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For the first time, U.S. officials have approved a small nuclear power plant design.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission [(NRC)] on Friday approved Portland-based NuScale Power's application for the small modular reactor that Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems plans to build at a U.S. Department of Energy site in eastern Idaho.
The small reactors can produce about 60 megawatts of energy, or enough to power more than 50,000 homes. The proposed project includes 12 small modular reactors. The first would be built in 2029, with the rest in 2030.
NuScale says the reactors have advanced safety features, including self-cooling and automatic shutdown.
"This is a significant milestone not only for NuScale, but also for the entire U.S. nuclear sector and the other advanced nuclear technologies that will follow," said NuScale Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Hopkins in a statement.
The cooperative pushing the effort will next need to submit an application to the NRC for a combined construction and operating license and expects this to be ready within two years.
Also at Ars Technica.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday September 04 2020, @11:58AM (3 children)
That's better than fusion by half, twice as likely to actually happen. (2x0 = what?)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday September 04 2020, @03:44PM
Wait, is that the new math, isn't the answer always 2 or was it 5? No, no, 3 sir! 3! Wait, no, I think this one is a trick question.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by bussdriver on Saturday September 05 2020, @05:19AM (1 child)
A small one can only make a small problem right??
But seriously, this 50k is BS. It should handle 300k at night and to help charge of the grid batteries; not be the sole power source. Hell, let them compete on the grid along with everything else and take away the subsidies and watch it die before it can begin. This is not going to be profitable without tons of graft; I don't think going smaller isn't going to help much.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday September 05 2020, @12:14PM
50K is fine, hell I'd like to see neighborhood scale capsules that only supply 5K homes - in a city+burbs of 1M people you'd have 200-250 capsules distributed across the region. Our local 1M population is spread across ~1000 sq mi, so that would be one capsule every 4 square miles on average (more in the dense areas, less in the rural spaces), so your transmission lines would only need to be a couple of miles from source to consumer, less than a mile in the urban areas. Knocking the grid offline should be damn near impossible with that much redundancy.
Now, when we all start driving electric everythings, those batteries are basically going to need a 100% grid capacity upgrade to handle the "just got home, need to charge up before we go out tonight" surge (unless we end up WFH permanently due to COVID). The grid should also transform to take advantage of the battery capacity online to bank solar or whatever other "pulse" power sources are available - that's more than just slapping an inverter into every garage.
But, with a capsule installed for every 5K homes - those capsules are going to have to be basically 100% self secure without human attendants. Maybe train (and fund) the local police to adequately respond to tamper calls - video monitoring should be able to cut down on prank triggering of the cop callouts, but still there's an issue if 1000 people "flash mob" the city's capsules all at once (using 4 man teams) it will be hard to tell which ones have the real potential to jack-hammer through 2' of poured concrete before the cops get there.
🌻🌻 [google.com]