An Oregon energy startup has a modular nuclear power reactor 1/100th the size of a traditional reactor and is supposedly far safer. The reactors can be installed in multiples to scale up or down to a location’s power needs.
Tiny, Simple Nuclear Reactor That Could Change Energy
NUSCALE
Traditional U.S. nuclear plants are reaching end of life, and the technology is simply outdated. An energy startup in Oregon wants us to rethink our reluctance to embrace nuclear energy, Wired reports. NuScale Power studies new reactor technology from a lab on the Oregon State University campus—the same university where the 2019 climate crisis petition began. Their cutting-edge reactor is tiny and, its proponents insist, much safer than our existing notions of nuclear energy lead us to believe.
The oldest operating U.S. nuclear power reactor opened in 1969, and even the newest powered on in the mid-1990s. One completed in 2016, started construction back in 1973. “Only two new reactors are under construction in the U.S., but they’re billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule,” Wired reports.
Like our aging and increasingly dangerous infrastructure, these nuclear plants need to be comprehensively updated or replaced, and soon.
Even so, nuclear power accounts for two-thirds of the United States’s total renewable power output, meaning any reactor that reaches end of life can significantly reduce our amount of renewable energy. NuScale’s next generation nuclear reactor is tiny by comparison to today’s operating reactors in the U.S. It’s safe to install in clusters according to the power needs of a specific area, and because of its tiny size, these reactors are much easier to encase in safety devices and contain in the event of an emergency.
There are regulatory differences, too. A demonstrably safer nuclear plant wouldn’t need to be built ten miles or more outside of its service area. In fact, the existing regulatory process and paradigm is based on huge reactors that are all going to age out of the system soon. Once new technologies begin to receive approval, regulators can begin to convert or even sundown existing plants and reduce the overall risk.
In the NuScale reactor, a core is kept cool by circulating normal fresh water, as happens in today’s operating nuclear plants on a much, much larger scale. Inside huge nuclear towers, most of the space is dedicated to cooling. The NuScale reactor uses gravity and buoyancy to naturally circulate the cooling water. The size difference is staggering: “About the size of two school buses stacked end to end, you could fit around 100 of them in the containment chamber of a large conventional reactor,” Wired reports. The reactor technology itself isn’t completely different than before, it’s just wildly more efficient and up to date.
The Byron plant generates 2,450 megawatt electrical (MWe) with two gigantic traditional towers. The largest reactors in the world top out at about 8,000 MWe. Each NuScale reactor rates 60 MWe, which sounds small because the reactor is small by design. Plants can install dozens at a time.
Or, even better, our army of about 100 nuclear plants around the U.S. can be turned into 1,000 small plants that provide more local power with less distance to travel. The Byron plant supplies millions of people up to 100 miles away, which has been fine, but local power bleeds less energy in storage, transit, and other overhead energy costs.
The modular nuclear reactors have 12,000 pages of technical information wending its way through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In the meantime, they’re promising a clean, plentiful, cutting-edge energy source they say is just as good as wind and solar without the pitfalls. Only time will tell.
Source: Wired
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John Doran
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2013 book by nuclear PhD engineer Robert Zubrin, who has 9 patents, granted or pending: Merchants of Despair.
Safe & clean nuclear power is demonised by the 1%s fake news MSM, buried under bureaucracy & underfunded by govt’s, who are complicit with the NWO plans for depopulation, de-industrialisation & a World Totalitarian Govt.
JD.
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Paul Savard
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I am skeptic…I know the chinese are on the verge of presenting their own version of “portable sun”…
Hope they test those things better than the 5 G, otherwize, we’ll be cooked (nuclear) and fried (5G)!!
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Shawn Marshall
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We’ve used small reactors in aircraft carriers and submarines for many years. A new modular design placed at or near loads would eliminate the need for new electric transmission lines. If there is any gift the USA could give to the world, especially to developing nations, it is small, fail safe nuclear power plants. That would be real foreign aid that could not be grafted away by charlatans on both sides of the gift. See Joe Biden – prison awaits .- if only the right people testify.
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Al Shelton
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Right on…….Shawn
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Graeme Mochrie
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I read an article about a floating Russian nuclear plant the other day, the first of its type. It is being floated to the north east Arctic and them going to be connected to a town. This give the possibility of bringing power to remote locations along the north coast of Russia. This floating plant is not a one off. The Russians intend to produce many such plants and to sell them to African states and other places which have poor generation capacity.
