Bill Gates-Backed 345 MWe Advanced Nuclear Reactor Secures Crucial US Approval (interestingengineering.com) 92
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares this article from Interesting Engineering:
Bill Gates-backed TerraPower's innovative Natrium reactor project in Wyoming has cleared a critical federal regulatory hurdle. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has successfully completed its final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the project, known as Kemmerer Unit 1, and found no adverse impacts that would block its construction.
The commission officially recommended that a construction permit be issued to TerraPower subsidiary USO for the facility in Lincoln County.
This announcement marks a significant milestone, making the Natrium project the first-ever advanced commercial nuclear power plant in the country to successfully complete this rigorous environmental review process... The first-of-a-kind design utilizes an 840 MW (thermal) pool-type reactor connected to a molten salt-based energy storage system. This storage technology is the plant's most unique feature. It is designed to keep the base output steady, ensuring constant reliability, but it also allows the plant to function like a massive battery. The system can store heat and boost the plant's output to 500 MWe when demand peaks, allowing it to ramp up power quickly to support the grid. TerraPower says it is the only advanced reactor design with this unique capability. The Natrium plant is strategically designed to replace electricity generation capacity following the planned retirement of existing coal-fired facilities in the region.
While the regulatory process for the nuclear components continues, construction on the non-nuclear portions of the site already began in June 2024. When completed, the Natrium plant is poised to be the first utility-scale advanced nuclear power plant in the United States.
The next step for the construction permit application is a final safety evaluation, which is anticipated by December 31, 2025, according to announcement from TerraPower, which notes that the project is being developed through a public-private partnership with the U.S. Energy Department.
"When completed, the Natrium plant will be the first utility-scale advanced nuclear power plant in the United States."
The commission officially recommended that a construction permit be issued to TerraPower subsidiary USO for the facility in Lincoln County.
This announcement marks a significant milestone, making the Natrium project the first-ever advanced commercial nuclear power plant in the country to successfully complete this rigorous environmental review process... The first-of-a-kind design utilizes an 840 MW (thermal) pool-type reactor connected to a molten salt-based energy storage system. This storage technology is the plant's most unique feature. It is designed to keep the base output steady, ensuring constant reliability, but it also allows the plant to function like a massive battery. The system can store heat and boost the plant's output to 500 MWe when demand peaks, allowing it to ramp up power quickly to support the grid. TerraPower says it is the only advanced reactor design with this unique capability. The Natrium plant is strategically designed to replace electricity generation capacity following the planned retirement of existing coal-fired facilities in the region.
While the regulatory process for the nuclear components continues, construction on the non-nuclear portions of the site already began in June 2024. When completed, the Natrium plant is poised to be the first utility-scale advanced nuclear power plant in the United States.
The next step for the construction permit application is a final safety evaluation, which is anticipated by December 31, 2025, according to announcement from TerraPower, which notes that the project is being developed through a public-private partnership with the U.S. Energy Department.
"When completed, the Natrium plant will be the first utility-scale advanced nuclear power plant in the United States."
Wait until (Score:5, Funny)
slowdown cowboy
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I'm glad this thing is nowhere near me. Wyoming is probably far enough away that when this thing goes supercritical, it won't take out a large chunk of population with it.
When a nuclear reactor goes "supercritical" that just means it is increasing in power. This is a routine process and so hardly something that will damage the reactor. Perhaps you mean "prompt critical" which is what happened at Chernobyl and caused a flash boil of the water in the core. We can look at the Natrium reactor to see why we will not get another Chernobyl from it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The first and perhaps most important distinction between Natrium and the RBMK used at Chernobyl is
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I would be.
The Department of Energy is selling off more than 40,000 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium from the Cold War arsenal to nuclear reactor startups. All of which I’m sure will be thoroughly vetted and monitored, because this is done under the direction of a former board member. Yikes!
