Technology

55920 readers

3245 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

393

Small modular nuclear reactors get a reality check in new report (newatlas.com)

submitted 1 month ago by machinin@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

156 comments fedilink hide all child comments

[T]he report's executive summary certainly gets to the heart of their findings.

"The rhetoric from small modular reactor (SMR) advocates is loud and persistent: This time will be different because the cost overruns and schedule delays that have plagued large reactor construction projects will not be repeated with the new designs," says the report. "But the few SMRs that have been built (or have been started) paint a different picture – one that looks startlingly similar to the past. Significant construction delays are still the norm and costs have continued to climb."

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] mindlight@lemm.ee 11 points 1 month ago

I'm pretty sure they essentially are "one time use" only.

Extremely simplified:

They run for 20-30 years without refueling, which means the reactors/system could be built more compact, a higher level of safety and require less maintenance / monitoring / fine-tuning.

All those parameters are connected in an equation which means if you want higher safety you have to make another parameter "worse". By making the system "one time use" you set the "refuelability" and "repairability" parameters to the lowest and can therefore up the other parameters.

Also, military requirements are very different from civilian.