Problem with that is basically you are condemning to death billions of people. We are already seeing the fragility of our 90% fossil fuel energy supply, to geopolitical events. While the ruling class has gambled everything on wind & solar, so far over $7T blown and they are up to 2.5% of World Primary energy. Can't even keep up with the growth of energy consumption, never mind replacing any fossil.
And with the Developing Nations legitimate aspirations to industrialize, which will require a further 5X increase in World primary energy.
Only nuclear energy is capable of supplying that level of energy, and fortunately it is quite capable of supplying that without significant environmental effects for a 100Myrs with just the accessible fission resources on Earth. Until the Sun consumes the Earth with fusion resources.
You ain't going to do that with the one-at-a-time build of big PWRs. The only way that is achievable is factory built, assembly line produced SMRs. And that would have been done 30yrs ago if not for regulatory impediments. The regulators are telling us that it is better to kill millions of people than allow nuclear to rapidly grow but with rational safety constraints. Including the only rational way to evaluate safety which is Comparative Risk Assessment.
What the regulators can't figure out is you get safety by building in quantity, incrementally improve, mass produce the apparatus that can monitor & control reactors with far more sophistication than anything done, anywhere right now. With A.I. monitoring and digital control systems it is virtually impossible to have any serious accident. What a modern automobile, like a Tesla, does is far, far beyond anything a nuclear reactor must do. Tesla's work because of the way they are built. As Musk frequently states, designing and building the machine is easy, building the factory to produce the machine in quantity is what is difficult.
A Starship launch system makes any nuclear reactor on Earth look like a child's toy. But Musk from the very start designed it with mass production in mind. A thousand or more a year from one factory. If the NRC was regulating the rocket industry, Musk would be still trying to get a small rocket to orbit.
This is the type of reactor we will need in order to survive into the next century:
Energy Future Unveiled! THORIUM Molten Salt Reactors, Copenhagen Atomics:
"This video explains how advanced small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) technology can be used to completely replace all of the energy we now derive from fossil fuels, for less investment than what’s already been spent on renewable energy in the last two decades alone."
Excellent Substack and I agree with a lot of what you say. But the irony is that there is technology that might very well do what CCGTs did to other power plants. So much so that even GE Vernova getting into the game. I wonder what you think -
A question for the Decouple editors: Is there an SMR design out there somewhere which uses CANDU nuclear technology as its design basis? In other words, the CANDU equivalent of a BWRX-300?
The basic reason one would ask that question is the same basic reason we would take a serious look at any 300 MW reactor design.
Even if the 300 MW SMR has an equivalent or even larger CAPEX price per kilowatt than does a 1,200 MW reactor, we can deploy more SMRs in more places which are either geographically dispersed and/or which can't locally support the CAPEX costs of the larger 1,200 MW plant.
As I've said, the key to SMR success is Made-To-Stock industrial production, not Made-To-Order. I don't know how well CANDU tech would work for that application. But you would need the same commitment from the Federal, Provincial and Local governments for zero emissions, practical SMRs as they have for much higher emissions impractical wind & solar. Powerful economic and political forces are opposing that option. Going right up to our Malthusian Central Bank Overlords.
There is the IMSR-400 & Moltex SSR-W300 MSRs, ARC-100 LSFR & XE-100 PBGCR already being developed in Canada. IMHO those are the best prospects for SMRs in Canada. Certainly not the BWRX-300. If Canada would put 1% of the funding they throw down the sewer on nutty wind/solar/hydrogen/battery storage scams on those SMRs they could be developed in a short time.
And Hydro which has proven to be very expensive and very environmentally damaging in Canada. Take note British Columbia morons and the expensive Site C boondoggle. And those grifters have a ban on nuclear power. While proclaiming themselves Climate Change Heroes. Hypocrites to the nth degree.
Most intelligent thing I’ve read on the subject, thank you. I do automation engineering for systems within a another unspecified industry (redundancy, fail safe, failure testing, etc etc) and have though this about SMRs for a long time. But I am not in the industry, so couldnt ever say this with assurance.
I would like to engage with the writer of this op ed.
I'm fed up to the teeth with the fecking crap you talk about SMRs, Mr [All Powerful] Chris Keefer.
You haven't got an original nuclear power thought in your head and just regurgitate any anti-SMR 'data' you trip over.
I'm an 87 years old, 5'-9" loner with resources comprising a laptop and Google. I put out original pieces on Substack about Gen III+ SMRs and the inevitable rise of an NEH-economy that get largely ignored.
You're a young man and look 6'-6" tall with a team at your back.
Come on mano a mano in the SMR/Hydrogen economy ring.
Hydrogen is a crackpot scam. The only point of nuclear hydrogen is for local process heat, or chemical industry feedstock. As a fuel Methanol is vastly superior to hydrogen. And H2 vehicles have been a dismal failure, as predicted, way back in the 1990's, and yet that scam keeps being resurrected every 5yrs or so. It is and always has been bait-and-switch.
