US Small-Scale Nuclear Reactor Industry Gains Traction In Missouri 200
trichard writes with this quote from an AP report:
"Ameren Missouri is vying to be the first utility in the country to seek a construction and operating license for a small-scale nuclear reactor, a technology that's appealing to utilities because of the smaller upfront costs and shorter development lead times. The small reactors, about a fourth or less the capacity of full-size nuclear units, are appealing to the nuclear industry because they could be manufactured at a central plant and shipped around the world. By contrast, building nuclear reactors today is a more cumbersome process that must be done largely on site and takes years."
How does the MTBF scale? (Score:5, Interesting)
Small Scale Nuclear Power Plants... (Score:5, Interesting)
have been in use by the U.S. Navy for decades. They've plenty of safety and failure rate data on them, they've got a high safety rating, and they're pretty small. Start mass producing them suckers and they'll be cheap as hell. Start peppering the power grid with them here and there, and soon we'll have clean, virtually unlimited power. Most counties in the country can get by with one, and still have plenty of power to spare which can be sold off to the larger cities that need would more than one.
Not quite true... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's an editorial addition by the submitter - and not part of TFA. And it's not quite right either.
Regardless of the size of the plant, the major machinery is built off-site and shipped to the construction site for installation. What's time consuming and expensive on site (and it's not clear that small reactors escape this) is the labor intensive work of hooking up all the piping, wiring, and ancillary systems for the plant.
What saves time and money in this kind of construction is eliminating building major machinery only on demand, and instead building it at a slow but steady and predictable pace. I.E. if you can negotiate to buy April's production in February of the previous year, you have less capital tied up (and thus pay less interest) than if you had to order your machinery two, three, or four years in advance. Though standardized serial production isn't quite the same as mass production, it has the same benefits to a lesser degree.
Re:How does the MTBF scale? (Score:4, Interesting)
A small reactor in simulations fails about as much as a big reactor, only it can be built to be a tomb if something goes wrong and the worst happens. Look at B&W's mPower modular reactor design, for example.
Weapons grade fuel not a good idea ... (Score:0, Interesting)
Actually, there's no reason at all someone can't just go in, pull out the fuel, and pass it on. That person will die, rather unpleasantly, shortly thereafter, but that's a small price to pay for kilograms of weapons grade uranium. E.g. "You WILL enter the reactor, remove the fuel, and deposit the fuel in this lead box. In return, we will NOT kill all your descendants." Last I heard, weapons grade uranium sold for about US$10,000 per gram, and you only need a few kg to build an atomic bomb. Please think these things through.
The US Navy keeps armed Guards on their reactors 24x7, AND the reactors are inside active duty naval vessels, all of which makes them a fairly hard target. A civilian reactor would be an easy and soft target, and the high black market value of weapons grade uranium would make it a very tempting target. Nope, civilian reactors need to use non-weapons grade fuel, with Thorium preferable to Uranium.
Incidentally, since the topic has come 'round to US Navy Nuclear Reactors, readers should know about Admiral Hyman Rickover, the 'Father of the Nuclear Navy' [wikipedia.org], who personally built the first US Navy Reactors.