Thanks god they started working on it, SMRs are certainly useful for limited areas. I have doubts about the price and construction delays by Westinghouse because their numbers look too good considering what was going on in the past. South Korea and Russia are so good at making cheaper large plants, SMRs will probably have hard time competing with them. Thanks for bringing this much needed videos.
There is no safe form of nuclear because all of them release radiation into the environment in one way or another. And there is no safe level or radiation, just increasing amount of cell damage with exposure.
I don´t think AP300 is too late. There, many countries here in EU are thinking about them preparing to implement them in the future. Eastern Europe is known for widespread use of multiple VVER440 on site. Here we love idea of building multiple cheaper and small units instead of few big units. Slovakian NPP Mochovce 3 and 4 already under construction (unit 3 ramping up production already) with cost of 6.2 billion euros for two 470MWe unit. There is aging NPP Bohunice V2 (end of life 2044 and 2045), it will need replace with more powerful plant. Which one is better 4-6 AP300 costing lets say 7-10 billion euros or two big reactors with price tag 15-20bilion euros? Other VVER440 plants will need similar upgrades in Czechia, Hungary, Ukraine and Poland is too very interested in SMRs. I would say, EU is quite big market for those smaller reactors to compete and more players we get all around the world is only better for end users and market. World needs to build lots of smaller reactors not few big, big rectors are by my view dead end. Big reactor projects are complicated, prone to be unique so supply chains needs to be built with every one poject again and again making them expensive and prone to delays.
Interesting. However, to make up for one AP1000 (confusingly it is 1200MWe) you would need 4 AP300s. Would it really be cheaper to build 4 small over one big?
There's a lot of demand right now in Eastern Europe. Given the price tags of AP1000s, it could make sense for the smaller designs. They can integrate into the grids more easily than big units. But your assessment of 1-2 big reactors (~1100 MWe each) vs several SMRs (~300 MWe) is an interesting problem. The capital costs of the SMRs are about the same or slightly lower than recent western-built large plants (if they _can_ be built at those costs), but the long-term economics might not be as good. Even Westinghouse pointed this out that the LCOE probably won't be as good, so you have to take some other advantages to make it worthwhile.
@@atomicblender Central and Eastern Europe have robust electrical infrastructure capable of handling additional loads. One of this countries can easily add ~40% more, i believe others too. Adding more than 20% of dispersed renewables would require building parallel systems, adding to the cost.
My hypothesis is that in markets like the US and Europe, full size reactors are a very tough sell because electricity demand is basically flat. Markets like China have an easier time because their demand is still growing. These smaller reactors are more suitable for keeping pace with retirements.
Have you forgotten, that EU outlawed production of internal combustion engines after 2035? Even the car manufacturers now say, they will not do ic cars after 2033. (I think it's not doable, but the electricity demand will rise.. definitely)
This video was interesting. I like the setup with your ‘set’. It’s tidy and minimal without looking to empty. It fits the tone of the content well and makes stuff easy to watch.
Thank you for this most informative video. I have recently discovered your channel and enjoy the content very much. As a not-at-all nerdy hobby I study nuclear reactors, with an emphasis on the RBMK/ CANDU and fast reactors because they pique my interest as well. Your channel has great info as to where the development of nuclear power currently is. The videos are clear and concise without too much clutter in the way. Keep up the good work!
Hi there…great video! I personally think this is a very smart play by Westinghouse because they are able to provide an SMR offering simply by providing a “little brother” to the AP1000. When you say the SMR field is crowded…is that really true? Or is it more true to say that there are a lot of hopeful startups who never built a nuclear plant before? The most serious SMR contender, the BWRX-300 by GEH, will be a popular choice and they will be very busy. You question the true modularity of the AP300, but that is even more true of the BWRX-300. It is just a small boiling water reactor with natural circulation, but really not much is factory-made. I think demand will outstrip supply - they will not be able to scale to the demand. NuScale and Rolls Royce are both in trouble. NuScale has had some pretty serious cost overruns and their First of a Kind is hanging in the balance still. Rolls Royce is having trouble filling out its order book with commitments so that they can build a factory. Those two might sort it out, they might not. Terrestrial and Terra power both been very quiet lately. Terrapower has some problems because they need HALEU fuel and the supply got disrupted cuz they can’t get it from Russian anymore. Who else then? Last energy, X-energy and Kairos are all interesting but vastly smaller and less experienced companies. After that, you get the micro-reactors, another market. At the end of the day, I personally believe the way forward for nuclear is to build big and build a fleet. We are not going to reach our decarbonization targets 300MWs at a time. However, I don’t hate the AP300 at all. For Westinghouse customers, there is now another option, and the company can provide it without the horrendous cost of developing a separate product.
Hi, I think your overall assessment of the SMR market is pretty fair. A crowded SMR market does include a number of designs that aren't fully ready. A few weeks ago I brought up that fact in my video on the BWRX-300. The GE design is the farthest along, at least actually having some contracted work. NuScale is having issues with cost, although it seems to mostly be materials driven rather than design issues. The definition of modularity seems to have become a bit flexible, so I shouldn't pick on only Westinghouse for that. Some designs are embracing factory build more than others (like Last Energy). The AP1000 is a reasonably solid design, so the AP300 is a natural fit. Good summary, cheers!
Another interesting one is the Linglong One (aka ACP100) from China, the world's first "true" SMR actually under construction... of course it won't ever be built in the US or europe for political reasons but it could see a lot of adoption elsewhere in the world.
I experienced AP1000 in China(Haiyang and Sanmen) last 20 years, and I look forward to AP300 being popular in future. Right now I am in Canada hard to find the right position not as I did in China, shame. I could only design Civil commercial building projects. But for the future, I would love to come back to the series of AP.
Just a bit of clarification. The AP1000 was based on the approved design of the AP600, so they will more likely be down scaling the AP600 design not the AP1000 design. Although the changes made to the AP600 design weren’t significant to create the AP1000. As for time line, 72 hours of long term battery needed for certain component functions that require power. Once initiated, before the 72 hours, the plant is in natural circulation cooling mode on the reactor, using the water drained from the IRWST. So the core cooling time is indefinite.
I like the how the AP300 publicity graphics are put together, with a solar farm just coming into view behind the AP300 building. There's definite "psychology" at work there.
I am jaedon Choi in KNF. I am very glad to see you and well summarized video about the AP300. I will sometimes visit your You tube channel to find out the newest nuclear technology.
A lot of shit talkers and naysayers here. Sigh. I'm by no means an expert in this field but I know one thing, we need to be getting off FF as soon as humanly possible and that won't happen on renewables alone. All nuclear techs should be maximized NOW. All issues can be worked out in time just like they were for every other emerging and progressing technology in the past. There was a time when flight and computerized technology seemed impractical, unaffordable, fanciful, or foolish. Do we feel that way now?? And now we carry more computing power in our pocket then NASA had on the first moon mission. Amazing what a difference 20-60 years makes. Problems are nothing but minor bumps in the road. For a look at how to progress with nuclear power one needs look no further than Rosatom or what's happening in China and India. Sadly the US gov owned by fossil fuels so of course the shit isn't going to be working here in the same way. All we need is to get the full weight of the State behind domestic nuclear and this shit would take off properly.
All you really need is to get the state out of the way with malevolent regulators. Nuclear would quickly destroy fossil fuel power, not continue alongside as with RE alongside fossil in Germany. In France nuclear didn’t ‘coexist’ w the large oil power fleet at the time. Nuclear destroyed it. Gone 15 years. The entire fossil fuel industry knows it.
Fun fact... Everyone is just marking time until the completely 100% inevitable next CME/carrington event that's coming down the pike. And then... major bigtime EMP. And then... eventual nuclear meltdowns of all the reactors and spent fuel pools as they lose their cooling systems. The planet will be quickly radiation sterilized from pole to pole. Fun fact... No one survives. Not anyone anywhere. Everyone dies. And that's that. End of story. Fun fact... There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of nuclear reactors and spent fuel pools. Fun fact... It is 100% inevitable that the planet will be in the wrong place at the wrong time for a CME/EMP. Fun fact... nuclear war is hardly even worth mentioning compared to nuclear meltdowns. Fun fact... A bomb goes boom and that's all the radiation it will ever produce. But meltdowns produce and spew out enormous amounts of new radioactive particles next to forever. Fun fact... You won't enjoy dying from radiation sickness even the least little bit. Fun fact... Every day that goes by has become one day less to global meltdown radiation oblivion. The existence of the many, many, many hundreds of nuclear reactors and spent fuel pools and the loss of their cooling systems will be the Final Word as to What Will Be What.
This universe is littered with civilizations, worlds that were once alive. But you she entity lifeforces (for Earth, including she entity lifeforces existing in XY DNA template bodies) have killed them with your... Personal Opinions. Personal Opinions that instantly and automatically replace any and all actual facts because it's your Personal Opinion that your Personal Opinions do. And those few civilizations that have managed (so far) to survive, are extremely stunted and stagnant. There's not one single surviving (so far) civilization in this universe that isn't an example of Epic Fail. Not. Even. One.
It looks like a 3-way SMR competition (< 300 MWe reactors): 1. AP300 GenIII+ PWR Water cooled (< 100% modular) 2. BWRX-300 GenIII+ BWR Water cooled (< 100% modular) 3. Xe-100 GenIV HTGR 750C Helium cooled, TRISO fuel (4x 80MWe reactors per plant, 100% modular) All three above have contracts now in US, UK, and Canada.
8 Feb 2024.... UK selects some of the first AP300s. Westinghouse has signed an agreement with Community Nuclear Power Limited (CNP) for the construction of *four* AP300 small modular reactors (SMRs) in the North Teesside region of northeast England. It would be the UK's first privately-financed SMR fleet.
Renewables are in the true sense of the term are not, and they will never be a reliable source of base load power no matter how much is spent on battery backup.
Many, many, many hundreds of nuclear reactors have been built like carrington events never, never, never happen. But they do. The Big Bad Wolf of the "final" CME is very definitely coming down the pike. And it can't be Personal Opinion denialismed away. For whatever reason, you she entity lifeforces (including she entity lifeforces existing in XY DNA template bodies) can have a weird compulsion going on to do things completely wrong. And, of course, then being all smug about it as though you did something to be proud of...
The AP1000 was an upsized AP600. Shrinking it does not seem like such a big deal. One must also consider all the Westinghouse PWRs that have been built. This does not seem a radial design. It would be good if they could be sited at old coal plants.
@@clarkkent9080 Clark - Did they ever build one? I don't think so. What they really should do is interview guys like you that have actually operated them. Book learning is no substitute for experience.
@@daniellarson3068 I first licensed on a Westinghouse 3 loop PWR so that is all I knew. When I licensed on a B&W 2 loop PWR it was the difference between night and day. For those of us that operated both, the analogy was Westinghouse was like a 1950s Cadillac, big and bulky, moved slow, vague steering, slow to get going and stop, While the B&W plants are like Ferrari's, sleek and nimble, quick steering, quick up to speed and stops on a dime. When Westinghouse has a problem they just add more systems where B&W redesigns the entire system to fix the problem. Do Westinghouse plant work....YES. But there is no comparison between the two in operation.
@@clarkkent9080 That's interesting and matches what I was once told by a trainer. He had been an operator at SMUD and said the smaller containment meant an operator had to react more quickly. His description ended with, "You'd have a really bad day." Closest I ever got was the simulator in the middle of the night. It'll be cool if they get some of these new designs built. I do believe some are largely smoke and mirrors.
@@daniellarson3068 Unfortunately, TMI-2 was a B&W plant and we know that story. I don't think the problem with new nuclear has anything to do with plant designs. B&W, Westinghouse, CE, they all work. Some may be easier to maintain and others to operate. Today the problem is cost and that has little to do with the design. We no longer have the skilled construction craft, quality suppliers, or desire to work hard. What we have is ok for a Wal Mart or Amazon warehouse but it falls short for a complex and critical nuclear plant At my first Westinghouse plant, it was considered normal to haul out 5 or more dead construction workers during an outage. Not from industrial accidents but from heart attacks. These middle aged overweight poor health union workers just reached the end of their life expediency and dropped dead. It was accepted that well "he was out of shape". That would not be acceptable today and so we have frequent breaks, spot cooling, and minimal physical requirements, weekly safety meetings, not something that makes construction efficient. Vogtle is in Georgia and tornado warnings and severe weather is a common summertime occurrence requiring all work to stop and sheltering in a designated enclosure adding to costly delays. Vogtle construction has random drug screening and a steady stream of failures and people getting caught with a whizzinator which is illegal in most states. If you don't know what that is look it up and then ask yourself "is there enough customers out there to actually make it profitable?" and "how bad must your desire to use drugs be to actually use wear this thing?" The answer is "yes" and "a very strong desire" The world is much different today than it was in the 1970s nuclear building boom and I don't see any of that changing anytime soon
AP1000 sky high cost occurred mostly in regulation, construction and frequent change of contractors. Toshiba is the first to blame, Westinghouse the second. Bechtel is the best nuclear contractor to be hired for AP1000 construction,however it was not selected. However Bechtel is actually the principal contractor in Vogtle 3&4 AP1000 construction site.