You’re right about process heat and chemical industry feedstock, but the immediate need is to replace the filthy, polluting, 100 million tonnes per year, steam methane reforming (SMR) hydrogen industry that, among other things, feeds the world.
Greener-than-green, nuclear enabled hydrogen (NEH) will bring about the hydrogen economy and NEH will power every sector of energy use that cannot be directly electrified.
H2 vehicles - and that includes aviation - are all ‘on hold’ until the exponential build out of Gen III+ LWRs is witnessed and start to be combined with SOEC electrolysis.
Hydrogen can power every form of transport! Airbus are ready to go with designs sorted but have announced their delay to manufacture until a buoyant manufacture and distribution hydrogen economy gets underway.
In aviation and all other forms of transport, hydrogen will be the safest energy carrier/transport fuel ever used:
Hydrogen economy is garbage and anyone who believes in it is a fool. The economic destruction cretins in the British gov't have been pushing the hydrogen economy garbage. It works out to be an EROI of 2. You need an EROI of 14 minimum to power an industrial civilization.
H2 is the most difficult fuel to store. Most leaky fuel. Most difficult to transport. Expensive especially if Green Hydrogen. Very dangerous, prone to leaks which can be ignited in a wide range of concentration in air from 4% to 74%. Even a lightning strike a mile away can ignite it.
For rockets to orbit, H2 is has the highest energy/mass. Every kg of fuel saved is an extra kg of mass to orbit. That was worth $54k for the Space Shuttle and $2720 for the Falcon 9. That's one big advantage for fuel for rockets, worth +$3k/kg mass saved. And yet both Musk and Bezos chose Methane over H2 for their new rocket engines. It's just not worth it, even in expensive rockets to deal with H2 and all its problems. And the SLS has continual problems/scrubs with H2 leaks, which is typical. And the ULA Vulcan rocket had a giant H2 explosion, destroying the rocket and launch facility.
What you can do is combine nuclear hydrogen with carbon from seawater CO2, or use flue gas (i.e. cement plant), biomass (i.e. forest overgrowth that causes terrible wildfires), stranded gas or waste to make Methanol, the easiest fuel to transport. And the simplest of chemical synthesis, has been done for hundreds of years. Methanol is a far superior fuel to H2 for vehicles, home heating or cooking fuel as it is being widely used in China where they make it from Coal for 13 cents/liter.
The absurdity of Hydrogen fuel is explained here:
The Unfortunate Truth About Toyota's Hydrogen V8 Engine, Engineering Explained:
"...Toyota and Hyundai both halted sales of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in Norway after an explosion at a Hydrogen fuel station. Norway, which has a more advanced infrastructure in terms of Hydrogen — as compared to North America — is basically shut down temporarily as both refuelling stations and new car sales of hydrogen vehicles from two manufacturers came to a halt. The explosion at the Uno-X station in Sandvika, Norway was massive enough to prompt the shut down of other stations and — temporarily, at least — new car sales of fuel-cell models from two manufacturers. Hydrogen is highly volatile — the reason it’s no longer used in airships — mandating caution in terms of safety. Hydrogen is among the most volatile of gases. The explosion was so big it triggered airbags in nearby cars. The fire department had to evacuate an area 500 meters around the station...."
"....I notice Chris Keefer follows you. Are you one of his attack-dogs he sets on people who disagree with him?..."
Which "attack-dogs" are those? Names? Talk about paranoid delusional.
I would like to engage with the content of this op ed.
Chris Keefer says this: "...They [CCGTs] are the most successful large scale power plants of the past decades..."
The CA$20.9 billion [US$15.2 billion] for the 1200 MW (4 x 300 MW BWRX-300 SMRs Darlington Project) is not just the OCC, it includes all sorts of 'stuff:
The NPP will have a capacity factor of 95% and a 4-nines certainty of an 80 year lifespan. It will generate 798,912,000 MWh of pollution-free electricity that will greatly benefit the health prospects of all of the Ontarian little boys and girls for the whole of their lives.
That 'complex' cost works out at US$19.03/MWh plus fuel at $6.1/MWh adds up to $25.13/MWh.
Just the OCC for the latest USA CCGTs is $2,500/kW. A 1200 MW plant would cost $3.0 billion; it would operate at 64% capacity factor for a lifespan of 30 years. It would generate 201,830,400 MWh of pollution-ridden electricity that would cause many premature deaths/vile illnesses.
The simple OCC works out at $14.86/MWh and the fuel (at $4.00/MMBtu) works out at $13.65/MWh and a grand total of $28.51/MWh
Wouldn't you agree, Chris Keefer, that the Darlington SMR project will prove to be a far more "...successful large scale power plant..." than any CCGT. Ask the little boys and girls you know which they'd prefer for their lifetime supply of electricity.
