Re:Nuclear-fusion reactor doubles record for energy made fro...
by panick21_ on Thursday February 24, 2022 @07:31AM
(#30453911)
Exactly, capital cost of large civil engineering project and the financing of that is actually the driver of the cost.
If you can build a nuclear plant with 500MW output and reduce the amount of concrete needed by significant factor, all of a sudden your are quite competitive.
Just for comparison, this is one of the furthest along commercial GenIV projects designs:
No massive cooling towers. No gigantic containment cylinder. No gigantic low-pressure steam turbine.
In a PWR the core containment vessel is incredibly expensive and can only be built a few places, but its actually not the cost driver. Even so, compare to those, modern GenIV core vessels are vastly cheaper.
Not having to weld 8 inch gigantic steel vessels is far easier. See:
If you can build a nuclear plant with 500MW output and reduce the amount of concrete needed by significant factor, all of a sudden your are quite competitive.
Just for comparison, this is one of the furthest along commercial GenIV projects designs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pZC_ajI8Hs
No massive cooling towers. No gigantic containment cylinder. No gigantic low-pressure steam turbine.
In a PWR the core containment vessel is incredibly expensive and can only be built a few places, but its actually not the cost driver. Even so, compare to those, modern GenIV core vessels are vastly cheaper.
Not having to weld 8 inch gigantic steel vessels is far easier. See:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OgTgV3Kq49U/maxresdefault.jpg