Christopher Allen Wright (born January 15, 1965) "12) is an American government official, engineer, and businessman serving as the 17th United States secretary of energy since February 2025. Before leading the U.S. Department of Energy, Wright served as the CEO of Liberty Energy, North America's second largest hydraulic fracturing company, and served on the boards of Oklo, Inc., a nuclear technology company, and EMX Royalty Corp., a Canadian mineral rights and mining rights royalty payment company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Wright [wikipedia.org]
Who IS Oklo, Inc. the "private nuclear reactor builder/operator"? Oklo is Sam Altman:
Trump Administration Providing Weapons Grade Plutonium [futurism.com]
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Trump guts nuclear safety regulations [courthousenews.com]
“The president signed a pair of orders on Friday aimed at streamlining the licensing and construction of nuclear power plants — while panning the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its ‘myopic’ radiation safety standards.”
We now have industry capture of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Who here knows about Admiral Hyman RIckover? All of this is worth reading:
https:/ [wikipedia.org]
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I say less, as that salt is sodium nitrate
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It's not elemental sodium. It's sodium salt, so less poppy boomy.
That's the thermal battery. The reactor core itself is cooled by liquid sodium metal. Sodium is a nice reactor coolant because it only produces one short-lived isotope (which in turn decays to a stable isotope) but it is still literally liquid sodium metal so keeping it dry is essential. Designs that run the sodium metal loop through a water loop to drive a turbine are inherently pretty spicy.
The Natrium design puts a sodium salt as an intermediary -- the sodium metal dumps heat to sodium nitrate, sodium ni
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You're ignorant of nuclear technology, darling, RBMKs are boiling water reactors that aren't pressurized.
The RBMK, like most any boiling water reactor design, is pressurized to about 1000 psi. A pressurized water reactor will run about twice that pressure, something like 2300 psi. Do I need to point you to Wikipedia to see this? Don't trust Wikipedia? The who should we trust on the level of pressure in RBMK reactors? If the RBMK is not pressurized then I'd like to see a source on that.
If you can't get that simple detail correct then why should I trust anything else you claim?
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It'll probably clear out a small City for a 10 years or so like it did with the Fukushima.
They will probably be a few dead engineers and just like Fukushima we will blame those dead engineers and not the CEOs that ignore the engineers when they were warned about the coming disaster.
What's funny is there's some people here right now and they don't know it but
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in about 15 or 20 years they will stop doing maintenance because it's too expensive and there will be a disaster.
The management system won't support the new version of Windows...
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A nuclear reactor BSODs
Or the sitting president decides he didn't like something Gates said.
Maybe we'll get lucky, and the president will BSOD soon.
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Maybe we'll get lucky, and the president will BSOD soon.
Betting it will be while rage-tweeting on the toilet.
I'll feel bad for the Secret Service agents on duty...
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Insert meme of Zapp Branigan saying CYANOTIC! here
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And then what? We get J(ust) D(umb) Vance in his place, a man dumber than Shrub, easier to manipulate than Raygun, more corrupt than Zelinsky, and eager to prove himself more evil than Netanyahoo. The man scares the britches off me.
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And then what? We get J(ust) D(umb) Vance in his place, a man dumber than Shrub, easier to manipulate than Raygun, more corrupt than Zelinsky, and eager to prove himself more evil than Netanyahoo. The man scares the britches off me.
Yes, it'll be dangerous, but at least he doesn't have Trump's charisma and persuasiveness. Maga will sour on him and anytime something goes wrong instead of blaming Biden they'll say "This would never have happened under Trump."
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And none of the populist appeal that makes people listen to Trump, and scares the pants off all the other Republicans lining up to lick those boots.
None of them are going to just fall behind Vance, because they are just as eager to claim the MAGA inheritance as Vance is, and egotistical enough to think they can, just like Vance.
We've seen some people try to out-Trump Trump already (Ramaswamy, DeSantis, etc.) and fail miserably because they seem like smarmy assholes just telling you what you want to hear. T
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A nuclear reactor BSODs slowdown cowboy
That’s just Cherenkov radiation, it’s supposed to be a blue deathy thing.
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This is good (Score:4, Informative)
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They also have the proven propensity to have expensive leaks and fires.
Russians finally just made the steam generating circuit redundant and managed to keep one plant running okay for a few years. All the sodium lovers praise that one outlier as the proof of reliability ... meanwhile the Russians are moving on to lead.
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So if Russia has managed to keep it running "okay for a few years" how is that not proof of reliability?
Seems they're relying on it...
