Re:Nuclear SMR welding breakthrough: A year's work now takes...
by jillesvangurp on Thursday February 22, 2024 @02:41AM
(#39464320)
It's a good thing to call out. The short version of this is that nuclear proponents are a bit hand wavy on this topic and that there is no good plan for this; nor any economical modeling worth talking about.
But there's no such thing as nuclear power deployed on an insecure location. At best you have nuclear plants on very remote or hard to reach sites where the security is a bit minimal. But essentially all existing nuclear is the subject of intense and costly security. Under current non proliferation treaties, that's neither optional nor likely to change any time soon.
Logically that means co-locating small nuclear plants on larger sites is the most cost effective way to secure them. That's something people have speculated about. The most suitable locations for that would be existing nuclear plants and decommissioned coal plants. Of course if you do that, you need to compare the efficiency of having lots of small reactors in one place and compare it to having 1 big reactor in the same place. Big reactors tend to be more efficient.
The notion that you can just fedex these things to wherever, plop them down and then check back in 30 years is a bit naive. That's not how it works in the real world. People deploying these things are going to be on the spot for securing them at a non zero cost. 24x7 for life time of the reactor and the waste.
Total cost of ownership is not limited to production and shipping (also needs security) but also has to include inspections, day to day operations, site security, waste disposal, handling, and security. (though that is commonly excluded and off-loaded on future generations of course), etc.
If you exclude all those things the cost per kwh looks more rosy than it is. The real cost is something most nuclear proponents avoid talking about simply because it generally looks pretty bad. But somebody still has to pay for that.
But there's no such thing as nuclear power deployed on an insecure location. At best you have nuclear plants on very remote or hard to reach sites where the security is a bit minimal. But essentially all existing nuclear is the subject of intense and costly security. Under current non proliferation treaties, that's neither optional nor likely to change any time soon.
Logically that means co-locating small nuclear plants on larger sites is the most cost effective way to secure them. That's something people have speculated about. The most suitable locations for that would be existing nuclear plants and decommissioned coal plants. Of course if you do that, you need to compare the efficiency of having lots of small reactors in one place and compare it to having 1 big reactor in the same place. Big reactors tend to be more efficient.
The notion that you can just fedex these things to wherever, plop them down and then check back in 30 years is a bit naive. That's not how it works in the real world. People deploying these things are going to be on the spot for securing them at a non zero cost. 24x7 for life time of the reactor and the waste.
Total cost of ownership is not limited to production and shipping (also needs security) but also has to include inspections, day to day operations, site security, waste disposal, handling, and security. (though that is commonly excluded and off-loaded on future generations of course), etc.
If you exclude all those things the cost per kwh looks more rosy than it is. The real cost is something most nuclear proponents avoid talking about simply because it generally looks pretty bad. But somebody still has to pay for that.