I was at VC Summer and worked closely with Vogtle. For both sites, Westinghouse and Shaw were to provide turnkey units. Westinghouse could never produce an actual schedule for the entire project, and seeing the writing on the wall, they pulled out. CBI was building the containment vessels and ended up being pulled into the construction, not sure how many iterations of builders they brought in. Sorry, but I’m not impressed with Bechtel, they are really good at milking the golden cow that is nuclear. They got the completion contract for Watts Bar 2. TVA budget was $5 billion, Bechtel sucked that up pretty quick and were removed. I interfaced with them on Bellefonte, they buried the walkdown process so deep in processes, walkdown packages, walkdown meetings and walkdown teams, it would have taken decades to just establish the asbuilt conditions. TVA pulled the plug again, for the 5th or 6th time. Now there’s a waste of money.
I find the term 'modular' being tossed around in several ways that seem to 'muddy the waters'. An attractive side of NUSCALE designs has been the idea of several identical reactors at one site. Each 'modular' reactor includes passive safety but the overall site has ongoing savings from the multiple reactors. A reactor outage does not reduce site production to zero, but only about 12-15%. The reactor servicing equipment and staff have a high utilization rate since at least one reactor on site is undergoing refueling/service at any given time. Operating and security staff are shared among many reactors, resulting in another area of savings. These savings are NOT there for a single-reactor AP300 type 'modular' design. You can get some of these savings with a 'fleet' of simular sites, but NUSCALE is essentially a 'fleet' of reactors within one facility. While this AP300 is 'modular' in the sense that it's construction is supposed to have savings, this is somewhat unproven. The 'economies of modular construction' rely on amortizing the off-site factory costs over a 'fleet' of reactors and so far this has had limited success. Even if successful in bringing down construction costs (although nuclear has an abysmal track record in coming in on-time / on-budget), this is only an up-front savings. The long term cost of operation is not improved. So 'modular' means different things in different designs. Both have better passive-safety and provide long-term eco-benefits but whether or not either form of 'modularity' catches hold and actually kick-starts another 'nuclear renaissance is unknown.
Investor owned companies own multiple reactor sites so they have a roving crew for refueling outages similar to your explanation for the NuScale project. While security is site specific, you will not have one operating crew responsible for multiple reactors while they are running. EVERY utility that wants nuclear has always chosen the largest unit due to economies of scale. The only advantage of SMR is a lower up front construction cost but operating costs are more per Kwh produced
BTW, passive safety features are promoted for their cost savings not their added safety since no U.S. reactor has ever had their non-passive safety features fail. Here is the NuScale project's current state This is from the Des Moines Register an concerning the only Small Modular Reactor (SMR) project in the U.S. today. It should be noted that NuScale said (Jan/2023) the target price for power from the plant is $89 per megawatt hour, up 53% from the previous estimate of $58 per MW hour In 2013, the Wall Street firm Lazard estimated that the cost of generating electricity at a new nuclear plant in the United States will be between $86 and $122 per megawatt-hour. Last November, Lazard estimated that the corresponding cost will be between $131 and $204 per megawatt-hour based upon the 4 recent new nuclear projects in the U.S. . During the same eight years, renewables have plummeted in cost, and the 2021 estimates of electricity from newly constructed utility-scale solar and wind plants range between $26 and $50 per megawatt-hour. Nuclear power is simply not economically competitive. SMRs will be even less competitive. Building and operating SMRs will cost more than large reactors for each unit (megawatt) of generation capacity. A reactor that generates five times as much power will not require five times as much concrete or five times as many workers. This makes electricity from small reactors more expensive; many of the original small reactors built in the United States were financially uncompetitive and shut down early. The estimated cost of constructing a plant with 600 megawatts of electricity from NuScale SMRs, arguably the design closest to deployment in the United States, was originally advertised as costing $1 billion but upon requesting actual bids from engineering firms, increased to $6.1 billion in 2020. Given inflation and other cost constraints that cost today can only be expected to be significantly higher. The cost was so high that ten members of Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems canceled their contracts. NuScale then changed its proposed plant configuration to 6 fewer reactors but increased each reactor output from 50 Mw to 77 Mw costing at total of $5.3 billion. The NRC just last week approved the construction of the 50 Mw design but now will have to start the review process all over given the switch to a 77 Mw design. For each kilowatt of electrical generation capacity, that estimate is around 80% more than the per-kilowatt cost of the Vogtle project in Georgia - before its cost exploded from $14 billion to over $30 billion. Based on the historical experience with nuclear reactor construction, SMRs are very likely to cost much more than initially expected. And they now have delayed the project start until 2025 in an attempt to find more backers. All this before the inevitable setbacks that will occur once construction starts.
I agree, the usage of the word "modular" is becoming a bit of misnomer in this space. The ideas of large, factory-built portions has yet to be realized on any meaningful scale. But, put SMR in your reactor's title and you suddenly get access to funding and interest from government subsidies. These companies aren't dumb, they're simply following where the market and money is going.
@@atomicblender There is a limit on what can be transported by truck/rail/barge and every commercial nuclear project has taken advantage of offsite construction of modules, when possible, for shipment to the construction site. Some people believe that you can build an entire unicorn SMR in a factory and ship it to the plant site. This is simply not true. The build it in a factory on an assembly line and save money is a dream and simple misinformation on reducing costs. The U.S. now has 5 recent nuclear projects and their realist build costs. The issue is NOT the reactor type or reactor generation that is causing massive budget over runs, it is supplier issues, project management, lack of qualified construction craft, and fraud. Talking about new or smaller reactor types is a solution in search of a problem that does not exist
@@clarkkent9080 I disagree about a couple of your points. The NUSCALE is said to expect only 3-4 operators in a common control room operating 8 or more reactors. So that's a savings. And while utilities with 'fleets' of plants do have some savings in maintenance personnel, with each NUSCALE reactor being of identical design, they ope to have even more savings in maintenance. And much of the specialized equipment needed, is shared among all the identical reactors, something that isn't as easy with a 'fleet' of reactors spread out over several states, and of different vendor/ design.
How do you mean "stiff competition"? The 40% reliance on LNG provides a huge field of opportunity and necessary challenge and mandate to bring steady-frequency. If a handful of the development designs come through as demonstrably reliable, we all win. We have spent too long in letting the current fleet become old and vulnerable to retirement without low_CO2 options. The AP300 is an option that needs to be deployed and proven along with untested types.
There are literally thousands of smaller communities around the world who can use a small reactor, it boil down to what the initial investment be, and the life cycle cost. I say there are markets for even smaller reactors. My preference is several reactors instead of one , so some can be down for maintenance. Reactor construction often take 2 decades , so 2 years late is nothing. Especially if you can come up with some advantages your competitors do not have.
This design is mostly Westinghouse wanting to avoid the Kodak effect. Kodak was a leader in the photographic industry in the 1970's. Although developing (one of?) the first digital camera(s), the company didn't believe in the future of digital photography, preferring instead to focus on what they were good at: analog cameras. Thus, when the digital photography market took off, they didn't really have a model ready for the market, and lost out on market shares. Kodak filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2012. Westinghouse would prefer to sell their AP1000 plants, but still want a stake in the game if the SMR market takes off. So no, I don't think they're really late to the party.
@@clarkkent9080 Thanks, perhaps I misunderstood what was meant by single loop. There a primary loop and a turbine cycle loop. Single turbine loop would be a better description.
@@legopals1516 Westinghouse reactors in the past had 3 or 4 loops. The AP1000 just used 2 large loops to save money and the AP300 just uses 1 loop. There is very little difference between a Westinghouse reactor from the 1970s and the AP1000. Westinghouse always takes the cheap and easy way in design
The 7.33 tons of spent fuel generated in one year by one 300MW reactor can fuel 7 1GW Molten Salt Reactors for one year. 940 kg of natural thorium in a Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) can generate 1 gigawatt (GW) of electricity for one year. The 55.668 tons of unused depleted uranium processed to obtain the 7.332 tons of enriched uranium can fuel a further 59 1GW Molten Salt Reactors for one year.
I’d rather see new non water cooking reactors. Or maybe some that use the water cooking ability for making the feared product that explodes.. Also would be great to have some different fuel because “NNP”
You forgot that the Chinese have built 4 AP1000's and are operating them - and their construction cost and timelines only had very minor increases (Sanmen 1&2: Haiyang 1&2). China has been so pleased with their performance that in 2022 they ordered 6 more units (Sanmen 3&4 and Haiyan 3&4, and 2 units at Lianjiang). Ukraine signed contracts for 2 AP1000 units in 2021 and recently announced this year that they are looking at potentially 4-8 more AP1000's beyond the 2 contracted for. Ukraine is also building a fuel assembly plant to provide Europe with replacement reactor fuel for both AP1000's and several Soviet/Russian reactor designs (Ukraine has been using Westinghouse provided fuel assemblies in their existing Soviet/Russian reactors for several years). The AP1000 is the most successful generation 3+ western reactor design in the world based on the number of constructed and operating plants and existing contracts. The biggest problem with the US AP1000's cost was that the USA had not built a nuclear power plant in so long that they forgot how to do it (and all the very real planning and execution that goes into it). A lot of very costly mistakes were made. Westinghouse's experience is something of real value in construction of any new nuclear power plant in the USA. Europe had been going through a much worse "forgetting how to do it" series of very costly lessons with their EPR. I see that Westinghouse has a real leg up here and can point to experience that no one else can. The fact that 6 Units have been built (or are near startup), with 2 abandoned, with 8 more currently ordered says that there is an active supply chain and the cost of major components is now well known. Another huge advantage for Westinghouse (their supply chain for the same components used in the AP300). As far as all the other SMR reactor designs: Lets see how much they really cost and what problems they have. Having worked in nuclear power plants I can assure you that not everything works as well as the designers planned - and lots of creative modifications had to be done - or you just lived with something that did not work as planned. I am one of the very few American engineers not part of Westinghouse or its subcontractors that worked on the operating Sanmen 1&2 units looking at an issue. It was relatively minor as historical nuclear plant issues go; and solvable at minimal cost. I'm sure my work was immediately shared with Haiyang 1&2 and I know that people at Vogtle 3 & 4 knew about it within a month or so. What the AP1000 has going for it was the extensive experience from the Westinghouse 2 and 3 loop plants of the past. My personal opinion is that the reason the ESBWR was never built was because BWR's have historically had more problems and higher operating cost than PWR's (essentially most of the entire power plant is a radioactive work environment - which increases the cost of all labor inside the power plant).
China did not sign for 6 more units of AP1000. They stole the design, called it something different and will build it without paying Westinghouse. VC Summer and Vogtle have been in the nuclear power business since the 1970s s how do you forget how to build what you have been operating and maintaining for 40+ years???? The U.S. does not use slave/prison/child labor and we have a robust regulatory and oversight of nuclear projects. You cannot compare the U.S. to either Russia, Ukraine, or China. Without some flippant "we forgot how to build" comment and being in the current nuclear construction industry, what is your real opinion on why VC Summer failed and Vogtle cost skyrocketed to the point where no U.S. utility is even remotely interested in the AP1000?
Thank for your report of hands on experience. “USA had not built a ..plant in so long …” Across the country for commercial power, true, but it was Westinghouse behind the Vogtle 3 4, AP1000 designs, and as you know they had very recent experience with Sanmen in China which you mention. Was that somehow not useful? Appears the difference between China and Vogtle must lie elsewhere, in part at least. For instance, the imposition in 2009 of the aircraft impact requirement, after design approval in 2006 without that requirement, does that have any parallel in China?
@@Nill757 Westinghouse was not supervising or controlling the construction of the Chinese plants. They provided the design and blueprints of the nuclear core, and key components; a standard steam plant design to match the nuclear core, and provided "model operating procedures for the nuclear core," and technical support for procedure development and startup. As such they did not follow in detail what and how the construction companies were doing. They just assumed that the US Contractors for Summer and Vogtle had essentially the same competence. Shaw (another American company) provided overall Project Management for the 1st 4 Chinese plants; which again did not lead to any real understanding of the construction process. So Westinghouse as fairly clueless as to the details of the planning and execution of the construction companies at Sanmen and Haiyang. While they could ask for advice from the Chinese companies after taking over management of VC Summer and Vogtle, their people did not really understand it as they personally did not have decades of experience in actual power plant construction combined with cultural differences in how things are done between China and the USA. I've had the personal experience of working with the Westinghouse design concepts and "model" operating procedures for the AP1000; and the resulting Chinese operating procedures and expectations. Bridging the culture difference is not easy - and my experience is that it was not easy to get the Chinese to understand the Westinghouse intent on how and why things should be operated a certain way. I believe that the Chinese would likewise have a hard time explaining to American construction people the how and why of something that they did to build their plants that worked.