It's like you say that all cars fall apart after 50,000 miles and Toyota doesn't count because they're an "outlier" - sometimes the outlier is built properly and shows you how it should be done.
Re:This is good (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, yes. We had a very sucessful one of these in Germany. Successfully catching fire without anybody in the control room realizing until some sailors from the Rhine called the fire brigade. They were utterly impressed by the burning sodium leaking from the cooling circuit and all the ways it can't be extinguished, It also successfully supported the local construction industry by costing billions more than the generous budget and last but not least successfully never producing a single Watt of output while eating 1,000 DM notes by the kilogram for years. It's still standing around uselessly at the Rhine and will do so for quite a few more years because it's too radioactive for demolition.
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Ah yes. What a useful and intelligent rebuttal. Ignore anything the poster said, just insult Germans. That seems to be your standard M.O. If anyone makes an argument you don't like, just descend into insults. Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for a response to my post [slashdot.org] addressing realistic projections for German CO2 per kWh over the next ten years for electricity generation (and also why electricity generation is only a piece of the CO2 generation pie at present).
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More from you!? I am not going to stop bringing up 19 vs 283.
I've done some more research in the last few days. Apparently German builds were extremely economic along with being among the best plants in the world. Germans not only stopped doing that, but they destroyed the plants their already built. That's dumb.
And I insult Americans too! Don't act like Germans are special. But the nuclear phaseout was extraordinary stupid and will be looked at as shamefull in the coming decades.
And I already g
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More from you!? I am not going to stop bringing up 19 vs 283.
It's not about stopping bringing it up. It's about how that's not any sort of rational argument. Every time anyone asks questions you don't want to answer, you just bug out, but then you come right back with this nonsense, you just never actually have a rational argument you can defend. It's clearly not only myself that recognizes this.
I've done some more research in the last few days. Apparently German builds were extremely economic along with being among the best plants in the world. Germans not only stopped doing that, but they destroyed the plants their already built. That's dumb.
There's something to be said for sunk costs when continued maintenance would only be a fraction of the build costs. A lot of it depends on where in its lifecycle the nuclear
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It's absolutely a rational argument. And if there was a single country/state that has deep decarbonized with solar/wind plus storage you would have mentioned it at this point. That would completely destroy my 19 vs 283 argument. Too bad you do not have a valid example.
A rational person looks at 19 and 283 and concludes nuclear energy is going to be required. Fanatics looks at the number and complain that I am not answering the questions, that I am bugging out, etc, etc.
I also consider that I am might
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It's absolutely a rational argument. And if there was a single country/state that has deep decarbonized with solar/wind plus storage you would have mentioned it at this point. That would completely destroy my 19 vs 283 argument. Too bad you do not have a valid example.
As I have pointed out numerous times, your favored example, France, has _not_ decarbonized. Even if your entire premise had no holes in it (which many posters have pointed out and I'll repeat just one of my points here: what happened to the CO2 from the garbage that France burns for power which is counted for Germany?), you are naively only looking at electricity generation and ignoring that overall, France only has about 30% less CO2 production than Germany per capita. These things and other keep being poi
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As I have pointed out numerous times, your favored example, France, has _not_ decarbonized.
They have deep decarbonized their electrical grid. 19 g CO2 per kWh proves it. Consequently they have the tool(a deep decarbonized eletrical grid) to decarbonize other sectors through electrification.
They are much closer than Germany is.
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That is just electrical generation. Also, please explain your 19 g per kWh figure in light of the fact that France burns garbage to produce electricity? Those numbers are included in the CO2 figure for Germany, why not in the figure for France?
They are much closer than Germany is.
They are about 30% closer. That is closer, but does it qualify for "much"?
As usual from you, no comment on anything else.
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Blah, blah, blah. 19 is significantly less than 283... Just admit that you're wrong so we can all move on.
Jebus you are daft. Seriously, that really seems to be all your argument actually boils down to in the end, isn't it. The fact that you think that's a remotely useful, coherent, or intelligent argument pretty much says it all.
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I told you at the start of this thread "I am not going to stop bringing up 19 vs 283."
Well Germany failed. That's a fact!
We can also talk about German automobile manufactures cheating on emissions test.
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I told you at the start of this thread "I am not going to stop bringing up 19 vs 283."