Problem with that is why doesn't the US build their own reactors instead of trying to pawn them off on Canada? US has 20X the market for those reactors but first 3 reactors to be built in Ontario of all places. There should at least have been 60 built in the US before any are built in Canada. With the 100% corrupt NRC blocking sales of CANDU's in the USA, using their usual false safety narrative.
And the US gov't using unethical trade practices & legal sanction to blockade sales of the two best PWRs, the APR1400, and the VVER1100. When you can't compete fairly on the market, resort to devious and despicable methods. While foisting unproven US SMRs off on Ontario, where they don't belong. So now the two best PWRs are being blockaded forcing everyone in the West to build the two worst reactors the EPR and AP1000.
Besides those facts, if you were going to build those BWRX-300s in Canada the obvious place would be where CANDUs would be too large for the size of the market, like Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick or Nova Scotia. Some of which rely on expensive imported LNG for power. In Ontario the only sensible choice would be the CANDUs, with a 95% Canadian supply chain.
Meanwhile Canada needs to focus on accelerated licensing for the XE-100, SSR-W300, SMR-160, ARC-100, USNC-MMR & the IMSR-400. Not the same old LWR tech. And the CNSC needs a big shakeup from their anti-nuclear efforts to slow licensing these new reactors to 12yrs or more. Takes twice as long to design and build a reactor from scratch as it takes to get CNSC licensing. The same bunch that claim: "Climate Change is an Existential Risk", "Global Boiling", "Its the End of the World". But when it comes to practice what you preach, then the hypocrisy is obscene.
I’m ignoring the first 2 paragraphs of opinionated claptrap, but it’s well worth picking up on the common sense, pragmatic views you express about the deployment of SMRs in a multitude of sparsely populated provinces.
Maybe you might care to comment on my very thoughts on this matter:
Nice, you have no answer so you call it claptrap. Talk about fallacious argument to the extreme.
Yes, SMRs are excellent for smaller sized markets and isolated areas. That's why the Copenhagen Atomics MSRs would be ideal @ 100MWth in a shipping container sized unit. PWRs are not the way to go. The only reason for these type of reactors not being mass produced is regulator corruption.
What a load of Chris Keefer, myopic 💩 based on the the equally myopic opinions of a couple of repetitive guests who fixate on 'vertical' economies of scale trashing the future for SMRs.
And the 'data' these opinions are based on is ridiculous spasmodic/historic/multi-national builds of technology-variable 'Large Reactors'.
Apply a bit of common sense! Even though SMRs are a third of the MW size, they have half the material content so they will-will-will be built and will move up the learning curve far more quickly than Large Reactors.
Inexplicably - the most comprehensive, data-packed study that has ever been done 'Meta-Analysis of Advanced Nuclear Reactor Cost Estimations' - has been pointed out to Chris Keefer a couple of times and has been completely ignored:
Just tell us, Chris Keefer, why won't invite the Lead Author of this study, Abdalla Abou-Jaoude, as a guest on your podcast?
I've 'run the numbers' on the expanded Table A-1 of this study (Slide 8/Page vi) and the costs per MWh for SMRs are 10% lower than those for Large Reactors. If Large Reactors don't have it on cost, they have nothing else going for them - zilch!
SMRs have a multitude of substantial advantages over Large Reactors though:
'Spread the largess of SMRs far and wide across all regions'
congratulations once again on having no substantive arguments engaging with the actual content of the post. All you've got here is an appeal to authority. "They are 1/3 the MW output with half the material content" is the exact point and why they are uneconomic. You're beloved BWRX-300 is not going all that well at Darlington my friend...
In your eyes, 'an appeal to authority' completely negates a study of this magnitude, complexity, cost and scientific man/woman hours that have gone into it?
What have you got other than the opinions of your two buddies, based on a historic, befuddled events?
This study flies in the face of your super-simplistic "...why they are uneconomic...". Why don't you engage with the actual content of this study and 'do the numbers'?
I've done them and your beloved Large Reactors don't come out of it that well, my friend.
Please explain why you won't discuss this study with Abdalla Abou-Jaoude. You have such a humongous following and power where it matters. It's simply not fair that you persist airing your SMR-belittling opinions without giving him the chance to explain how their study can predict figures for both SMRs and Large Reactors out to 2050, that can be of great significance to decision makers.
Regarding Darlington - you may recall that you laughingly compared the early, bare OCC costs from GEH for the BWRX-300 with the CAD20.9 billion. This "...Canada's first SMR project: How is CAD20.9 billion cost calculated?..." is the actuality:
Canada should be building their own Canadian designed reactors. If they want to buy foreign they would be better off buying from China or Russia. The US is following unfair trade practices and doesn't deserve to sell reactors they won't build themselves.
