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

submitted 5 months ago by machinin@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[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."

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[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I didn’t think that was ready for commercialize yet. You have all the disadvantages of nuclear, but need additional development costs, need to implement a supply chain, then build out a new technology that is less efficient than existing nuclear, has unclear service life, may be supplanted by fusion or renewables, and you can still use it to make bomb material. Seems like a poor idea and a waste of money.

From India’s perspective, they’d get to lead in a new technology, where they have huge reserves of fuel, and cheap labor to scale up to a billion energy-starved citizens …. And if it helped increase their nuclear weapons stock in the face of tight controls on plutonium, so much the better

[–] areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What makes you think it's less efficient. Normally high temperature reactor technology is more efficient not less.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world -1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I’m not claiming to be any more knowledgeable than what I read here, but Wikipedia says

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

In 1973, however, the US government settled on uranium technology and largely discontinued thorium-related nuclear research. The reasons were that uranium-fuelled reactors were more efficient, the research was proven and thorium's breeding ratio was thought insufficient to produce enough fuel to support development of a commercial nuclear industry

[–] areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I didn't say anything about thorium. Not all molten salt reactors are thorium though. In fact not all high temperature reactors are molten salt either. People keep mixing these technologies up.