@@Nill757 Chinese textile mills can produce 200,000 pairs of socks each day ship them half way around the world and sell them at Wal Mart and everyone make a profit. American textile mills cannot even come close to that price or quality in their own country so the problem must lie elsewhere....maybe the NRC has too many regulations on American textile plants?
If W can build a 300 MW power plant for a billion dollars, it will be 30% less expensive than a storage battery capable of delivering 300 MW for only 48 hours that costs $100 per kWh - which is much less than DOE forecasts for Lithium batteries by 2030. Storage battery costs alone prove the extreme expense of the solar/wind/battery pipe dream vs an all nuclear plan.
48 hour batteries aren't really a thing. Including that as a point of comparison is like comparing a 300w solar panel to a 300w nuclear reactor. Its pretty misleading.
@@SocialDownclimber True, yet 48 hrs or more are needed, making the point that battery storage at grid scale wont happen, and everywhere solar wind is pushed, fossil power will remain in place , watt for watt, which is both expensive and dirty, as seen in Germany, Uk, California, etc.
If the customers are smart enough to demand a fixed price contract, regulations and governments don't mess it up, and Westinghouse can deliver on price, they might find some buyers that are an exception to where the ever lowering prices of Solar, Wind, and Batteries are not much lower cost to install. Batteries in particular are getting very cheap in the next few years, making Solar and Wind much more attractive. Demand will be going up all over the world with EVs soon becoming standard all over the world.
No one has built a 'modern SMR' by now, so why shouldn't a big competitor that has all technologies and experiances in house shouldn't be still right on spot? I'm just curious if the big steam-generator of a one looper is small enough for easy road transport,.. So, its all on the question who has the best 'pefab house building sheme'.(And who wins the market by speed, political infuance, deep pockets to live through the heartships of building prototypes,...
Utilities can build whatever they want as long as it meets regulatory requirements. Politics are only involved when these companies want taxpayer welfare
@@clarkkent9080 And how many projects in the next few years, so at least the 'prototypes' will be indepent of state incentives? (Russian reactors come with there own russian state backed finance-plan, Sizewell C will be owned to 20% by GB-Gov and another 20% by EDF,..)
@@hellboystein2926 The NuScale and Terrapower projects each receive $2 billion matching taxpayer welfare. Vogtle received government backed low interest loans. And EVERY commercial nuclear plant in the U.S. is insured (Price-Anderson Act) by the U.S. government against accidents. TMI-2 cost the taxpayer $1 billion just to clean up the melted fuel and that was in 1980 dollars. Nuclear has never been able to stand on its own without taxpayer handouts
@@clarkkent9080 So doesn't windfarms solar-farms or even the Oil and gas industry, so 'whats the alternative' going back into the cage? Cocking on a smocky wood-fire and dying early from the fumes,...??
@@hellboystein2926 I have never flicked my light switch and not have the lights come on. In 30 years I only lost power once when a kid ran into the subdivision transformer. INVESTOR owned utilities will make the best economical decisions and right now they are leaning to solar, wind with natural gas as the backup. Texas is ultra conservative, anti-green but at least has some of the most intelligent populations of the MAGA states and they are the leaders in wind energy, even more than California. Texas has more wind energy than any other state and they also have 100% of that wind energy backed up with natural gas plants. Apparently even the hatters of tree hugging green energy know what is most cost effective and put economics above political ideology.
Gen 3+ means a pool on the roof, that is not passive saftey in the same way molten salt self regulates (higher temps = less reactions) . tragic to see how much support 'SMR party' gets and MSR gets misrepresented or shunned. I understand people may have vested interests in sunk dev costs like AP1000 and TRISO but sticking with cost prohibitive designs just seems deliberately obtuse. Imagine what the rest of industry could do, carbon capture -> fuel synth plant -> closed loop fuel cycle. for that you need high temp reactors at a lot lower costs.. if only there were 5~10 decent designs on the table.. alas
LWRs are way to go now, we have know-how and supply chains built already for them, MSRs and other "exotic" designs are way to go in long term. We can built dozens if not hundreds LWRs like AP300, NuScale, BWRX300 and others without bigger issues because we need them as soon as possible.
@@samuelgomola9097 less safe, more expensive to build and operate, less applications and risk of meltdown ruining nuclear optics with the easily swayed.. seems like a big risk for not much reward.. the only bonus being regulatory ease, which is evolving currently.. think longer term..
@@samuelforsyth6374 You are looking at MSRs like they are holy grail, but they are not. They needs years of development and lot's of money. They are way to go in future but not today, if you think we should haly all LWR projects and wait for MSR miracle you are delusional. LWRs and SMRs derived from them are feasible and safe way to go today and in next 40+ years until we mature MSR technology in usefull and safe. Handling and processing highly radioactive hot liquid fuel is whole new challenge. Corosion caused by hot salts is another challenge we haven't fully solved for MSRs. Technology od freze plugs, controll systems, reactor vessel neutron flux, neutron flux in heat exchangers, filling and emptying primary curcuit with hot radiactive liquid salt, and many more problems to solve. All those problems and many more have solutions, but we haven't got them yet... We need low carbon and affordable power NOW not tomorrow. LWRs are good enough with very good understanding of technology and physics behind. Neutron embritlement took literally decades to sufficiently solve, fuel rod twisting was solved literally in late 2000s after decades of research. Nucelar technology is very, very, very complex branch of engineering and physics. To be honest at the end, we are much closer even to VHTR gas cooled reactors than MSRs. It can be done and it will, but don't expect it tomorrow.
@@samuelgomola9097 I'm not sure you are up to date with the rate of change, freeze plugs are obsolete, neutron flux matters less in fast spectrum and DOE is funding salt creep testing so they can regulate it.. the science in many ways is more simple than a multi layered TRISO pellet. The largest real impediment is tritium production, altho that is somewhat valueable
I agree we can do better than gen 3 with a pool on the roof with spent fuel pool nearby... China is surely doing everything they can with TMSR-LF1, the last time we heard from them they were testing various loops. India is into something similar, i recall Russia doing experiments in this direction too. They are not forgotten but we have to be patient because the West doesn't seem interested in them.
On the style of video, you were quite redundant especially in the beginning, essentially having two completely separate introductions that supplied exactly the same information and which easily cost you an extra minute of run-time. Beyond that, it's not clear to me why a customer would WANT and AP300 when, given the not really modular design, and otherwise near identical technology, they could have an AP1000.
The AP1000 might be too big for some sites. I think a real opportunity for the ~300 MWe class is to replace old coal plants. It's an expensive route, but grids are finding that too much wind and solar is becoming difficult to manage. And thanks for the video feedback, it really helps. I put this one was put together much more quickly than usual so it looks like there's a bit of repetition in the beginning.
Smaller parts like a pressure vessel for a 300 will be much faster to build than a 1000 with more mills available, more experience, less likelihood of mistakes, and easier transport, ie rail instead of barge, or semi instead of rail.
Really we should be looking at power density per unit of footprint area. I reckon horsepower per football field is the right unit of measurement for this.
As soon as he said it was a follow on from the AP1000 I was disappointed. I don't think there will be (or should be) a future for third generation reactors. The future of nuclear will only be assured if we produce unpressurised waterless reactors. There are numerous fourth generation unpressurised designs around so why even contemplate a design with unnecessary risks? The answer is simple - companies such as Westinghouse, Rolls Royce etc. only know third generation designs so that is what they will produce. Here in the UK we are only a couple of breakdowns away from being in real energy deficit. The escalating amount of money being squandered on HS2 (£100 billion +) would much more profitably have been spent on completely solving our generation problem. Madness!
Don't you think we should build one in the U.S. and test it for 10 years or so before we throw out the baby nuke with the reactor coolant? Given construction times, you are looking at decades before we could settle on something new
@@clarkkent9080 Taking the approach of designing, certifying and developing will take the AP300 longer than going through the same process for a fourth generation reactors which have most safety issues designed out. Here in the UK Rolls Royce said ( a couple of years ago) that it would take 15 years to bring their first small (third generation) reactor on line - once they start work. As an example the Moltex reactor - a fourth generation waste burner - is on course to go critical in Canada in 2030. So, I can't agree that sticking with the horse is a good idea when someone has designed a car - metaphorically speaking.
@@redmunds1565 I can not speak for other countries but in the U.S. There are only two companies that are working on reactors today and that is Terrapower and NuScale. NuScale has placed their project on hold as the ESTIMATED costs skyrocket and utilities are backing out. Terrapower was planning on getting their fuel from Russia so now the U.S. taxpayer will be building them a fuel fabrication facility in the future. If either ever does build, it will be at least 10 more years to complete and then at least 5 years to prove the concept before more could be considered. So it will be at least 2038 before construction of more of these "new" reactors could begin. Assuming a record 7 year build time we could have a few more by 2045. We do not have unlimited construction craft and the recent AP1000 builds showed that even two simultaneous nuclear builds were stressing the available resources
BWR is old technology and doesn’t truly represent Gen4 walk away plants that can and should be rapidly deployed in the US even if it’s under demo/pilot plants
Underconstruction should make them cheap to build. Being smaller we'll be able to hide them easier when they are decommissioned so we won't know they are there for the next 10,000 years. Why aren't they being sprinkled with thorium which makes them _New, Improved, Good Housekeeping Approved!!_
"In any system of energy, Control is what consumes energy the most. No energy store holds enough energy to extract an amount of energy equal to the total energy it stores. No system of energy can deliver sum useful energy in excess of the total energy put into constructing it. This universal truth applies to all systems. Energy, like time, flows from past to future".
300 MW is not very small. I'm waiting to see what will be developed that fits inside of a semi trailer or shipping container, or a train locomotive. Trailer sized diesel generators are about 1 MW Shipping container sized nuclear power generators should be in the 1 MW to 10 MW range.
Testing LF1 in China :) Don't you think this are a little too complicated or expensive to run? On the other hand we need new generation plants capable of doing things PWRs can't.
@@Krill_all_health_insuranceCEOs MSR on Th cycle. They say fuel reprocessing in situ is hard but that might not be truth, i don't know enough about chemistry and material science to comment. What do you think about them being complicated, why is only China with another country or two doing it, why not in the West?
@@codaalive5076 IDK. Im stlll learning more layman info about today's nuke energy advancements. I wish to see a thorium plant started in the US. That seems unlikely for now, but I hope that changes. Thorium is extremely superior to Uranium nuclear fuel by all metrics IMO.
@@Krill_all_health_insuranceCEOs PWR technology is so mature we can have them built now to work for the next 60-80 years. Less developed technology like MSR fast reactors on Th cycle need a lot more development backed by governments. US had one running (on uranium to prove the concept, they could use Th at higher price) around 60's but research stopped for several reasons. I noticed google shows nothing for LF1, wikipedia has Chinese MSR described under "TMSR-LF1".
This reminds me of the Germans who thought that Russian gas was a good idea. Nuclear and no fossil fuels in every dictatorship. Uranium ore exported to dictators nuclear industries brilliant 👏 👌 👍 😊😊😊, what could go wrong. Just fatten the USA military defence budgets ezi pezi. Wonderful, wonderful ❤️ love it ,fabulous, no fossil fuels 😊.
Interesting that both the NuScale and Terrapower SMR and MSR were advertised as costing that magical $! billion but are now estimated to cost over $4 billion each and that is before and ground has been broken. In the nuclear world it is all about cost, cost, and cost
just because you were a janitor at a nuclear facility does not make you expert. Why are you always here with your irrational bias? retired with an axe to grind is my guess
Ground HAS been broken. Barely. I forget which one of those 2 finally broke ground in the last month or so in Washington State - though it was more a symbolic act than a REAL one.
@@lukehahn4489 you flip burgers at McDonalds and think you know everything because you watched a YT video. You got a raise to $13 per hour, enjoy that and go away
I agree that cost is the bottom line. In a coal or natural gas power plant, the power conversion side of the plant is 85% of the cost of the plant. Any high-temperature nuke would utilize the exact same equipment. When you remove the expensive forgings, containment structure, and fuel handling equipment from the equation, there is no reason the reactor vessel of an MSR should cost any more than a coal or NG boiler. This is exactly where the estimates are for Terrestrial Energy's MSR. I don't know about X-Energy's high-temperature gas reactor but Dow Chemical seems to think the price is good.
