Designs chosen for mini nuclear reactors
Designs chosen for mini nuclear reactors
First contracts for next generation of nuclear power to be awarded next summer
The next stage of the process will see companies able to bid for Government contracts with successful bids from the six going to contract award stage next summer.
Next summer is soon
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What is the benefit of smaller reactors? It seems like they would be worse in just about every way? Wouldn't smaller reactors be less efficient as you need more sites/material/personnel to generate the same power? Wouldn't needing more sites also make logistics and regulatory approval more difficult?
Economies of scale in construction and disposal. Ease of transportation. Modularity. Manufacturers can have better oversight of them, and design flaws can be found and fixed easier when you have, say, 1000 production articles as opposed to 4 articles.
Plus, if you put six of them together in a 2x3 configuration, you get a massive power output multiplier (source: Factorio)
Great call on the source - solar just doesn't scale like nuclear does!
benefits? reactor assemblies can be built in a factory.
worse in every way? no.
more sites, more logistics? no. multiple small reactors are installed at the same site
A nuclear reactor is the part of a nuclear plant that generates steam from the radioactive materials.
NuScale's plan, for example, is to build a pre-fabricated reactor you can ship via truck to the plant. You put it in a deep pool, and add some piping to connect it to your steam turbine, and you've got a power plant.
It's modular, in that you can put many nuclear reactors in your pool. You can hook them up to whatever steam turbine you want. You don't necessarily need more sites, you can have one site with more reactors.
The advantages of the design is better passive emergency safety, centralized building of the most complex parts, and the ability to build smaller plants for smaller cities.
Additionally, there's been some discussion refurbishing old coal plants with small modular reactors; you'd basically replace the old coal furnace with a new pool of SMRs, hooking the steam to the old turbines and other infrastructure. Honestly, I'll beleive it when I see it.