Besides the Thorcon power reactors are vastly superior to the expensive dead-end technology BWRX-300s. If you are going to buy American get an exceptional reactor like the Thorcon 250MW barge built, fuel efficient, high temperature, high efficiency SMRs. Now that is practical tech. And institute factory production, which is the absolutely critical for the World's energy future.
After seeing the energy disaster unfolding in the Middle East, building assembly line reactors should be the #1 priority of all governments. France figured out after the Arab Oil Embargo that going on a large nuclear build was economic survival.
The basic reason one would ask that question is the same basic reason we would take a serious look at any 300 MW reactor design.
Even if the 300 MW SMR has an equivalent or even larger CAPEX price per kilowatt than does a 1,200 MW reactor, we can deploy more SMRs in more places which are either geographically dispersed and/or which can't locally support the CAPEX costs of the larger 1,200 MW plant.
For myself, my favorite SMR is the NuScale design. IMHO, it has the least technical risk for the most day-to-day operational benefit.
However, the NuScale design's first-of-a-kind CAPEX per kilowatt is the same or larger as is the CAPEX per kilowatt of the latest GenIII+ 1200 MW reactors.
The benefits of continuous SMR production in factories will not kick in unless and until a high-efficiency industrial support base can be established for these SMRs.
Someone has to pay the upfront costs of initially establishing that high-efficiency SMR industrial base.
Here in the US, only the state and federal governments have the resources needed to handle the financial risks of creating a robust SMR industrial base, and of placing enough firm orders to get the industrial base tuned up to its highest possible efficiency.
At any rate, going with nuclear is strictly a public policy decision. We buy nuclear for purposes of gaining energy reliability and security, not because it is the cheapest means of generating electricity.
That honor goes to CCGT -- assuming one can get past the climate change nonsense and be allowed to build CCGT.
Climate change may be nonsense but that hasn't stopped them from throwing $7T down the sewer on Wind & Solar (incl transmission, storage etc), all based upon climate change. Big result, World primary energy is now up to 2.5% wind/solar. Yeah, that'll save us. Whereas Nuclear gets less subsidized than fossil. They need to be held to account for their hypocrisy. A small fraction of that would have paid for setting up assembly line production of SMRs, of various types. As it did for wind & solar. The subsidies should be over for wind & solar, mass scale production was developed over 10yrs ago. And yet the massive unheard-of-ever subsidies continue unabated.
CCGT is cheaper because gas happens to be very low cost in the US. Although it is being subsidized heavily by banks and by environmental exemptions that nuclear doesn't get. It ain't cheaper in most of the World, marginal cost of gas is LNG price and that is expensive energy. No way it can compete with nuclear in a fair and free market. Even more so if a carbon tax is included. And Peak Oil & Peak Gas is coming as it has already in most of the World, most notably Europe. And that doesn't include disastrous, economy-destroying geopolitical events. Which likely are going to increase. The cost of this latest war is going to far succeed what it would cost to setup assembly line production of SMRs.
As for SMRs, we should have a go at some PWRs but my view is they are a dead end for the SMR future. They are good in naval reactors which is where they got their start and pushed forward by Admiral Rickover to the objection of the nuclear scientists at the time. They work good for naval reactors because they burn highly enriched uranium, which gives them a compact core and a long period before refueling.
For SMRs you want high temperature, so they are efficient and can produce local process heat, low pressure, compact and amenable to fuel reprocessing. That puts molten salt reactors as the most likely path forward. China's success with their TMSR has led them to plan on a 200MW version to power giant container ships. No ship would be able to compete on fuel cost. MSRs being ideal for ship propulsion as well as most other applications. The only problem is corrupt regulators who are blocking MSR development. They don't want solutions and they don't want nuclear replacing fossil.
SmithFS, I don't particularly care what happens in the rest of the world with nuclear power, only what happens in the US and in Canada.
Further, I care what happens in Canada only to the extent that their well-practiced approach to nuclear technology and to nuclear project management might have good application to the US nuclear program.
Worldwide peak oil will happen some day in the future, as will peak gas. But we will know it has happened only when it is already in the rear view mirror.
But for now, and for decades into the future, there is no sign that the world as whole intends to abandon fossil fuels, the current Middle East war not withstanding. The world economy is not going to decarbonize at any point in the near to mid-term future.
As for SMR designs, one can play the game, 'Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who has the best SMR of all.'
I don't get too deeply into that game, because I see that some SMR designs have distinct advantages over others within the nuclear power ecosystem which exists here in the US.
I like the NuScale design, but the fact is that the BWRX-300 design has a leg up simply because the Canadians have made a firm commitment to it and have actually placed a firm order for one.
It is clear to me at least that Ontario is setting itself up as the go to place on the North American continent for SMR expertise.