Good grief, it's all just circular with you. As I posted, four posts back:
It's not about stopping bringing it up. It's about how that's not any sort of rational argument. Every time anyone asks questions you don't want to answer, you just bug out, but then you come right back with this nonsense, you just never actually have a rational argument you can defend. It's clearly not only myself that recognizes this.
Well Germany failed. That's a fact!
It's not a fact because it's undefined. What are your actual criteria for what constitutes success or failure in this context (and don't just post the two numbers you constantly post over again for this, it's a serious question). What objective criteria do you actually propose as concrete goalposts.
We can also talk about German automobile manufactures cheating on emissions test.
Why?
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19 is less than 283. This debate doesn't need any more metrics. Germany failed. Therefore nuclear is going to be required. It's a rational argument. You are just a "fanatic" so your brain is incapable of processing any pronuclear facts. Your inability to look at the scale of the difference between 19 and 283 (after Germany spent 500 billion euros and 15 years too) says more about you.
What are your actual criteria for what constitutes success or failure in this context
50 g CO2 per kWh or less
Why?
Because it is evidence that Germany is lying about their non electricity emissions.
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19 is less than 283. This debate doesn't need any more metrics.
OK, then. That's just full on moronic.
You are just a "fanatic" so your brain is incapable of processing any pronuclear facts.
Actually, I am a pragmatist who is quite interested in nuclear technology and its applications. I am also a pragmatist. I am also quite interested in technology in general. Due to those things, I evaluate technology based on utility. By virtually every metric I find suitable for measuring, current renewables seem to beat nuclear power as pragmatic power sources for the majority of both electrical generation and, longer-term, primary power generation. I have listed the r
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Yes, your inability to admit that 19 is less than 283 is moronic
I am also a pragmatist.
By virtually every metric I find suitable for measuring, current renewables seem to beat nuclear power as pragmatic power
Except the most important metric of g CO2 per kWh. You also don't find a lot of metrics suitable--capacity factor, land usage, material usage, etc.
Also because you oppose nuclear energy you assume being pro nuclear means I oppose renewables. I don't. We should build all of the above. The issue is building only renewables will result in failure.
Only 1.56 % of French electricty is from biofuels. That would include garbage.
I am c
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Yes, your inability to admit that 19 is less than 283 is moronic
I have no inability whatsoever to admit that the number 19 is less than the number 283. The moronic part is where you fail to recognize that I am calling your actual claims about what the numbers really are and your interpretation of them into question, not whether one number is bigger than another.
Except the most important metric of g CO2 per kWh.
I am obviously considering that metric. The CO2 per kWh for both nuclear and wind and solar are well within our target range. They are effectively equivalent on that metric.
You also don't find a lot of metrics suitable--capacity factor, land usage, material usage, etc.
I consider capacity factor in all of my
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The CO2 per kWh for both nuclear and wind and solar are well within our target range. They are effectively equivalent on that metric.
What isn't equivalent is what is used to overcome intermittency. In Germany it's coal. Here in California it's methane--yes we're failing too!
As for land usage, it's pretty clear that wind power uses less than nuclear.
You're wrong about that. Significantly wrong. Crazy person wrong. [plos.org]
Now, it is possibly to use nuclear without a massive source of cooling water, but that generally means a lot more land use and more expense
See Palo Verde in the middle of Arizona. If it can work there it can work anywhere. Also the electricity is sells is cheap.
it does not make sense for standard power generation on the grid. The mix can include nuclear (especially still running older plants in good condition where they can be inexpensively and safely maintained), but it should not be a major component.
Again the goal is to minimize g CO2 per kWh which nuclear is suitable for and solar/wind have yet to do anywhere in the world.
That does not account for the other four and a half percent or so that comes from burning things
Cite that. Or better yet post that to el
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What isn't equivalent is what is used to overcome intermittency. In Germany it's coal. Here in California it's methane--yes we're failing too!
Geographical distribution of wind, an interconnected grid, and storage can be used to overcome intermittency. Storage can be hydro where practical (with definitely a decent amount of capacity in Germany) and battery.