@@chapter4travels That must be why Terrapower's 345 Mw MSR originally estimated to cost $1 billion is now at $4 billion with half of that taxpayer welfare and the company now saying the first few plants will be expensive but costs are expected to drop over time....Give me a break. BTW, Even at $4 billion it is more costly that the massively over budget , financial failure, Vogtle reactors
The "Party" started in the 90s and no one has opened even a beer. Not one SMR has been started in the Western world! There must be reasons for that stubbornness on the part of History, don't you think? Maybe the talk is just so sweet, it distracts people from actually doing something?
Uses water and high pressure reactor! Same mistake over and over again. If something goes wrong, there is a potencial of generating H2 and then we'll have a big booom! In USA what is needed is technological innovations in the design of really NEW types of Nuclear reactors: no water, low pressure and high temperature....
When the sun shines and it doesn't rain, we all die of thurst. It is all so obvious. Lucky we have nuclear desalination. Weather forcasts are always wrong. We are fortunate that the majority knows more than the experts.
There is a $$$ sweet spot in the length of a YT video. Some YT video titles could be answered in 2 or 3 words but they stretch the video out for ad placement. The vast majority of YT videos are posted to make money and have no ties to the truth or reality.
There is the problem of spent fuel. But most wind and solar power units can't be recycled either. But unrecycled solar and wind landfill don't need protection and security for centuries.
@@drewthompson7457 solar panels are 99% silicon (SAND) and wind turbine blades are FIBERGLASS.. Why recycle sand and fiberglass? Things that are inert do not have to be recycled.
@@drewthompson7457 That is factual just as rocks are inert and never break down. However misinforming people and making them believe that silicon solar panels or fiberglass turbine blades are hazardous to the environment is just lying to try and make your point seem better. Nuclear plants are made of trillions of tons of concrete and steel and are so massive. that after removing the equipment, they generally just burry the concrete in place. The problem with nuclear is the cost, plain and simple and trying to make the other generation methods seem bad is just ignoring reality
Then we would have wasted billions on nuclear plants that never run like VC Summer and bankrupt the utility. You do know that PRIVATE funding is what builds all generation plants and they all get some government subsidizes. Do you want to dictate what investors build???
i,m not in nukes so pick apart what i say. the only viable way to make this work is to build plants that are truly modular so the can be built in a factory. the advantage comes from being able to build 50 of the exact same design to the exact same specs. then all the pieces are trucked to the site and assembled like lego blocks. any replacements can be ordered by section needing replaced. think assembly line advantages. with a really good design and set up there could be thousands off these made.
Spoiler alert, the VC Summer and Vogtle new nuclear projects did just that with system modules. But when they arrived on site, they did not fit together and the construction was so poor that they had to be reworked on site and the factory build concept ended up costing more.
In order to speak sooner or later, you need to see the project embodied in hardware. In the meantime, there are many projects, but their implementation is not.
I have to wonder where we would be if half of what our government spent on solar and wind were spent on nuclear. I suspect we would be in a lot better shape.
Biden has $30 billion to bribe investor owned utilities to keep old nuclear plants open. NuScale and Terrapower each got $2 billion in taxpayer welfare for their projects. The taxpayer is building a nuclear fuel facility for Terrapower. Are you still wondering???
I wish America would try to approach things like: "The better off the low income level people are doing; The better off the entire rest of the economy will be." {Type mentality} -Think of it like a ecosystem in nature. The little things might seem meaningless and insignificant yet, if they crumbled away, the entire ecosystem would crumble. The last things remaining would be the top predators.. until they even eat themselves.. leaving just a few top sharks in the ecosystem.. the whales would all be gone once the plankton crumble away. The sharks would eat the whales. Then once all that's left is sharks, the sharks would even eat the other sharks. *(Think of this but as a analogy for our economy and our modern day society..) If we instead decided to support the lowest income earning people in the ecosystem. So they could at least afford a roof over their heads. Thus now having more income to use $$ throughout many other aspects of our economy. There would be a beneficial systematic distribution to other aspects of society. Benefiting the entire system. All because we were Finally able to try and see if we helped the lowest wage earners, would it help? It really would help. People would be able to obtain the most basic level of essential living standards... That would Vastly improve our current state of our economy & society though *Also imagine this analogy in our economy. The more help we invest in the lowest level people, the more it would trickle into every facet of our economy. If poor people can pay their rent & not go homeless: landlords would get $, businesses would get $, banks would get $, local small shops would get $, mortgages & bills could be paid, insurance companies would get $, Taxes would get $, So essentially that $ would go out & filter right back in to improve our Country while simultaneously improving our quality of Life. Every bit of the economy would somehow find a way to benefit off of this situation... I don't get why we haven't even Given it a chance?? If it doesn't help? Then by all means stop it and figure out what problems we could be facing might be one's that run way deeper than expected and that would take drastic changes to improve that situation... (I hope we TRY something soon, before things get any more unstable. The worst thing we could do is continue on doing exactly what we are currently doing. It might get to a point where overcoming our struggles could simply become a pipedream. I don't want it to get to that) *We really should be fully investing & commiting to Modern Advanced Nuclear energy options. We are way behind when we should be already setup & going so we can greatly enhance the efficiency of our power grid, as well as greatly lowering the amount of greenhouse gas emissions bring produced.. we can be basically self sufficient when it comes to our power grid. We can prove to ourselves as a society that we really have advanced so much in our capabilities and understanding of safety measures when it comes to nuclear energy options. As well as understanding more ways to utilize and obtain the energy source. Rather than the stereotype narrow mindset a lot of people think of due to the mistakes of our past. I know we can grow and evolve from those days tho. We just gotta get going on commiting to this power source that we would be irrational and absurd to not utilize... It's honestly crazy nuclear energy options isn't much more wide spread in our current day of age...
@@clarkkent9080 > Name one nuclear project in the last 20 years here in the U.S. that had any effect from fear mongers Indian Point - low-carbon, paid-off plant providing 25% of NYC's electricity; decommissioned and replaced by gas SONGS - low-carbon, paid-off plant providing a major part of CA's electricity; decommissioned and replaced by gas There were some close shaves also: Diablo Canyon - low-carbon, paid-off plant providing 10% of CA's electricity; saved from closure by a realization than wind/solar are not going to cut it in a low-carbon & dispatchably-electrified world. Dresden - low-carbon, paid-off plant providing a large part of IL's electricity; saved from closure by a realization than wind/solar are not going to cut it in a low-carbon & dispatchably-electrified world. Byron - low-carbon, paid-off plant providing a large part of IL's electricity; saved from closure by a realization than wind/solar are not going to cut it in a low-carbon & dispatchably-electrified world. Now - I invite you to name one wind-/solar- project, preferably in Germany, which has resulted in a coal plant closing. (yeah, OK, Germany was a bit harsh, given they are RE-OPENING coal plants there to make up for a loss of nuclear and gas)
@@clarkkent9080 Diablo Canyon Construction began #1 1968, #2 commissioned in 1986, 18 years later. “August 6, 1977: the Abalone Alliance held the first blockade at Diablo Canyon Power Plant, and 47 people were arrested. August 1978: almost 500 people were arrested for protesting at Diablo Canyon. April 8, 1979: 30,000 people marched in San Francisco to support shutting down the Diablo Canyon Power Plant. June 30, 1979: about 40,000 people attended a protest rally at Diablo Canyon (blocking the gates). September 1981: more than 1900 protesters were arrested at Diablo Canyon. May 1984: about 130 demonstrators showed up for start-up day at Diablo Canyon, and five were arrested”
@@Nill757 They tried to build VC Summer in South Carolina and during construction ZERO protestors showed up. Vogtle was under construction for 16 years in Georgia and during that time ZERO protestors showed up. And apparently nothing has happened at Diablo Canyon in protest friendly California in the last 39 years. Your point means nothing as you have no point.
Innovation in the West is always slow due to invested parties int those industries. Case in point, why China leaped ahead ahead by building their infrastructure in roads, high-speed railways and airplanes. Look at how America and Europe is playing catchup to China and Russia!!! Westinghouse and GE didnt want to believe that a so-called third world countries could surpassed them but ignore them while keeping Africa, Mideast and Latin America down.
“… pressurized …Disaster” Yes? Many many disasters around the world, Bhopal chemical plant hurt 1/2 million, Banqiao dam collapsed kill up 1/4 million. And, all those planes crashes, hydrocarbon explosions accidents over the years. Can you name one public fatality anywhere from radiation from a commercial pressurized light water reactor?
I think he tried to start out providing facts but now all he does is click bate and posts unicorn videos. He like many others is just in it for the $$$$
Of course if you've been following what's been happening lately with CMEs, you'd be majorly sweating bullets big time. Loss of electrical grids will certainly be... problematic... but all the nuclear meltdowns will be the actual disaster.
Is there really, really, REALLY a CME/EMP coming down the pike? Answer... yep. Proponents of the nuclear power industry seem to... forget... about the 100% inevitable CME/carrington events. Like the sun magically isn't really there. Even though it very extremely obviously is.
Doing a weapons-grade Captain Picard-style double facepalm at the moment. You she entity lifeforces (including she entity lifeforces existing in XY DNA template bodies) are an an endless source of exasperation and having to do a weapons-grade Captain Picard-style double facepalm. And if you think you can Personal Opinion denialism away that CME... Not. Gonna. Work. M... O... O... N... that spells "electromagnetic pulse". M... O... O... N... that spells "a bigtime uh-oh".
Thanks god they started working on it, SMRs are certainly useful for limited areas. I have doubts about the price and construction delays by Westinghouse because their numbers look too good considering what was going on in the past.
South Korea and Russia are so good at making cheaper large plants, SMRs will probably have hard time competing with them.
Thanks for bringing this much needed videos.
I didn't notice the different style. Your willingness to look at the pros and cons, makes this a more trustworthy channel (IMO).
There is no safe form of nuclear because all of them release radiation into the environment in one way or another. And there is
no safe level or radiation, just increasing amount of cell damage with exposure.
I don´t think AP300 is too late. There, many countries here in EU are thinking about them preparing to implement them in the future. Eastern Europe is known for widespread use of multiple VVER440 on site. Here we love idea of building multiple cheaper and small units instead of few big units. Slovakian NPP Mochovce 3 and 4 already under construction (unit 3 ramping up production already) with cost of 6.2 billion euros for two 470MWe unit. There is aging NPP Bohunice V2 (end of life 2044 and 2045), it will need replace with more powerful plant. Which one is better 4-6 AP300 costing lets say 7-10 billion euros or two big reactors with price tag 15-20bilion euros? Other VVER440 plants will need similar upgrades in Czechia, Hungary, Ukraine and Poland is too very interested in SMRs. I would say, EU is quite big market for those smaller reactors to compete and more players we get all around the world is only better for end users and market. World needs to build lots of smaller reactors not few big, big rectors are by my view dead end. Big reactor projects are complicated, prone to be unique so supply chains needs to be built with every one poject again and again making them expensive and prone to delays.
Interesting. However, to make up for one AP1000 (confusingly it is 1200MWe) you would need 4 AP300s. Would it really be cheaper to build 4 small over one big?
There's a lot of demand right now in Eastern Europe. Given the price tags of AP1000s, it could make sense for the smaller designs. They can integrate into the grids more easily than big units. But your assessment of 1-2 big reactors (~1100 MWe each) vs several SMRs (~300 MWe) is an interesting problem. The capital costs of the SMRs are about the same or slightly lower than recent western-built large plants (if they _can_ be built at those costs), but the long-term economics might not be as good. Even Westinghouse pointed this out that the LCOE probably won't be as good, so you have to take some other advantages to make it worthwhile.
@@atomicblender Central and Eastern Europe have robust electrical infrastructure capable of handling additional loads. One of this countries can easily add ~40% more, i believe others too. Adding more than 20% of dispersed renewables would require building parallel systems, adding to the cost.
there is no SMR party. SMRs are economically braindead.
“more”
I don’t think the idea is to add any more power, but to replace the coal gas and oil power already there with secure, clean domestic power.
My hypothesis is that in markets like the US and Europe, full size reactors are a very tough sell because electricity demand is basically flat. Markets like China have an easier time because their demand is still growing. These smaller reactors are more suitable for keeping pace with retirements.
Have you forgotten, that EU outlawed production of internal combustion engines after 2035? Even the car manufacturers now say, they will not do ic cars after 2033. (I think it's not doable, but the electricity demand will rise.. definitely)
Exactly my thoughts, perfect reply
This video was interesting.
I like the setup with your ‘set’. It’s tidy and minimal without looking to empty. It fits the tone of the content well and makes stuff easy to watch.