OPG is using the GE Hitachi/BWXT team's BWRX-300 as their starting point because nuclear reactors are already being produced by BWXT in Ontario for the US Navy, and so OPG can leverage on the existing industrial base to get that first SMR reactor out the door.
Canada buying from China or Russia - in these days of energy security I'd only expect to hear that from a stand up comedian.
There'll be terrific PWR SMRs from the UK and France online in the 2030 - you can have some of each for your two languages🤪
LWRs - Large Reactors or SMRs - will be the commercial market's NPP of choice, with their 80 years/100 years of profitable income, until the end of this century and probably well beyond.
It's not worth engaging with anyone now who thinks thorium-fuelled NPPs will have anything of significance in the market place for at least 4 decades. Start your serious 'campaigning' then.
And, good luck to Canada's nuclear power industry if they decide to stick with the 2% of the market CANDU's will manage.
OTOH, BWXT alone could 'enrich' Canada's manufacturing industries beyond compare if they invest and expand to meet the exponential build out of LWR NPPs that Darlington is helping to kick off right now.
Everyone is already buying almost all their Solar and most of their Wind from China. That's vastly more than the nuclear market right now. And most of the nuclear is coming from Russia. What rock have you been living under?
They won't be terrific PWR SMRs, that's a dead end. MSRs are the best tech for SMRs, possibly PBRs and LSFRs may be competitive. PWRs application is really big GW scale power plants and Naval HEU fueled reactors. That's about it.
2% of the market is far, far above anything they will get by building US reactors, with mostly US built components. If they're so good why is the US not building dozens of them? Their market base is 20X that of Canada. And yet the first 3 reactors are to be built in Canada, heavily subsidized by the corrupt, idiots in the Ontario and Federal Gov't, while they proclaim buy Canada, just as Trump proclaims buy USA. Especially with Canada having many advanced reactor designs (not PWR) being developed here. Most notably the IMSR-400. Which would also supply the vital low carbon process heat for the oil sands.
BWXT-300 is a dead end, but were open to proof, so how about building the comparative 60 in the US first, and then maybe you can sell some elsewhere?
One thing I’m not fully convinced by is how much of the result is coming from the technology itself versus the current financing environment.
Nuclear economics have always been extremely sensitive to the cost of capital and construction timelines. In a high rate world, anything with long lead times will screen poorly on LCOE, even if the system actually needs that type of generation. The comparison also assumes power prices are set in a stable market, but in practice a lot of grids are now pricing at the margin off gas or LNG, which makes the whole system more exposed to fuel shocks.
We saw this very clearly in EU, where optimizing for short term cost reduced firm capacity and increased dependence on imported fuel. Once volatility hit, the system cost ended up being much higher than what the project level models suggested.
In that sense, the question for SMRs may not be whether they beat gas on LCOE, but how much volatility and external dependency the system is willing to accept without more firm baseload.
I agree but for a different reason. The challenges of standardized factory production are daunting but have achievable solutions. The high bar is still the chemistry within the advanced gas and molten cooled reactors and the FOAK problems of the water cooled small reactors. But it looks like Aalo and a few others are making progress. It’s difficult to see any deployment of any kind of small rectors that will add significantly to energy generation before 2035.
The big mistake was not going thorium. We ditched it because it didn't enrich nuclear fuel for bombs. Our old reactors did. Now we lost years of research and development in tmsrs because of the fear of the nuclear accidents in the old reactors blinded opinion to the safety of nuclear.
The bigger mistake would be to stop momentum and the young building because LWR old Karen Reactors didn’t have any kids… A mistake that isn’t being made now, nor again. If the kids make their own mistakes they’ll learn from them… fine.
The SMRs and AI and Musk and the rest are building. They and their backers are not concerned with economics, or regulation or… brace… safety.
Or profits.
Or even as Musk and Altman said explicitly;
Money. Explicitly stating To the extent they succeed they told investors money will become unrecognizable and far less meaningful.
And the investments poured in…
Yes the “money” flooded in response to being told success meant the death of money … so that something else can be born. SURVIVAL.
The Big Shift is happening and it’s completely being missed despite being explicitly told the old world -which is clearly terminal-is going to be consumed by their Chrysalis so the Butterfly 🦋 of human transformation into the infinity ♾️ of Space can be born. That’s why there is great confusion amongst the FIN Quants, who see the AI and tech Lords circling their Capital Wagons (the actual Moat) but see no gains nor maths.
No, because the profit is in gaining other worlds we save our souls.
If you want to know what the food is; 401K, Passive investing and Private Capital, the 🦋 is 🤖 AI, SpaceX, Mars, even Bezos took Captain Kirk into Space: the old die rather nobly so the young can live. This is the best thing the Boomers have ever done; turn over their horded Treasure to be the energy that allows the young to escape and blossom.