You're wrong about that. Significantly wrong. Crazy person wrong. [plos.org]
No, I am not. Have you even bothered to read the paper you linked to? Don't just link to things and expect me to read them for you. For starters, let's look at the measures that paper uses. It employs LUIE which is hectares/TWh/year... So, in other words, hectares/TJ*hour/second/year or, in othe
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Japan had one too, which also caught fire. The Soviets built one, and it caught fire at least 14 times.
The problem with sodium as a coolant is that if it comes into contact with air, it ignites. If it comes into contact with water, it produces hydrogen, and then ignites. It becomes radioactive too, although the half life is 15 hours, but still enough to make fighting the inevitable fire a much more difficult and dangerous process.
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In AtomicAlgebra's defense (OK, I will admit to this being facetious) hot, liquid sodium being sprayed around is so hideously dangerous to anything living that the radiation probably barely adds to how dangerous it is.
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Do you have a source for that? I have found only two incidents in Germany, neither involving sodium. I looked at these articles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidents [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany [wikipedia.org]
Been touting nuclear for 50 years, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
My copy of Petr Beckmann's "The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear" is at least that old, and dog-eared. For decades, I arm-waved about the possibilities of nuclear, the incredible costs of coal and carbon. That goes back before CO2 was a villain. Ash and particulates were bad enough.
But. I just don't see the money, any more. For a long time, I thought "If only they'd build them right, stamp them out like cookies, only a few designs" or "The next generation will be completely walk-away safe, that'll do it", were going to make it work.
But, I'm an engineer. My job was always to get 'er done, cheaply as possible with every quality and standard met, and now I see that coming with just renewables and storage...cheaper.
If I'm wrong, China is going to prove it before Bill Gates does. They apparently have something like 20 nuke projects a-building, with just about every magic solution being tried. Pebble beds, thorium salts, the works. And China will be the one that can measure them up against renewables costs, too.
In 5 years, we'll know. But I am not hopeful that nuclear has a prayer, not since the sodium batteries cut the price of storage yet again.
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In 5 years, we'll know.
Yes, Ontario should have one, possibly two SMRs online by then. Happily everything is on budget and on time so far, and there is no reason to expect otherwise going forward. These folks have a great track record of success.
https://www.opg.com/projects-s... [opg.com]
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Doesn't seem very small or modular.
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Doesn't seem very small or modular.
I think 300MWe is pretty standard SMR size. They are prepping the site for 4 of them. That does not mean everybody needs 4 of them. The plan is to use these first four to bootstrap a supply chain to be able to construct them in around 5 years.
80% Agreement (Score:3)
My job was always to get 'er done, cheaply as possible with every quality and standard met, and now I see that coming with just renewables and storage...cheaper
It depends on how far "net zero" you want to go. There are still a lot of people who live in places where the sun doesn't shine much for a good chunk of the year. It also gets dangerously cold. Heating a home uses an enormous amount of electricity. If you still plan on supplementing with natural gas, it's less of a problem. If you want to go all-electric, you are going to have to figure out how to generate a lot of power when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't come out much so people don't freeze to
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There are a lot of people who live in places that are unsuitable for nuclear power too, either for geographic or for political reasons. And of course there is the cost. Places that don't get much sun often have decent wind resources.
I have a feeling that China will end up abandoning or mothballing a lot of the ones it has planned or under construction. That's what happened with a lot of the coal plants they built, because renewables displaced them before they even came online.
Of course they need some nuclea
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Turn the question around: how much renewables and storage can you build for the kind of money people are spending on nukes?
The link the previous replier gave to the Ontario project notes that they expect to pay out $20B in capital costs for the construction and startup of the four SMRs and their supply chain. For 1.2GW, that's about $17/watt. Let's round down a bit to allow for future cost improvements and say renewables must beat $15/watt.
Both solar arrays and windfarms are now clocking in at something
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China is going to prove it before Bill Gates does
This is partly (or mostly I would say) due to the fact that in China the state owns [wikipedia.org] both [wikipedia.org] of it's primary nuclear power construction and operation companies. Those things like standard designs, quality standards are more controlled since the project goal can be to build the plant and just stay on budget, not necessarily turn a "profit" or have to go seek investment.
If and when China wants to build their own sodium fast reactor (they may already be) they'll declare it a project, fund it and just start doing
Nuclear reactors being approved (Score:2, Insightful)
What could possibly go wrong?