Thank you for this most informative video. I have recently discovered your channel and enjoy the content very much. As a not-at-all nerdy hobby I study nuclear reactors, with an emphasis on the RBMK/ CANDU and fast reactors because they pique my interest as well. Your channel has great info as to where the development of nuclear power currently is. The videos are clear and concise without too much clutter in the way. Keep up the good work!
Hi there…great video! I personally think this is a very smart play by Westinghouse because they are able to provide an SMR offering simply by providing a “little brother” to the AP1000. When you say the SMR field is crowded…is that really true? Or is it more true to say that there are a lot of hopeful startups who never built a nuclear plant before?
The most serious SMR contender, the BWRX-300 by GEH, will be a popular choice and they will be very busy. You question the true modularity of the AP300, but that is even more true of the BWRX-300. It is just a small boiling water reactor with natural circulation, but really not much is factory-made. I think demand will outstrip supply - they will not be able to scale to the demand.
NuScale and Rolls Royce are both in trouble. NuScale has had some pretty serious cost overruns and their First of a Kind is hanging in the balance still. Rolls Royce is having trouble filling out its order book with commitments so that they can build a factory. Those two might sort it out, they might not. Terrestrial and Terra power both been very quiet lately. Terrapower has some problems because they need HALEU fuel and the supply got disrupted cuz they can’t get it from Russian anymore. Who else then? Last energy, X-energy and Kairos are all interesting but vastly smaller and less experienced companies. After that, you get the micro-reactors, another market.
At the end of the day, I personally believe the way forward for nuclear is to build big and build a fleet. We are not going to reach our decarbonization targets 300MWs at a time. However, I don’t hate the AP300 at all. For Westinghouse customers, there is now another option, and the company can provide it without the horrendous cost of developing a separate product.
I don't believe that any of the Russian nuclear materials have been cut off.
@@gregorymalchuk272 They did just recently, it's not like the US was a major purchaser.
Hi, I think your overall assessment of the SMR market is pretty fair. A crowded SMR market does include a number of designs that aren't fully ready. A few weeks ago I brought up that fact in my video on the BWRX-300. The GE design is the farthest along, at least actually having some contracted work. NuScale is having issues with cost, although it seems to mostly be materials driven rather than design issues. The definition of modularity seems to have become a bit flexible, so I shouldn't pick on only Westinghouse for that. Some designs are embracing factory build more than others (like Last Energy). The AP1000 is a reasonably solid design, so the AP300 is a natural fit. Good summary, cheers!
Build big and build a fleet. Well said.
Another interesting one is the Linglong One (aka ACP100) from China, the world's first "true" SMR actually under construction... of course it won't ever be built in the US or europe for political reasons but it could see a lot of adoption elsewhere in the world.
I experienced AP1000 in China(Haiyang and Sanmen) last 20 years, and I look forward to AP300 being popular in future. Right now I am in Canada hard to find the right position not as I did in China, shame. I could only design Civil commercial building projects. But for the future, I would love to come back to the series of AP.
I too have been to Zhangzhou! I am gonna miss this place!! *sad*
It does not matter when it was introduced or started construction. Its when it start selling power
Do we have any updates on Thorium reactors?
Just a bit of clarification.
The AP1000 was based on the approved design of the AP600, so they will more likely be down scaling the AP600 design not the AP1000 design. Although the changes made to the AP600 design weren’t significant to create the AP1000.
As for time line, 72 hours of long term battery needed for certain component functions that require power. Once initiated, before the 72 hours, the plant is in natural circulation cooling mode on the reactor, using the water drained from the IRWST. So the core cooling time is indefinite.
How long does it take to build one of these?
Other than some redundant talking points in first 2-3 minutes, I loved this video. Keep it up!
Thanks for the feedback! This one was put together much more quickly than usual.
I like the how the AP300 publicity graphics are put together, with a solar farm just coming into view behind the AP300 building. There's definite "psychology" at work there.
I am jaedon Choi in KNF. I am very glad to see you and well summarized video about the AP300. I will sometimes visit your You tube channel to find out the newest nuclear technology.
Hello Mr Choi! I am glad you visit and hope you enjoyed the videos!
the containment doesn't look very modular--that was the downfall of the AP-1000 (field construction of reinforced concrete)
There were a lot of things that made the AP1000 exceed the schedule and cost estimate. But the containment itself was not one of them
A lot of shit talkers and naysayers here. Sigh.
I'm by no means an expert in this field but I know one thing, we need to be getting off FF as soon as humanly possible and that won't happen on renewables alone.
All nuclear techs should be maximized NOW.
All issues can be worked out in time just like they were for every other emerging and progressing technology in the past.
There was a time when flight and computerized technology seemed impractical, unaffordable, fanciful, or foolish. Do we feel that way now??
And now we carry more computing power in our pocket then NASA had on the first moon mission. Amazing what a difference 20-60 years makes.
Problems are nothing but minor bumps in the road.
For a look at how to progress with nuclear power one needs look no further than Rosatom or what's happening in China and India.
Sadly the US gov owned by fossil fuels so of course the shit isn't going to be working here in the same way.
All we need is to get the full weight of the State behind domestic nuclear and this shit would take off properly.
All you really need is to get the state out of the way with malevolent regulators. Nuclear would quickly destroy fossil fuel power, not continue alongside as with RE alongside fossil in Germany. In France nuclear didn’t ‘coexist’ w the large oil power fleet at the time. Nuclear destroyed it. Gone 15 years. The entire fossil fuel industry knows it.
Fun fact... Everyone is just marking time until the completely 100% inevitable next CME/carrington event that's coming down the
pike.
And then... major bigtime EMP. And then... eventual nuclear meltdowns of all the reactors and spent fuel pools as they lose
their cooling systems. The planet will be quickly radiation sterilized from pole to pole.
Fun fact... No one survives. Not anyone anywhere. Everyone dies. And that's that. End of story.
Fun fact... There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of nuclear reactors and spent fuel pools.
Fun fact... It is 100% inevitable that the planet will be in the wrong place at the wrong time for a CME/EMP.
Fun fact... nuclear war is hardly even worth mentioning compared to nuclear meltdowns.
Fun fact... A bomb goes boom and that's all the radiation it will ever produce. But meltdowns produce and spew out enormous
amounts of new radioactive particles next to forever.
Fun fact... You won't enjoy dying from radiation sickness even the least little bit.
Fun fact... Every day that goes by has become one day less to global meltdown radiation oblivion.
The existence of the many, many, many hundreds of nuclear reactors and spent fuel pools and the loss of their cooling systems
will be the Final Word as to What Will Be What.
This universe is littered with civilizations, worlds that were once alive. But you she entity lifeforces (for Earth, including she entity lifeforces existing in XY DNA template bodies) have killed them with your... Personal Opinions.
Personal Opinions that instantly and automatically replace any and all actual facts because it's your Personal Opinion that your Personal Opinions do.
And those few civilizations that have managed (so far) to survive, are extremely stunted and stagnant.
There's not one single surviving (so far) civilization in this universe that isn't an example of Epic Fail. Not. Even. One.
Destroyers Of All Worlds much?
@@satanofficial3902 how dramatic. Spider in the bathroom, same thing?
Just barge the power to the available grid input. Regulators are resistance.
It looks like a 3-way SMR competition (< 300 MWe reactors):
1. AP300 GenIII+ PWR Water cooled (< 100% modular)
2. BWRX-300 GenIII+ BWR Water cooled (< 100% modular)
3. Xe-100 GenIV HTGR 750C Helium cooled, TRISO fuel (4x 80MWe reactors per plant, 100% modular)
All three above have contracts now in US, UK, and Canada.
8 Feb 2024.... UK selects some of the first AP300s.
Westinghouse has signed an agreement with Community Nuclear Power Limited (CNP) for the construction of *four* AP300 small modular reactors (SMRs) in the North Teesside region of northeast England. It would be the UK's first privately-financed SMR fleet.
Renewables are in the true sense of the term are not, and they will never be a reliable source of base load power no matter how much is spent on battery backup.
This is why mechanical batteries are important
Many, many, many hundreds of nuclear reactors have been built like carrington events never, never, never happen. But they do.
The Big Bad Wolf of the "final" CME is very definitely coming down the pike. And it can't be Personal Opinion denialismed away.
For whatever reason, you she entity lifeforces (including she entity lifeforces existing in XY DNA template bodies) can have a weird compulsion going on to do things completely wrong.
And, of course, then being all smug about it as though you did something to be proud of...
Death cultism much?
and new nuclear in the U.S. will never be less than 2-3 time that of any other generation method. For utilities it is cost, cost, and cost
@@clarkkent9080 more nonsense from a troll
The AP1000 was an upsized AP600. Shrinking it does not seem like such a big deal. One must also consider all the Westinghouse PWRs that have been built. This does not seem a radial design. It would be good if they could be sited at old coal plants.
and the AP600 was a rube goldberg of their 1970s designs. They work but are not the best
@@clarkkent9080 Clark - Did they ever build one? I don't think so. What they really should do is interview guys like you that have actually operated them. Book learning is no substitute for experience.
@@daniellarson3068 I first licensed on a Westinghouse 3 loop PWR so that is all I knew. When I licensed on a B&W 2 loop PWR it was the difference between night and day.
For those of us that operated both, the analogy was Westinghouse was like a 1950s Cadillac, big and bulky, moved slow, vague steering, slow to get going and stop, While the B&W plants are like Ferrari's, sleek and nimble, quick steering, quick up to speed and stops on a dime.
When Westinghouse has a problem they just add more systems where B&W redesigns the entire system to fix the problem.
Do Westinghouse plant work....YES. But there is no comparison between the two in operation.
@@clarkkent9080 That's interesting and matches what I was once told by a trainer. He had been an operator at SMUD and said the smaller containment meant an operator had to react more quickly. His description ended with, "You'd have a really bad day." Closest I ever got was the simulator in the middle of the night. It'll be cool if they get some of these new designs built. I do believe some are largely smoke and mirrors.
@@daniellarson3068 Unfortunately, TMI-2 was a B&W plant and we know that story.
I don't think the problem with new nuclear has anything to do with plant designs. B&W, Westinghouse, CE, they all work. Some may be easier to maintain and others to operate.
Today the problem is cost and that has little to do with the design. We no longer have the skilled construction craft, quality suppliers, or desire to work hard. What we have is ok for a Wal Mart or Amazon warehouse but it falls short for a complex and critical nuclear plant
At my first Westinghouse plant, it was considered normal to haul out 5 or more dead construction workers during an outage. Not from industrial accidents but from heart attacks. These middle aged overweight poor health union workers just reached the end of their life expediency and dropped dead. It was accepted that well "he was out of shape".
That would not be acceptable today and so we have frequent breaks, spot cooling, and minimal physical requirements, weekly safety meetings, not something that makes construction efficient.
Vogtle is in Georgia and tornado warnings and severe weather is a common summertime occurrence requiring all work to stop and sheltering in a designated enclosure adding to costly delays.
Vogtle construction has random drug screening and a steady stream of failures and people getting caught with a whizzinator which is illegal in most states.
If you don't know what that is look it up and then ask yourself "is there enough customers out there to actually make it profitable?" and "how bad must your desire to use drugs be to actually use wear this thing?" The answer is "yes" and "a very strong desire"
The world is much different today than it was in the 1970s nuclear building boom and I don't see any of that changing anytime soon
I was wondering how safe these types of modular nuclear reactors would be if an EMP weapon wipes out electrical components?
AP1000 sky high cost occurred mostly in regulation, construction and frequent change of contractors. Toshiba is the first to blame, Westinghouse the second. Bechtel is the best nuclear contractor to be hired for AP1000 construction,however it was not selected. However Bechtel is actually the principal contractor in Vogtle 3&4 AP1000 construction site.
I was at VC Summer and worked closely with Vogtle.
For both sites, Westinghouse and Shaw were to provide turnkey units.
Westinghouse could never produce an actual schedule for the entire project, and seeing the writing on the wall, they pulled out. CBI was building the containment vessels and ended up being pulled into the construction, not sure how many iterations of builders they brought in.
Sorry, but I’m not impressed with Bechtel, they are really good at milking the golden cow that is nuclear. They got the completion contract for Watts Bar 2. TVA budget was $5 billion, Bechtel sucked that up pretty quick and were removed. I interfaced with them on Bellefonte, they buried the walkdown process so deep in processes, walkdown packages, walkdown meetings and walkdown teams, it would have taken decades to just establish the asbuilt conditions. TVA pulled the plug again, for the 5th or 6th time. Now there’s a waste of money.