…and if you missed it, G0D is American… but G0D needs ENORMOUS amounts of Energy and electricity. We don’t care about money, however nice pile you got there… and something has got to happen to it; building.
SMRs, Fusion and Grid-Scale Batteries. They will all be available in ten years. Just like in 2016, 2006, 1996…
Problem with that is basically you are condemning to death billions of people. We are already seeing the fragility of our 90% fossil fuel energy supply, to geopolitical events. While the ruling class has gambled everything on wind & solar, so far over $7T blown and they are up to 2.5% of World Primary energy. Can't even keep up with the growth of energy consumption, never mind replacing any fossil.
And with the Developing Nations legitimate aspirations to industrialize, which will require a further 5X increase in World primary energy.
Only nuclear energy is capable of supplying that level of energy, and fortunately it is quite capable of supplying that without significant environmental effects for a 100Myrs with just the accessible fission resources on Earth. Until the Sun consumes the Earth with fusion resources.
You ain't going to do that with the one-at-a-time build of big PWRs. The only way that is achievable is factory built, assembly line produced SMRs. And that would have been done 30yrs ago if not for regulatory impediments. The regulators are telling us that it is better to kill millions of people than allow nuclear to rapidly grow but with rational safety constraints. Including the only rational way to evaluate safety which is Comparative Risk Assessment.
What the regulators can't figure out is you get safety by building in quantity, incrementally improve, mass produce the apparatus that can monitor & control reactors with far more sophistication than anything done, anywhere right now. With A.I. monitoring and digital control systems it is virtually impossible to have any serious accident. What a modern automobile, like a Tesla, does is far, far beyond anything a nuclear reactor must do. Tesla's work because of the way they are built. As Musk frequently states, designing and building the machine is easy, building the factory to produce the machine in quantity is what is difficult.
A Starship launch system makes any nuclear reactor on Earth look like a child's toy. But Musk from the very start designed it with mass production in mind. A thousand or more a year from one factory. If the NRC was regulating the rocket industry, Musk would be still trying to get a small rocket to orbit.
This is the type of reactor we will need in order to survive into the next century:
Energy Future Unveiled! THORIUM Molten Salt Reactors, Copenhagen Atomics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27IntvWo4mo
This guy gives the best description of what should happen with Nuclear:
Energy Transition: Nuclear SMRs vs Renewables, Energy Transition Crisis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBF2fGUO5cQ
"This video explains how advanced small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) technology can be used to completely replace all of the energy we now derive from fossil fuels, for less investment than what’s already been spent on renewable energy in the last two decades alone."
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-power-reactors/small-modular-reactors/small-modular-reactors?utm_source=perplexity. Will the gap close (amount uncertain) as the global scale increases and if they are non-profit?
Excellent Substack and I agree with a lot of what you say. But the irony is that there is technology that might very well do what CCGTs did to other power plants. So much so that even GE Vernova getting into the game. I wonder what you think -
https://outspokengeek.substack.com/p/quick-note-bloom-energy-new-cfo-comparison
See this for a background-
https://outspokengeek.substack.com/p/the-implausible-bloom-of-an-energy
A question for the Decouple editors: Is there an SMR design out there somewhere which uses CANDU nuclear technology as its design basis? In other words, the CANDU equivalent of a BWRX-300?
The basic reason one would ask that question is the same basic reason we would take a serious look at any 300 MW reactor design.
Even if the 300 MW SMR has an equivalent or even larger CAPEX price per kilowatt than does a 1,200 MW reactor, we can deploy more SMRs in more places which are either geographically dispersed and/or which can't locally support the CAPEX costs of the larger 1,200 MW plant.
As I've said, the key to SMR success is Made-To-Stock industrial production, not Made-To-Order. I don't know how well CANDU tech would work for that application. But you would need the same commitment from the Federal, Provincial and Local governments for zero emissions, practical SMRs as they have for much higher emissions impractical wind & solar. Powerful economic and political forces are opposing that option. Going right up to our Malthusian Central Bank Overlords.
There is the IMSR-400 & Moltex SSR-W300 MSRs, ARC-100 LSFR & XE-100 PBGCR already being developed in Canada. IMHO those are the best prospects for SMRs in Canada. Certainly not the BWRX-300. If Canada would put 1% of the funding they throw down the sewer on nutty wind/solar/hydrogen/battery storage scams on those SMRs they could be developed in a short time.
And Hydro which has proven to be very expensive and very environmentally damaging in Canada. Take note British Columbia morons and the expensive Site C boondoggle. And those grifters have a ban on nuclear power. While proclaiming themselves Climate Change Heroes. Hypocrites to the nth degree.
Most intelligent thing I’ve read on the subject, thank you. I do automation engineering for systems within a another unspecified industry (redundancy, fail safe, failure testing, etc etc) and have though this about SMRs for a long time. But I am not in the industry, so couldnt ever say this with assurance.
