with high level of air pollution should be more eager to get an even large portion of energy from nuclear power. And also countries which lack enough energy options.
And it seems we going need more energy to deal all the waste from these useless “green alternative energy” which don’t generate useful energy and are obviously a waste of tax dollars.
I like nuclear and I also like geothermal for 24/7 dispatchable power sources.
When you take a deeper dive into wind and solar, esp. the environmental cost of ugly hillsides, maintenance headaches and dead migratory birds for wind, along with the mining and CO2 generated to produce solar panels and their requisite backup battery systems, it looks a whole lot less “green”.
One Michael Moore got right:
Caution: Long but well worth the watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE
The problem is perception. In the book “The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear” the author Petr Beckmann, comes to the sad conclusion that people in general are just not happy with technology that, while extremely safe in terms of failure probabilities also have enormous damage potential when they do fail.
I can see where this design might help as it is smaller, but I’d like to see the “worst case scenario” to see if it’s going to fly as a realistic alternative power source.
I’m not arguing your point. Merely pointing out that, so far, what I’ve seen as the worst case scenario is +6C of global warming. Not that I believe that. Nor do I believe it is impossible to devise a fail-safe nuclear reactor as least in terms of operation vs sabotage. A chemical plant is also subject to these criteria with outcomes just as bad, Bhopal, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
Dam failures can also be extremely destructive.
The French have a submarine reactor that produces 48 MW for 30 years without refueling. Rickover demanded we use water-moderated sub reactors for many reasons, one of which was if it ran away, it would end up on the bottom of a very large heat sink, where it would sit, boiling away, harmlessly, until it ran out of fuel. Make it fool-proof, and after a while, no one would even know it was there. Build hundreds of these things along the coasts and shorelines, under water, and the profits could build you enough wind turbines and solar panels to keep all the enviros happy.
It would be easier to build on land and thorium or even modular PBRs would be better. Heck, the Chinese built a PBR that was impossible to put into melt-down, even when removing all power to the reactor.
But I get the sense that small fusion reactors aren’t that far off. Clark Lindsey used to monitor those advancements on his blog.
Helium-3 mined from the Moon.
For warship use? When in doubt, run the numbers.
60 megawatts is roughly 80,000 hp. A 9000-ton Burke-class destroyer has 100,000 hp of gas turbines installed. So, put one of these nukes in a 7000 ton destroyer? Let’s look at the mass involved next… NuScale says ~700 tons shipped dry from the factory, but the whole thing is run submerged in water. 4.5 meters diameter, 23 meters long, roughly cylindrical. That’s roughly 360 cubic meters. Guestimate ~2/3rds that volume of water, and that’s another ~300 tons, for a thousand tons total.
But this thing also requires steam generators, turbines, gearboxes, condensors. BUT, it’s also replacing the mass of fuel and tankage the destroyer would otherwise have carried, many hundreds of tons.
So, maybe. Might take some design tinkering (which the current USN ship designers might well turn into yet another multi-$billion rolling fiaso. But I digress.)
But it could certainly run something like a large container ship or tanker, where the mass and volume would be lost in the noise, and the fuel savings could add up for a lot of years.
U.S.S. Enterprise had 8 reactors. U.S.S. Nimitz has two, as does every carrier built since the Nimitz. All of our subs except one or two have one reactor each. Don’t think we can’t do it. The Navy has been doing it continuously, safely, reliably, and at high power for going on 60 years now. The holdup is not technological, it’s bureaucratic.