I find the term 'modular' being tossed around in several ways that seem to 'muddy the waters'. An attractive side of NUSCALE designs has been the idea of several identical reactors at one site. Each 'modular' reactor includes passive safety but the overall site has ongoing savings from the multiple reactors. A reactor outage does not reduce site production to zero, but only about 12-15%. The reactor servicing equipment and staff have a high utilization rate since at least one reactor on site is undergoing refueling/service at any given time. Operating and security staff are shared among many reactors, resulting in another area of savings. These savings are NOT there for a single-reactor AP300 type 'modular' design. You can get some of these savings with a 'fleet' of simular sites, but NUSCALE is essentially a 'fleet' of reactors within one facility.
While this AP300 is 'modular' in the sense that it's construction is supposed to have savings, this is somewhat unproven. The 'economies of modular construction' rely on amortizing the off-site factory costs over a 'fleet' of reactors and so far this has had limited success. Even if successful in bringing down construction costs (although nuclear has an abysmal track record in coming in on-time / on-budget), this is only an up-front savings. The long term cost of operation is not improved.
So 'modular' means different things in different designs. Both have better passive-safety and provide long-term eco-benefits but whether or not either form of 'modularity' catches hold and actually kick-starts another 'nuclear renaissance is unknown.
Investor owned companies own multiple reactor sites so they have a roving crew for refueling outages similar to your explanation for the NuScale project. While security is site specific, you will not have one operating crew responsible for multiple reactors while they are running. EVERY utility that wants nuclear has always chosen the largest unit due to economies of scale. The only advantage of SMR is a lower up front construction cost but operating costs are more per Kwh produced
BTW, passive safety features are promoted for their cost savings not their added safety since no U.S. reactor has ever had their non-passive safety features fail.
Here is the NuScale project's current state
This is from the Des Moines Register an concerning the only Small Modular Reactor (SMR) project in the U.S. today. It should be noted that NuScale said (Jan/2023) the target price for power from the plant is $89 per megawatt hour, up 53% from the previous estimate of $58 per MW hour
In 2013, the Wall Street firm Lazard estimated that the cost of generating electricity at a new nuclear plant in the United States will be between $86 and $122 per megawatt-hour. Last November, Lazard estimated that the corresponding cost will be between $131 and $204 per megawatt-hour based upon the 4 recent new nuclear projects in the U.S. . During the same eight years, renewables have plummeted in cost, and the 2021 estimates of electricity from newly constructed utility-scale solar and wind plants range between $26 and $50 per megawatt-hour. Nuclear power is simply not economically competitive.
SMRs will be even less competitive. Building and operating SMRs will cost more than large reactors for each unit (megawatt) of generation capacity. A reactor that generates five times as much power will not require five times as much concrete or five times as many workers. This makes electricity from small reactors more expensive; many of the original small reactors built in the United States were financially uncompetitive and shut down early.
The estimated cost of constructing a plant with 600 megawatts of electricity from NuScale SMRs, arguably the design closest to deployment in the United States, was originally advertised as costing $1 billion but upon requesting actual bids from engineering firms, increased to $6.1 billion in 2020. Given inflation and other cost constraints that cost today can only be expected to be significantly higher.
The cost was so high that ten members of Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems canceled their contracts. NuScale then changed its proposed plant configuration to 6 fewer reactors but increased each reactor output from 50 Mw to 77 Mw costing at total of $5.3 billion. The NRC just last week approved the construction of the 50 Mw design but now will have to start the review process all over given the switch to a 77 Mw design. For each kilowatt of electrical generation capacity, that estimate is around 80% more than the per-kilowatt cost of the Vogtle project in Georgia - before its cost exploded from $14 billion to over $30 billion. Based on the historical experience with nuclear reactor construction, SMRs are very likely to cost much more than initially expected. And they now have delayed the project start until 2025 in an attempt to find more backers. All this before the inevitable setbacks that will occur once construction starts.
I agree, the usage of the word "modular" is becoming a bit of misnomer in this space. The ideas of large, factory-built portions has yet to be realized on any meaningful scale. But, put SMR in your reactor's title and you suddenly get access to funding and interest from government subsidies. These companies aren't dumb, they're simply following where the market and money is going.
@@atomicblender There is a limit on what can be transported by truck/rail/barge and every commercial nuclear project has taken advantage of offsite construction of modules, when possible, for shipment to the construction site.
Some people believe that you can build an entire unicorn SMR in a factory and ship it to the plant site. This is simply not true.
The build it in a factory on an assembly line and save money is a dream and simple misinformation on reducing costs. The U.S. now has 5 recent nuclear projects and their realist build costs. The issue is NOT the reactor type or reactor generation that is causing massive budget over runs, it is supplier issues, project management, lack of qualified construction craft, and fraud. Talking about new or smaller reactor types is a solution in search of a problem that does not exist
@@clarkkent9080 I disagree about a couple of your points. The NUSCALE is said to expect only 3-4 operators in a common control room operating 8 or more reactors. So that's a savings.
And while utilities with 'fleets' of plants do have some savings in maintenance personnel, with each NUSCALE reactor being of identical design, they ope to have even more savings in maintenance. And much of the specialized equipment needed, is shared among all the identical reactors, something that isn't as easy with a 'fleet' of reactors spread out over several states, and of different vendor/ design.
How do you mean "stiff competition"? The 40% reliance on LNG provides a huge field of opportunity and necessary challenge and mandate to bring steady-frequency. If a handful of the development designs come through as demonstrably reliable, we all win. We have spent too long in letting the current fleet become old and vulnerable to retirement without low_CO2 options. The AP300 is an option that needs to be deployed and proven along with untested types.
There are literally thousands of smaller communities around the world who can use a small reactor, it boil down to what the initial investment be, and the life cycle cost. I say there are markets for even smaller reactors. My preference is several reactors instead of one , so some can be down for maintenance. Reactor construction often take 2 decades , so 2 years late is nothing. Especially if you can come up with some advantages your competitors do not have.
This design is mostly Westinghouse wanting to avoid the Kodak effect.
Kodak was a leader in the photographic industry in the 1970's. Although developing (one of?) the first digital camera(s), the company didn't believe in the future of digital photography, preferring instead to focus on what they were good at: analog cameras. Thus, when the digital photography market took off, they didn't really have a model ready for the market, and lost out on market shares. Kodak filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2012.
Westinghouse would prefer to sell their AP1000 plants, but still want a stake in the game if the SMR market takes off. So no, I don't think they're really late to the party.
If it only has a single loop, is it not more like a BWR than a PWR?
BWRs don't have steam generators at all
@@clarkkent9080 Thanks, perhaps I misunderstood what was meant by single loop. There a primary loop and a turbine cycle loop. Single turbine loop would be a better description.
@@legopals1516 Westinghouse reactors in the past had 3 or 4 loops. The AP1000 just used 2 large loops to save money and the AP300 just uses 1 loop. There is very little difference between a Westinghouse reactor from the 1970s and the AP1000. Westinghouse always takes the cheap and easy way in design
NRC has not approved this 300 MW version. And it’s similarity to AP under the malevolent NRC is useless.
True, the uprated NuScale design isn't approved. But they are moving forward anyway.
@@atomicblender I’m referring to this Westinghouse 300 MW design.
Great video essays btw.
@@atomicblender If you mean on hold till 2025 trying to find utilities interested in their SMR, then yes that dare is moving ahead
The 7.33 tons of spent fuel generated in one year by one 300MW reactor can fuel 7 1GW Molten Salt
Reactors for one year. 940 kg of natural thorium in a Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) can generate 1 gigawatt (GW) of electricity for one year. The 55.668 tons of unused depleted uranium processed to obtain the 7.332 tons of enriched uranium can fuel a further 59 1GW Molten Salt Reactors for one year.
I’d rather see new non water cooking reactors. Or maybe some that use the water cooking ability for making the feared product that explodes.. Also would be great to have some different fuel because “NNP”
You forgot that the Chinese have built 4 AP1000's and are operating them - and their construction cost and timelines only had very minor increases (Sanmen 1&2: Haiyang 1&2). China has been so pleased with their performance that in 2022 they ordered 6 more units (Sanmen 3&4 and Haiyan 3&4, and 2 units at Lianjiang).
Ukraine signed contracts for 2 AP1000 units in 2021 and recently announced this year that they are looking at potentially 4-8 more AP1000's beyond the 2 contracted for. Ukraine is also building a fuel assembly plant to provide Europe with replacement reactor fuel for both AP1000's and several Soviet/Russian reactor designs (Ukraine has been using Westinghouse provided fuel assemblies in their existing Soviet/Russian reactors for several years).
The AP1000 is the most successful generation 3+ western reactor design in the world based on the number of constructed and operating plants and existing contracts.
The biggest problem with the US AP1000's cost was that the USA had not built a nuclear power plant in so long that they forgot how to do it (and all the very real planning and execution that goes into it). A lot of very costly mistakes were made.
Westinghouse's experience is something of real value in construction of any new nuclear power plant in the USA. Europe had been going through a much worse "forgetting how to do it" series of very costly lessons with their EPR. I see that Westinghouse has a real leg up here and can point to experience that no one else can.
The fact that 6 Units have been built (or are near startup), with 2 abandoned, with 8 more currently ordered says that there is an active supply chain and the cost of major components is now well known. Another huge advantage for Westinghouse (their supply chain for the same components used in the AP300).
As far as all the other SMR reactor designs: Lets see how much they really cost and what problems they have. Having worked in nuclear power plants I can assure you that not everything works as well as the designers planned - and lots of creative modifications had to be done - or you just lived with something that did not work as planned. I am one of the very few American engineers not part of Westinghouse or its subcontractors that worked on the operating Sanmen 1&2 units looking at an issue. It was relatively minor as historical nuclear plant issues go; and solvable at minimal cost. I'm sure my work was immediately shared with Haiyang 1&2 and I know that people at Vogtle 3 & 4 knew about it within a month or so.
What the AP1000 has going for it was the extensive experience from the Westinghouse 2 and 3 loop plants of the past. My personal opinion is that the reason the ESBWR was never built was because BWR's have historically had more problems and higher operating cost than PWR's (essentially most of the entire power plant is a radioactive work environment - which increases the cost of all labor inside the power plant).
China did not sign for 6 more units of AP1000. They stole the design, called it something different and will build it without paying Westinghouse.
VC Summer and Vogtle have been in the nuclear power business since the 1970s s how do you forget how to build what you have been operating and maintaining for 40+ years???? The U.S. does not use slave/prison/child labor and we have a robust regulatory and oversight of nuclear projects. You cannot compare the U.S. to either Russia, Ukraine, or China.
Without some flippant "we forgot how to build" comment and being in the current nuclear construction industry, what is your real opinion on why VC Summer failed and Vogtle cost skyrocketed to the point where no U.S. utility is even remotely interested in the AP1000?
Thank for your report of hands on experience.
“USA had not built a ..plant in so long …”
Across the country for commercial power, true, but it was Westinghouse behind the Vogtle 3 4, AP1000 designs, and as you know they had very recent experience with Sanmen in China which you mention. Was that somehow not useful? Appears the difference between China and Vogtle must lie elsewhere, in part at least. For instance, the imposition in 2009 of the aircraft impact requirement, after design approval in 2006 without that requirement, does that have any parallel in China?
@@Nill757 Westinghouse was not supervising or controlling the construction of the Chinese plants. They provided the design and blueprints of the nuclear core, and key components; a standard steam plant design to match the nuclear core, and provided "model operating procedures for the nuclear core," and technical support for procedure development and startup. As such they did not follow in detail what and how the construction companies were doing. They just assumed that the US Contractors for Summer and Vogtle had essentially the same competence.
Shaw (another American company) provided overall Project Management for the 1st 4 Chinese plants; which again did not lead to any real understanding of the construction process.
So Westinghouse as fairly clueless as to the details of the planning and execution of the construction companies at Sanmen and Haiyang. While they could ask for advice from the Chinese companies after taking over management of VC Summer and Vogtle, their people did not really understand it as they personally did not have decades of experience in actual power plant construction combined with cultural differences in how things are done between China and the USA.
I've had the personal experience of working with the Westinghouse design concepts and "model" operating procedures for the AP1000; and the resulting Chinese operating procedures and expectations. Bridging the culture difference is not easy - and my experience is that it was not easy to get the Chinese to understand the Westinghouse intent on how and why things should be operated a certain way. I believe that the Chinese would likewise have a hard time explaining to American construction people the how and why of something that they did to build their plants that worked.
@@Nill757 Chinese textile mills can produce 200,000 pairs of socks each day ship them half way around the world and sell them at Wal Mart and everyone make a profit. American textile mills cannot even come close to that price or quality in their own country so the problem must lie elsewhere....maybe the NRC has too many regulations on American textile plants?
@@perryallan3524 thanks
If W can build a 300 MW power plant for a billion dollars, it will be 30% less expensive than a storage battery capable of delivering 300 MW for only 48 hours that costs $100 per kWh - which is much less than DOE forecasts for Lithium batteries by 2030. Storage battery costs alone prove the extreme expense of the solar/wind/battery pipe dream vs an all nuclear plan.