I would like to engage with the writer of this op ed.
I'm fed up to the teeth with the fecking crap you talk about SMRs, Mr [All Powerful] Chris Keefer.
You haven't got an original nuclear power thought in your head and just regurgitate any anti-SMR 'data' you trip over.
I'm an 87 years old, 5'-9" loner with resources comprising a laptop and Google. I put out original pieces on Substack about Gen III+ SMRs and the inevitable rise of an NEH-economy that get largely ignored.
You're a young man and look 6'-6" tall with a team at your back.
Come on mano a mano in the SMR/Hydrogen economy ring.
Hydrogen is a crackpot scam. The only point of nuclear hydrogen is for local process heat, or chemical industry feedstock. As a fuel Methanol is vastly superior to hydrogen. And H2 vehicles have been a dismal failure, as predicted, way back in the 1990's, and yet that scam keeps being resurrected every 5yrs or so. It is and always has been bait-and-switch.
You’re right about process heat and chemical industry feedstock, but the immediate need is to replace the filthy, polluting, 100 million tonnes per year, steam methane reforming (SMR) hydrogen industry that, among other things, feeds the world.
Greener-than-green, nuclear enabled hydrogen (NEH) will bring about the hydrogen economy and NEH will power every sector of energy use that cannot be directly electrified.
H2 vehicles - and that includes aviation - are all ‘on hold’ until the exponential build out of Gen III+ LWRs is witnessed and start to be combined with SOEC electrolysis.
Hydrogen can power every form of transport! Airbus are ready to go with designs sorted but have announced their delay to manufacture until a buoyant manufacture and distribution hydrogen economy gets underway.
In aviation and all other forms of transport, hydrogen will be the safest energy carrier/transport fuel ever used:
https://substack.com/@colinmegson/p-170183610
PS: I notice Chris Keefer follows you. Are you one of his attack-dogs he sets on people who disagree with him?
Hydrogen economy is garbage and anyone who believes in it is a fool. The economic destruction cretins in the British gov't have been pushing the hydrogen economy garbage. It works out to be an EROI of 2. You need an EROI of 14 minimum to power an industrial civilization.
H2 is the most difficult fuel to store. Most leaky fuel. Most difficult to transport. Expensive especially if Green Hydrogen. Very dangerous, prone to leaks which can be ignited in a wide range of concentration in air from 4% to 74%. Even a lightning strike a mile away can ignite it.
For rockets to orbit, H2 is has the highest energy/mass. Every kg of fuel saved is an extra kg of mass to orbit. That was worth $54k for the Space Shuttle and $2720 for the Falcon 9. That's one big advantage for fuel for rockets, worth +$3k/kg mass saved. And yet both Musk and Bezos chose Methane over H2 for their new rocket engines. It's just not worth it, even in expensive rockets to deal with H2 and all its problems. And the SLS has continual problems/scrubs with H2 leaks, which is typical. And the ULA Vulcan rocket had a giant H2 explosion, destroying the rocket and launch facility.
What you can do is combine nuclear hydrogen with carbon from seawater CO2, or use flue gas (i.e. cement plant), biomass (i.e. forest overgrowth that causes terrible wildfires), stranded gas or waste to make Methanol, the easiest fuel to transport. And the simplest of chemical synthesis, has been done for hundreds of years. Methanol is a far superior fuel to H2 for vehicles, home heating or cooking fuel as it is being widely used in China where they make it from Coal for 13 cents/liter.
The absurdity of Hydrogen fuel is explained here:
The Unfortunate Truth About Toyota's Hydrogen V8 Engine, Engineering Explained:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJjKwSF9gT8
"...Toyota and Hyundai both halted sales of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in Norway after an explosion at a Hydrogen fuel station. Norway, which has a more advanced infrastructure in terms of Hydrogen — as compared to North America — is basically shut down temporarily as both refuelling stations and new car sales of hydrogen vehicles from two manufacturers came to a halt. The explosion at the Uno-X station in Sandvika, Norway was massive enough to prompt the shut down of other stations and — temporarily, at least — new car sales of fuel-cell models from two manufacturers. Hydrogen is highly volatile — the reason it’s no longer used in airships — mandating caution in terms of safety. Hydrogen is among the most volatile of gases. The explosion was so big it triggered airbags in nearby cars. The fire department had to evacuate an area 500 meters around the station...."
"....I notice Chris Keefer follows you. Are you one of his attack-dogs he sets on people who disagree with him?..."
Which "attack-dogs" are those? Names? Talk about paranoid delusional.
I would like to engage with the content of this op ed.
Chris Keefer says this: "...They [CCGTs] are the most successful large scale power plants of the past decades..."