Fukushima says hi. Remember they blamed the engineers not the CEOs.
Re:Nuclear reactors being approved (Score:4, Informative)
This was designed and sent for approval before Trump won the election. Bill Gates is known to be careful, at least outside of software.
It is NOT being rapidly built to meet short term AI Data Center demand, but instead being tested to replace the old coal power plants.
Does that mean it is definitely safe? No. Does it mean it won't be used to meet AI demand? Almost certainly it will be used for AI demand.
But you are misrepresenting the actual situation.
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You are wrong on several factors. First, the worst nuclear reactors we have built are FAR safer than coal power plants. Every single coal power plant has indirectly killed more people than the worst nuclear reactor.
By any reasonable standard, quick and dirty cheap nuclear reactors are safer than coal. Which is what this is designed to replace. There is no information about this reactor cutting corners. The US has not done that in 30 years. The Soviet Union did, but we are not them.
But more importantl
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The only reason to go nuclear is that you can slap it up faster than a large solar farm because you don't have to source the batteries.
No, you can't. The biggest part of the reason that nuclear power is the most expensive power technology around is the fact that it takes so long to build a plant.
The small modular reactor advocates claim that this will change with small reactors. We'll see.
--
...voting for a politician with 28 credible right back occasions eight of which are against children was a bad idea...
I have no idea what this sentence says. Could you translate it into English?
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China builds nuclear plants in six years, on budget. Of course we're not allowed to buy their tech, but they're exporting 15 of the things to other countries that aren't run by morons.
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The only reason to go nuclear is that you can slap it up faster than a large solar farm because you don't have to source the batteries.
No, you can't. The biggest part of the reason that nuclear power is the most expensive power technology around is the fact that it takes so long to build a plant.
China builds nuclear plants in six years, on budget.
Solar farms generally take eight to eighteen months to complete, from planning to implementation, so looks like you're agreeing with me, saying even the Chinese nuclear plants are years slower to build.
Second, China is not known for following safety regulations or OSHA (or equivalent) standards.
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Sodium cooled reactors have been tried before, and they always catch fire. The sodium becomes radioactive because it is a weak neutron absorber, and when it is hot it is extremely volatile. It corrodes the pipework, and ignites upon contact with air. You can't use water to put the fire out, because water and sodium produces sodium hydroxide and hydrogen, and the hydrogen also catches fire.
All that gets worse as you scale the design up. Containment buildings are one of the major costs of build a reactor, esp
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Fukushima says hi.
We said hi to Fukushima in the 1970s. You are basing your fears of nuclear power plants on 50+ year old technology. To claim that these fears are still valid is to claim that technology has not advanced since. The Natrium reactor is clearly quite different than the BWR used at Fukushima.
Even as unsafe nuclear power is claimed to be there's statistics showing that nuclear power is the safest option we have available. That's with most reactors operating still using 50+ year old technology. We have safer
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This is not a new project. Terra Power has been trying to get approvals since the turn of the century, running into constant interference from the political establishment of both sides, who hate him (a billionaire using his money to help poor people? That simply CANNOT be allowed!!) It sounds like in the current political chaos someone wasn't paying attention so they finally allowed the approval.
On the small side, but not super-small (Score:2)
Average Nuclear reactors are 1 GW, so this is about 35% size of existing plants, with a heat bank to temporarily boost it up to 85% output when needed.
Most people consider Small Modular Reactors to be no larger than about 300 MW, so this is a bit to large to count as a modular one, especially considering the heat bank.
But it is a wonderful NEW design that has been properly tested by a man I think cares more about the environment than making money on nuclear power.
Sounds like a good idea to me, I hope it wo
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And it's about frelling time, too. Terra Power has been trying to get approvals since the turn of the century, to constant political interference from both sides. I guess there is a silver lining to the current political chaos, people weren't paying attention.
NIMBY waste (Score:2)
Sodium-cooled fast reactor* (Score:5, Informative)
Natrium is an older term for sodium, a chemical element with the symbol Na
So really, this is a sodium-cooled fast reactor which means they are using molten salt for thermal energy storage. If I understand correctly, development has been held back material science problems since sodium is chemically reactive.