48 hour batteries aren't really a thing. Including that as a point of comparison is like comparing a 300w solar panel to a 300w nuclear reactor. Its pretty misleading.
@@SocialDownclimber True, yet 48 hrs or more are needed, making the point that battery storage at grid scale wont happen, and everywhere solar wind is pushed, fossil power will remain in place , watt for watt, which is both expensive and dirty, as seen in Germany, Uk, California, etc.
What are the true cost projections per kWh for batteries? Is there a list I can see of costs across different technologies.
@@gregorymalchuk272 price now for large grid battery installed from Tesla is over $500/kwh.
@@Nill757 Does Tesla charge a huge premium or is that a representative of competitive commodity Lithium storage battery prices? I'm curious.
If the customers are smart enough to demand a fixed price contract, regulations and governments don't mess it up, and Westinghouse can deliver on price, they might find some buyers that are an exception to where the ever lowering prices of Solar, Wind, and Batteries are not much lower cost to install. Batteries in particular are getting very cheap in the next few years, making Solar and Wind much more attractive.
Demand will be going up all over the world with EVs soon becoming standard all over the world.
No one has built a 'modern SMR' by now, so why shouldn't a big competitor that has all technologies and experiances in house shouldn't be still right on spot?
I'm just curious if the big steam-generator of a one looper is small enough for easy road transport,..
So, its all on the question who has the best 'pefab house building sheme'.(And who wins the market by speed, political infuance, deep pockets to live through the heartships of building prototypes,...
Utilities can build whatever they want as long as it meets regulatory requirements. Politics are only involved when these companies want taxpayer welfare
@@clarkkent9080 And how many projects in the next few years, so at least the 'prototypes' will be indepent of state incentives? (Russian reactors come with there own russian state backed finance-plan, Sizewell C will be owned to 20% by GB-Gov and another 20% by EDF,..)
@@hellboystein2926 The NuScale and Terrapower projects each receive $2 billion matching taxpayer welfare. Vogtle received government backed low interest loans. And EVERY commercial nuclear plant in the U.S. is insured (Price-Anderson Act) by the U.S. government against accidents. TMI-2 cost the taxpayer $1 billion just to clean up the melted fuel and that was in 1980 dollars. Nuclear has never been able to stand on its own without taxpayer handouts
@@clarkkent9080 So doesn't windfarms solar-farms or even the Oil and gas industry, so 'whats the alternative' going back into the cage? Cocking on a smocky wood-fire and dying early from the fumes,...??
@@hellboystein2926 I have never flicked my light switch and not have the lights come on. In 30 years I only lost power once when a kid ran into the subdivision transformer.
INVESTOR owned utilities will make the best economical decisions and right now they are leaning to solar, wind with natural gas as the backup. Texas is ultra conservative, anti-green but at least has some of the most intelligent populations of the MAGA states and they are the leaders in wind energy, even more than California. Texas has more wind energy than any other state and they also have 100% of that wind energy backed up with natural gas plants.
Apparently even the hatters of tree hugging green energy know what is most cost effective and put economics above political ideology.
A video on how AI will assist with developing future cancer treatments would be good to watch
Gen 3+ means a pool on the roof, that is not passive saftey in the same way molten salt self regulates (higher temps = less reactions) . tragic to see how much support 'SMR party' gets and MSR gets misrepresented or shunned. I understand people may have vested interests in sunk dev costs like AP1000 and TRISO but sticking with cost prohibitive designs just seems deliberately obtuse. Imagine what the rest of industry could do, carbon capture -> fuel synth plant -> closed loop fuel cycle. for that you need high temp reactors at a lot lower costs.. if only there were 5~10 decent designs on the table.. alas
LWRs are way to go now, we have know-how and supply chains built already for them, MSRs and other "exotic" designs are way to go in long term. We can built dozens if not hundreds LWRs like AP300, NuScale, BWRX300 and others without bigger issues because we need them as soon as possible.
@@samuelgomola9097 less safe, more expensive to build and operate, less applications and risk of meltdown ruining nuclear optics with the easily swayed.. seems like a big risk for not much reward..
the only bonus being regulatory ease, which is evolving currently.. think longer term..
@@samuelforsyth6374 You are looking at MSRs like they are holy grail, but they are not. They needs years of development and lot's of money. They are way to go in future but not today, if you think we should haly all LWR projects and wait for MSR miracle you are delusional. LWRs and SMRs derived from them are feasible and safe way to go today and in next 40+ years until we mature MSR technology in usefull and safe. Handling and processing highly radioactive hot liquid fuel is whole new challenge. Corosion caused by hot salts is another challenge we haven't fully solved for MSRs. Technology od freze plugs, controll systems, reactor vessel neutron flux, neutron flux in heat exchangers, filling and emptying primary curcuit with hot radiactive liquid salt, and many more problems to solve. All those problems and many more have solutions, but we haven't got them yet... We need low carbon and affordable power NOW not tomorrow. LWRs are good enough with very good understanding of technology and physics behind. Neutron embritlement took literally decades to sufficiently solve, fuel rod twisting was solved literally in late 2000s after decades of research. Nucelar technology is very, very, very complex branch of engineering and physics. To be honest at the end, we are much closer even to VHTR gas cooled reactors than MSRs. It can be done and it will, but don't expect it tomorrow.
@@samuelgomola9097 I'm not sure you are up to date with the rate of change, freeze plugs are obsolete, neutron flux matters less in fast spectrum and DOE is funding salt creep testing so they can regulate it.. the science in many ways is more simple than a multi layered TRISO pellet.
The largest real impediment is tritium production, altho that is somewhat valueable
I agree we can do better than gen 3 with a pool on the roof with spent fuel pool nearby... China is surely doing everything they can with TMSR-LF1, the last time we heard from them they were testing various loops. India is into something similar, i recall Russia doing experiments in this direction too.
They are not forgotten but we have to be patient because the West doesn't seem interested in them.
Data centers needs Smr units
more competition by established companies will see the costs reduce and innovations accelerate
On the style of video, you were quite redundant especially in the beginning, essentially having two completely separate introductions that supplied exactly the same information and which easily cost you an extra minute of run-time.
Beyond that, it's not clear to me why a customer would WANT and AP300 when, given the not really modular design, and otherwise near identical technology, they could have an AP1000.
The AP1000 might be too big for some sites. I think a real opportunity for the ~300 MWe class is to replace old coal plants. It's an expensive route, but grids are finding that too much wind and solar is becoming difficult to manage.
And thanks for the video feedback, it really helps. I put this one was put together much more quickly than usual so it looks like there's a bit of repetition in the beginning.
Smaller parts like a pressure vessel for a 300 will be much faster to build than a 1000 with more mills available, more experience, less likelihood of mistakes, and easier transport, ie rail instead of barge, or semi instead of rail.
so what's it power production in football fields?
Really we should be looking at power density per unit of footprint area. I reckon horsepower per football field is the right unit of measurement for this.
I think that's the new unit of measure -- WpF (Watts per Football field/pitch)
As soon as he said it was a follow on from the AP1000 I was disappointed. I don't think there will be (or should be) a future for third generation reactors. The future of nuclear will only be assured if we produce unpressurised waterless reactors. There are numerous fourth generation unpressurised designs around so why even contemplate a design with unnecessary risks? The answer is simple - companies such as Westinghouse, Rolls Royce etc. only know third generation designs so that is what they will produce. Here in the UK we are only a couple of breakdowns away from being in real energy deficit. The escalating amount of money being squandered on HS2 (£100 billion +) would much more profitably have been spent on completely solving our generation problem. Madness!
Don't you think we should build one in the U.S. and test it for 10 years or so before we throw out the baby nuke with the reactor coolant? Given construction times, you are looking at decades before we could settle on something new
@@clarkkent9080 Taking the approach of designing, certifying and developing will take the AP300 longer than going through the same process for a fourth generation reactors which have most safety issues designed out. Here in the UK Rolls Royce said ( a couple of years ago) that it would take 15 years to bring their first small (third generation) reactor on line - once they start work. As an example the Moltex reactor - a fourth generation waste burner - is on course to go critical in Canada in 2030. So, I can't agree that sticking with the horse is a good idea when someone has designed a car - metaphorically speaking.
@@redmunds1565 I can not speak for other countries but in the U.S. There are only two companies that are working on reactors today and that is Terrapower and NuScale. NuScale has placed their project on hold as the ESTIMATED costs skyrocket and utilities are backing out.
Terrapower was planning on getting their fuel from Russia so now the U.S. taxpayer will be building them a fuel fabrication facility in the future.
If either ever does build, it will be at least 10 more years to complete and then at least 5 years to prove the concept before more could be considered. So it will be at least 2038 before construction of more of these "new" reactors could begin. Assuming a record 7 year build time we could have a few more by 2045.
We do not have unlimited construction craft and the recent AP1000 builds showed that even two simultaneous nuclear builds were stressing the available resources
great video for the non industry expert
BN owns Westinghouse. Lots of leverage $$$
BWR is old technology and doesn’t truly represent Gen4 walk away plants that can and should be rapidly deployed in the US even if it’s under demo/pilot plants
The only letter in SMR that isn't false is the R. 300MW ain't small and the M in SMR is a bit a of a stretch if not a complete lie.
What do you mean? Traditional reactors are in the gigawatt range.
@@anxiousearth680 Not in Europe , except for the latest models.
Underconstruction should make them cheap to build.
Being smaller we'll be able to hide them easier when they are decommissioned so we won't know they are there for the next 10,000 years.
Why aren't they being sprinkled with thorium which makes them _New, Improved, Good Housekeeping Approved!!_
"In any system of energy, Control is what consumes energy the most.
No energy store holds enough energy to extract an amount of energy equal to the total energy it stores.
No system of energy can deliver sum useful energy in excess of the total energy put into constructing it.
This universal truth applies to all systems.
Energy, like time, flows from past to future".
Please stop copy pasting nonsense
I predict we will buy the MSR type created at ORNL in the 1960's , but from China.
This was like a slide show
300 MW is not very small. I'm waiting to see what will be developed that fits inside of a semi trailer or shipping container, or a train locomotive.
Trailer sized diesel generators are about 1 MW
Shipping container sized nuclear power generators should be in the 1 MW to 10 MW range.
Oh that would be great a 1 Mw unit that needs security, operators, maintenance, etc.. Plan on $$$ per Kwh electric rates
Now the smallest mobile nuclear power plant occupies the area of a football field 140m x 30m and produces 75 MW.
Thorium crew where u at?? 💪⚡⚡
Testing LF1 in China :) Don't you think this are a little too complicated or expensive to run? On the other hand we need new generation plants capable of doing things PWRs can't.
@@codaalive5076 which is too complicated?
@@Krill_all_health_insuranceCEOs MSR on Th cycle. They say fuel reprocessing in situ is hard but that might not be truth, i don't know enough about chemistry and material science to comment.
What do you think about them being complicated, why is only China with another country or two doing it, why not in the West?
@@codaalive5076 IDK. Im stlll learning more layman info about today's nuke energy advancements. I wish to see a thorium plant started in the US. That seems unlikely for now, but I hope that changes. Thorium is extremely superior to Uranium nuclear fuel by all metrics IMO.
@@Krill_all_health_insuranceCEOs PWR technology is so mature we can have them built now to work for the next 60-80 years. Less developed technology like MSR fast reactors on Th cycle need a lot more development backed by governments. US had one running (on uranium to prove the concept, they could use Th at higher price) around 60's but research stopped for several reasons.
I noticed google shows nothing for LF1, wikipedia has Chinese MSR described under "TMSR-LF1".
This reminds me of the Germans who thought that Russian gas was a good idea.
Nuclear and no fossil fuels in every dictatorship.
Uranium ore exported to dictators nuclear industries brilliant 👏 👌 👍 😊😊😊, what could go wrong.
Just fatten the USA military defence budgets ezi pezi.
Wonderful, wonderful ❤️ love it ,fabulous, no fossil fuels 😊.
台灣多地震, 風災, 水災, 政治環境自由, 這才是台灣要的: 10MW 的 MMR 用 20呎 貨櫃運輸, 採用釷燃料 (台灣有釷礦) 的 TRISO 封裝, 完全 isolate, 運到哪用到哪, 可以整機回送 Refurbish 不留核廢 !
Interesting that both the NuScale and Terrapower SMR and MSR were advertised as costing that magical $! billion but are now estimated to cost over $4 billion each and that is before and ground has been broken. In the nuclear world it is all about cost, cost, and cost
just because you were a janitor at a nuclear facility does not make you expert. Why are you always here with your irrational bias? retired with an axe to grind is my guess
Ground HAS been broken.
