Nuclear SMR welding breakthrough: A year's work now takes a day

Re:Nuclear SMR welding breakthrough: A year's work now takes... by jszymborski on Wednesday February 21, 2024 @01:43PM (#39457735)

SMRs feel like a much worse target from what I understand.

I'm no expert, but my understanding

1) SMRs are typically designed to be walk-away safe. Their smaller capacity means its harder for them to go critical in a spectacular way. [0]

2) Distributed targets are hard to respond to, but they're also hard to hit in an impactful way. Instead of having to hit one giant nuclear plant which supplies an entire regions energy, you have to hit many much smaller targets which supply much less energy.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/01/24/can-we-ma...

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Re:Nuclear SMR welding breakthrough: A year's work now takes... by Retric on Wednesday February 21, 2024 @01:56PM (#39457934)

Getting it critical is a long way from the worst thing you can do with access to one or more SMR.

However, nobody is going to be using these things individually. You still need a steam turbine, and cooling tower etc. So the general assumption is people will be using 10+ of these things and the added complexity would be offset by economies of scale.

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