Why sodium? The benefit of sodium is that you reduce the risk of a meltdown since water has a relatively low boiling point. This allows the reactor to be "hot" run which is called a "fast reactor" Water-based fast reactors have to be run under high pressure so there is more risk involved.
Why makes fast reactors desirable? Per Wikipedia:
All fast reactors have several advantages over the current fleet of water based reactors in that the waste streams are significantly reduced. Crucially, when a reactor runs on fast neutrons, the plutonium isotopes are far more likely to fission upon absorbing a neutron. Thus, fast neutrons have a smaller chance of being captured by the uranium and plutonium, but when they are captured, have a much bigger chance of causing a fission. This means that the inventory of transuranic waste is non existent from fast reactors.
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The drawbacks of sodium include making a restart much harder and also every time it's been tried there's been show-stopper corrosion which they thought they had solved in their design already. That doesn't guarantee that it will happen again, but...
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every time it's been tried there's been show-stopper corrosion which they thought they had solved in their design already.
Understood but I think you should keep in mind that Molten-salt batteries [wikipedia.org] have become a thing.
That doesn't guarantee that it will happen again, but...
If you never try then you can never succeed. Science is full of repeated failures... and then someone gets it right.
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I suppose at such high temperatures sodium is highly corrosive, but my cars from the 1970's had sodium cooled valves, and those lasted quite a long time, intact. The sodium contained within did not interact with air or water, so was effectively inert. Of course it was fun to take a grinder to a removed valve and then drop it in a bucket of water.
Its all bullshit (Score:2)
This thing may go online in 10 years. It then needs to run for at the very least another 10 years to prove the concept. And than, if everything goes well (it never does), we may see more of these in about 30 years.
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This thing may go online in 10 years. It then needs to run for at the very least another 10 years to prove the concept. And than, if everything goes well (it never does), we may see more of these in about 30 years.
That's better progress than we've been making with nuclear fusion like with ITER. The ITER has been under construction for nearly 20 years and will likely take another 5 to 10 years yet before testing can happen. Then we'd need another few years of testing on ITER to develop DEMO, this would likely be a series of reactors based off ITER to refine the technology. How long will that take? 10 years to build and then another 10 years of data collection and such? After that would be PROTO, another series of
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This is just nonsense. Fusion is a very long-term project and that was clear form the very beginning (disregard the inane press reporting an listen to the actual scientists). Fusion is NOT going to solve climate change, but it may eventually change the energy landscape and that is why it is being done.
So, no we cannot hold out for fusion and we can not hold out for any "next-gen" nuclear either.
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So, no we cannot hold out for fusion and we can not hold out for any "next-gen" nuclear either.
I agree that we can't wait that long. It appears plenty of others agree since there's dozens of current generation nuclear power plants under construction, and plans for many more. Here's a few web pages showing this:
https://www.morganstanley.com/... [morganstanley.com]
https://www.goldmansachs.com/i... [goldmansachs.com]
https://www.utilitydive.com/ne... [utilitydive.com]
We can keep going with the expectations that renewable energy option will meet our energy needs but that's been the plan for something like 40 years now since Chernobyl scared a bunch of people
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This thing may go online in 10 years.
Nope, expected completion is 2030, you're stuck in the past. China just completed the Fuqing 5 nuclear plant in six years from breaking ground, and Terra Power started construction on the Natrium plant last year so that doesn't sound unreasonable.
We're way behind the curve here. China has approved construction of 10 new reactors per year for the last three years, and is currently in the process of exporting 15 more. Their products and processes are years ahead of ours in the west, and because of our moro
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This thing may go online in 10 years.
Nope, expected completion is 2030, you're stuck in the past.
Hahahaha, no. I can see reality. Different from you. Lets see, Fuqing 5 is a PWR, and as such mostly understood tech. Terra Power "starting" some construction means exactly nothing. You really have nothing here, except a big mouth.
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Nope, expected completion is 2030, you're stuck in the past
And we all know there is never any delays in constructing things that have never been constructed before...
If you seriously think they're going to just sail through their schedule and not have any delays or NIMBYist legal delays you're crazy.
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Well, it's Wyoming, so there aren't a lot of people to have back yards . . . :-)