Barely.
I forget which one of those 2 finally broke ground in the last month or so in Washington State - though it was more a symbolic act than a REAL one.
@@lukehahn4489 you flip burgers at McDonalds and think you know everything because you watched a YT video. You got a raise to $13 per hour, enjoy that and go away
I agree that cost is the bottom line.
In a coal or natural gas power plant, the power conversion side of the plant is 85% of the cost of the plant. Any high-temperature nuke would utilize the exact same equipment. When you remove the expensive forgings, containment structure, and fuel handling equipment from the equation, there is no reason the reactor vessel of an MSR should cost any more than a coal or NG boiler. This is exactly where the estimates are for Terrestrial Energy's MSR. I don't know about X-Energy's high-temperature gas reactor but Dow Chemical seems to think the price is good.
@@chapter4travels That must be why Terrapower's 345 Mw MSR originally estimated to cost $1 billion is now at $4 billion with half of that taxpayer welfare and the company now saying the first few plants will be expensive but costs are expected to drop over time....Give me a break.
BTW, Even at $4 billion it is more costly that the massively over budget , financial failure, Vogtle reactors
For the reminder the AP1000 started as AP600 but power output was too low and it didn't sell. So they just us e an old concept that smart
Every utility has always selected the largest output for economies of scale. The ideal of SMRs is a joke
BWR is risky.....
Single loop makes turbine side work difficult
The "Party" started in the 90s and no one has opened even a beer. Not one SMR has been started in the Western world! There must be reasons for that stubbornness on the part of History, don't you think? Maybe the talk is just so sweet, it distracts people from actually doing something?
At least they're developing a PWR. Nobody in their right mind should be developing a BWR under any circumstances.
Uses water and high pressure reactor! Same mistake over and over again. If something goes wrong, there is a potencial of generating H2 and then we'll have a big booom! In USA what is needed is technological innovations in the design of really NEW types of Nuclear reactors: no water, low pressure and high temperature....
Thanks for this knowledgeable video.
When the sun shines and it doesn't rain, we all die of thurst. It is all so obvious.
Lucky we have nuclear desalination.
Weather forcasts are always wrong.
We are fortunate that the majority knows more than the experts.
Pretty good video overall. Please try and not repeat yourself, so many RUclipsrs do, and it's annoying.
There is a $$$ sweet spot in the length of a YT video. Some YT video titles could be answered in 2 or 3 words but they stretch the video out for ad placement. The vast majority of YT videos are posted to make money and have no ties to the truth or reality.
They could fill the video with even more awesome facts rather than saying the same thing over and over again 🙂
The government needs to give Kirk Sorenson a Billion dollars and be done with these dinosaurs.
If Sorenson had anything more than BS, maybe he could get private investors. But they just don't give away money based on YT videos
That billion would be a great start. The technology of chemical filtering needs to be proveably achievable or proveably impossible..
Thorcon ,moltex ,natrium is cheaper
Some online videos, like everything living on earth are growing old, guys.
Ap300 just imagine if the world had not wasted billions on wind and sun power.
There is the problem of spent fuel. But most wind and solar power units can't be recycled either. But unrecycled solar and wind landfill don't need protection and security for centuries.
@@drewthompson7457 solar panels are 99% silicon (SAND) and wind turbine blades are FIBERGLASS.. Why recycle sand and fiberglass? Things that are inert do not have to be recycled.
@@clarkkent9080 : and inert things never break down and remain in landfills forever. Simple, just build more landfill sites.
@@drewthompson7457 That is factual just as rocks are inert and never break down. However misinforming people and making them believe that silicon solar panels or fiberglass turbine blades are hazardous to the environment is just lying to try and make your point seem better.
Nuclear plants are made of trillions of tons of concrete and steel and are so massive. that after removing the equipment, they generally just burry the concrete in place. The problem with nuclear is the cost, plain and simple and trying to make the other generation methods seem bad is just ignoring reality
Then we would have wasted billions on nuclear plants that never run like VC Summer and bankrupt the utility. You do know that PRIVATE funding is what builds all generation plants and they all get some government subsidizes. Do you want to dictate what investors build???
i,m not in nukes so pick apart what i say. the only viable way to make this work is to build plants that are truly modular so the can be built in a factory. the advantage comes from being able to build 50 of the exact same design to the exact same specs. then all the pieces are trucked to the site and assembled like lego blocks. any replacements can be ordered by section needing replaced. think assembly line advantages. with a really good design and set up there could be thousands off these made.
Spoiler alert, the VC Summer and Vogtle new nuclear projects did just that with system modules. But when they arrived on site, they did not fit together and the construction was so poor that they had to be reworked on site and the factory build concept ended up costing more.
In order to speak sooner or later, you need to see the project embodied in hardware. In the meantime, there are many projects, but their implementation is not.
I have to wonder where we would be if half of what our government spent on solar and wind were spent on nuclear. I suspect we would be in a lot better shape.
Biden has $30 billion to bribe investor owned utilities to keep old nuclear plants open. NuScale and Terrapower each got $2 billion in taxpayer welfare for their projects. The taxpayer is building a nuclear fuel facility for Terrapower. Are you still wondering???
I wish America would try to approach things like: "The better off the low income level people are doing; The better off the entire rest of the economy will be." {Type mentality} -Think of it like a ecosystem in nature. The little things might seem meaningless and insignificant yet, if they crumbled away, the entire ecosystem would crumble. The last things remaining would be the top predators.. until they even eat themselves.. leaving just a few top sharks in the ecosystem.. the whales would all be gone once the plankton crumble away. The sharks would eat the whales. Then once all that's left is sharks, the sharks would even eat the other sharks. *(Think of this but as a analogy for our economy and our modern day society..)
If we instead decided to support the lowest income earning people in the ecosystem. So they could at least afford a roof over their heads. Thus now having more income to use $$ throughout many other aspects of our economy. There would be a beneficial systematic distribution to other aspects of society. Benefiting the entire system. All because we were Finally able to try and see if we helped the lowest wage earners, would it help? It really would help. People would be able to obtain the most basic level of essential living standards... That would Vastly improve our current state of our economy & society though *Also imagine this analogy in our economy. The more help we invest in the lowest level people, the more it would trickle into every facet of our economy. If poor people can pay their rent & not go homeless: landlords would get $, businesses would get $, banks would get $, local small shops would get $, mortgages & bills could be paid, insurance companies would get $, Taxes would get $, So essentially that $ would go out & filter right back in to improve our Country while simultaneously improving our quality of Life. Every bit of the economy would somehow find a way to benefit off of this situation... I don't get why we haven't even Given it a chance?? If it doesn't help? Then by all means stop it and figure out what problems we could be facing might be one's that run way deeper than expected and that would take drastic changes to improve that situation... (I hope we TRY something soon, before things get any more unstable. The worst thing we could do is continue on doing exactly what we are currently doing. It might get to a point where overcoming our struggles could simply become a pipedream. I don't want it to get to that)
*We really should be fully investing & commiting to Modern Advanced Nuclear energy options. We are way behind when we should be already setup & going so we can greatly enhance the efficiency of our power grid, as well as greatly lowering the amount of greenhouse gas emissions bring produced.. we can be basically self sufficient when it comes to our power grid. We can prove to ourselves as a society that we really have advanced so much in our capabilities and understanding of safety measures when it comes to nuclear energy options. As well as understanding more ways to utilize and obtain the energy source. Rather than the stereotype narrow mindset a lot of people think of due to the mistakes of our past. I know we can grow and evolve from those days tho. We just gotta get going on commiting to this power source that we would be irrational and absurd to not utilize... It's honestly crazy nuclear energy options isn't much more wide spread in our current day of age...
The issue is the fear mongers. They hear reactor and they start crying.
Name one nuclear project in the last 20 years here in the U.S. that had any effect from fear mongers
@@clarkkent9080 > Name one nuclear project in the last 20 years here in the U.S. that had any effect from fear mongers
Indian Point - low-carbon, paid-off plant providing 25% of NYC's electricity; decommissioned and replaced by gas
SONGS - low-carbon, paid-off plant providing a major part of CA's electricity; decommissioned and replaced by gas
There were some close shaves also:
Diablo Canyon - low-carbon, paid-off plant providing 10% of CA's electricity; saved from closure by a realization than wind/solar are not going to cut it in a low-carbon & dispatchably-electrified world.
Dresden - low-carbon, paid-off plant providing a large part of IL's electricity; saved from closure by a realization than wind/solar are not going to cut it in a low-carbon & dispatchably-electrified world.
Byron - low-carbon, paid-off plant providing a large part of IL's electricity; saved from closure by a realization than wind/solar are not going to cut it in a low-carbon & dispatchably-electrified world.
Now - I invite you to name one wind-/solar- project, preferably in Germany, which has resulted in a coal plant closing.
(yeah, OK, Germany was a bit harsh, given they are RE-OPENING coal plants there to make up for a loss of nuclear and gas)
@@clarkkent9080
Diablo Canyon
Construction began #1 1968, #2 commissioned in 1986, 18 years later.
“August 6, 1977: the Abalone Alliance held the first blockade at Diablo Canyon Power Plant, and 47 people were arrested.
August 1978: almost 500 people were arrested for protesting at Diablo Canyon.
April 8, 1979: 30,000 people marched in San Francisco to support shutting down the Diablo Canyon Power Plant.
June 30, 1979: about 40,000 people attended a protest rally at Diablo Canyon (blocking the gates).
September 1981: more than 1900 protesters were arrested at Diablo Canyon.
May 1984: about 130 demonstrators showed up for start-up day at Diablo Canyon, and five were arrested”
@@Nill757 They tried to build VC Summer in South Carolina and during construction ZERO protestors showed up. Vogtle was under construction for 16 years in Georgia and during that time ZERO protestors showed up.
And apparently nothing has happened at Diablo Canyon in protest friendly California in the last 39 years.
Your point means nothing as you have no point.
I still prefer LFTR tech.
Innovation in the West is always slow due to invested parties int those industries. Case in point, why China leaped ahead ahead by building their infrastructure in roads, high-speed railways and airplanes. Look at how America and Europe is playing catchup to China and Russia!!!
Westinghouse and GE didnt want to believe that a so-called third world countries could surpassed them but ignore them while keeping Africa, Mideast and Latin America down.
Call me when it's built. Meanwhile: NuScale's SMR's exist.
NuScale is on hold till 2025 due to massive cost increases and the is before they even try building anything
Dat is één miljard voor de Nederlanders.
Any pressurised system should be illegal. Recipe for disaster, no matter what the scale.
“… pressurized …Disaster”
Yes? Many many disasters around the world, Bhopal chemical plant hurt 1/2 million, Banqiao dam collapsed kill up 1/4 million. And, all those planes crashes, hydrocarbon explosions accidents over the years.
Can you name one public fatality anywhere from radiation from a commercial pressurized light water reactor?
Martinez Barbara Robinson Deborah Clark Timothy
Nuscale power corporation
$SMR NuScale
is this guy getting paid by the Nuke power industry?
I think he tried to start out providing facts but now all he does is click bate and posts unicorn videos. He like many others is just in it for the $$$$
to late???
Jones Sandra Johnson James Hall Margaret
Of course if you've been following what's been happening lately with CMEs, you'd be majorly sweating bullets big time.
Loss of electrical grids will certainly be... problematic... but all the nuclear meltdowns will be the actual disaster.
All of you ARE taking CMEs into account, AREN'T you?
Well, of COURSE you are! Being such all-knowing know-it-alls who already know EVERYthing.
"A safe and efficient way to produce electricity."
Well, that sure didn't age even the least bit well.
Is there really, really, REALLY a CME/EMP coming down the pike?
Answer... yep.
Proponents of the nuclear power industry seem to... forget... about the 100% inevitable CME/carrington events.
Like the sun magically isn't really there. Even though it very extremely obviously is.
Doing a weapons-grade Captain Picard-style double facepalm at the moment.
You she entity lifeforces (including she entity lifeforces existing in XY DNA template bodies) are an an endless source of exasperation and having to do a weapons-grade Captain Picard-style double facepalm.
And if you think you can Personal Opinion denialism away that CME...
Not. Gonna. Work.
M... O... O... N... that spells "electromagnetic pulse".
M... O... O... N... that spells "a bigtime uh-oh".
Stop repeating everything. It is wasting my time.
60 years too late.
CRAP OLD DESIGNS, ...WAY WAY WAY TOO EXPENSIVE = GARBAGE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
michael schneider Thebulletin Trumpism enters energy policy Google that for me?
Not a chance. Oil is still king. Opec, Every African country, Indonesia, The entire ME and Russia literally go away with that.
US is #1 oil producer, #1 gas too.