Nuclear may be about to have a revival, but it may not be the West that provides the technology.
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julian
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Small reactors are not new. Small reliable reactors sit in submarines (US) and run for decades. One was used at McMurdo Base in Antarctica for a while but removed because the site was not maintenance friendly. I have serious concerns about the wisdom of putting a device that creates plutonium in 3rd world countries where any Khaddafi (or Castro or Kim) type dictator with delusions of bossing the planet by holding it hostage could arise. Or even an outfit like ISIS.
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Tom O
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Why did you decide to throw bricks at Khaddafi? He took a nation being held in 3rd world conditions to a 1st world nation that had a better standard of living than many western nations, all through “socialism” and a desire to make his country better. What he did in Libya was incredible, what Europe and the US did in Libya in order to kill him was a travesty, and all the leaders of those nations, including the military leaders that “pulled the triggers,” should be transported to a reinvigorated “Devil’s Island” and left there to rot. And I am not sure how far Castro or Kim could have taken their countries had they been helped instead of sanctioned into near non-existence. I don’t worry about what Kim will do with a few nukes, I worry what a NWO president in the US would do with a few thousand nukes.
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Moffin
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Was it Gaddaffi or oil that took Libya into the first world?
Dissent of the top echelon and populace when there is a lot of money (oil) floating around leads to the curtailment of leaders life expectancy unless those leaders orchestrate some judicious assassinations and spread some of the wealth for the benefit of potential dissenters.
Kim and Castro did not have oil.
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Squidly
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It was the Obozo administration and Killery Klinton that took out Gaddafi [sic], and as is/was most things the Democrats do, whas a huge mistake, especially after making deals with Gaddafi and then violating those agreements with him. Very sad, but typical of the Democrat party.
To glorify “socialism” is asinine stupid. Anyone who shows a shred of sympathy or even support for socialism cannot be taken seriously on any topic. Only someone incredibly stupid or just plain evil can glorify socialism. Your comment sounds as if you approve of Gaddafi’s socialism. If so, you are a retard and should refrain from further comments. I hold ZERO tolerance for anyone supporting or sympathetic to socialism based governments (ie: Communism, etc..) .. I don’t see how any human can be sympathetic to a governmental organization responsible for the systematic torture and slaughter of hundreds of millions of people. Oh, I know, “they just didn’t do it right” .. yeah, because you can’t “do it right” .. by the very nature of socialism (and all other derived forms) it necessarily dictates that you will have to torture and slaughter people. It is by design. Anyone who cannot recognize that at this point is seriously mentally deficient.
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T. C. Clark
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Molren Salts Reactors….MSR…..is the answer. Not uranium fuel rods being cooled by high pressure water. Thorium is much more abundant than uranium….the solid fuel uranium rods only use a small percent of the uranium before replacement is needed…as for the Ruskies…..their only aircraft carrier is not nuclear powered….in fact it is now damaged by a huge fire and will cost $1.5 billion to repair…the portable power unit by the Ruskies is the CA model…stands for Chernobyl Again.
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Tom O
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Again the anti Russian babble. WHEN your MSRs become available instead of obviously not being promoted, rave about them. As for the Russian portable unit, you have no more idea what it is than a monkey does of a Tesla.
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T. C. Clark
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Insults aside….you should visit gordonmcdowell on Youtube and you will discover the future….MSR. I know you are a fanboy of Czar Ras-Putin…..the dictator of Russia.
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Matt Holl
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Greetings T.C.
Thank you for the reference to Gordon McDowell. I appreciate it.
Knowledge is strength. Ignorance is sickness.
Matt
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Squidly
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I absolutely agree with you T.C. …
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Fellows,
What were Admiral Rickover’s nuclear reactors?
Have a good day, Jerry
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T. C. Clark
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The reactors of Rickover were for military use and thus cost was not as much a concern as it is for civilian use. The reactors used steel containment for the high pressures and there was an unlimited amount of water nearby for any extra cooling to prevent a meltdown. Weinberg had a patent for the military design and he was responsible for the MSR design that was built at Oak Ridge Tenn. Weinberg knew the MSR was a better machine for civilian reactors but he was a scientist and not a politician…the politicians made the fateful decisions.
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