The CA$20.9 billion [US$15.2 billion] for the 1200 MW (4 x 300 MW BWRX-300 SMRs Darlington Project) is not just the OCC, it includes all sorts of 'stuff:
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/what-is-the-budget-for-canadas-first-smr-project#:~:text=The%20BWRX%2D300%20is%20a,will%20the%20first%20SMR%20cost
The NPP will have a capacity factor of 95% and a 4-nines certainty of an 80 year lifespan. It will generate 798,912,000 MWh of pollution-free electricity that will greatly benefit the health prospects of all of the Ontarian little boys and girls for the whole of their lives.
That 'complex' cost works out at US$19.03/MWh plus fuel at $6.1/MWh adds up to $25.13/MWh.
Just the OCC for the latest USA CCGTs is $2,500/kW. A 1200 MW plant would cost $3.0 billion; it would operate at 64% capacity factor for a lifespan of 30 years. It would generate 201,830,400 MWh of pollution-ridden electricity that would cause many premature deaths/vile illnesses.
The simple OCC works out at $14.86/MWh and the fuel (at $4.00/MMBtu) works out at $13.65/MWh and a grand total of $28.51/MWh
Wouldn't you agree, Chris Keefer, that the Darlington SMR project will prove to be a far more "...successful large scale power plant..." than any CCGT. Ask the little boys and girls you know which they'd prefer for their lifetime supply of electricity.
Problem with that is why doesn't the US build their own reactors instead of trying to pawn them off on Canada? US has 20X the market for those reactors but first 3 reactors to be built in Ontario of all places. There should at least have been 60 built in the US before any are built in Canada. With the 100% corrupt NRC blocking sales of CANDU's in the USA, using their usual false safety narrative.
And the US gov't using unethical trade practices & legal sanction to blockade sales of the two best PWRs, the APR1400, and the VVER1100. When you can't compete fairly on the market, resort to devious and despicable methods. While foisting unproven US SMRs off on Ontario, where they don't belong. So now the two best PWRs are being blockaded forcing everyone in the West to build the two worst reactors the EPR and AP1000.
Besides those facts, if you were going to build those BWRX-300s in Canada the obvious place would be where CANDUs would be too large for the size of the market, like Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick or Nova Scotia. Some of which rely on expensive imported LNG for power. In Ontario the only sensible choice would be the CANDUs, with a 95% Canadian supply chain.
Meanwhile Canada needs to focus on accelerated licensing for the XE-100, SSR-W300, SMR-160, ARC-100, USNC-MMR & the IMSR-400. Not the same old LWR tech. And the CNSC needs a big shakeup from their anti-nuclear efforts to slow licensing these new reactors to 12yrs or more. Takes twice as long to design and build a reactor from scratch as it takes to get CNSC licensing. The same bunch that claim: "Climate Change is an Existential Risk", "Global Boiling", "Its the End of the World". But when it comes to practice what you preach, then the hypocrisy is obscene.
I’m ignoring the first 2 paragraphs of opinionated claptrap, but it’s well worth picking up on the common sense, pragmatic views you express about the deployment of SMRs in a multitude of sparsely populated provinces.
Maybe you might care to comment on my very thoughts on this matter:
https://substack.com/@colinmegson/p-138216375
Nice, you have no answer so you call it claptrap. Talk about fallacious argument to the extreme.
Yes, SMRs are excellent for smaller sized markets and isolated areas. That's why the Copenhagen Atomics MSRs would be ideal @ 100MWth in a shipping container sized unit. PWRs are not the way to go. The only reason for these type of reactors not being mass produced is regulator corruption.
What a load of Chris Keefer, myopic 💩 based on the the equally myopic opinions of a couple of repetitive guests who fixate on 'vertical' economies of scale trashing the future for SMRs.
And the 'data' these opinions are based on is ridiculous spasmodic/historic/multi-national builds of technology-variable 'Large Reactors'.
Apply a bit of common sense! Even though SMRs are a third of the MW size, they have half the material content so they will-will-will be built and will move up the learning curve far more quickly than Large Reactors.
Inexplicably - the most comprehensive, data-packed study that has ever been done 'Meta-Analysis of Advanced Nuclear Reactor Cost Estimations' - has been pointed out to Chris Keefer a couple of times and has been completely ignored:
https://inldigitallibrary.inl.gov/sites/sti/sti/Sort_107010.pdf
Just tell us, Chris Keefer, why won't invite the Lead Author of this study, Abdalla Abou-Jaoude, as a guest on your podcast?
I've 'run the numbers' on the expanded Table A-1 of this study (Slide 8/Page vi) and the costs per MWh for SMRs are 10% lower than those for Large Reactors. If Large Reactors don't have it on cost, they have nothing else going for them - zilch!
SMRs have a multitude of substantial advantages over Large Reactors though:
'Spread the largess of SMRs far and wide across all regions'
https://substack.com/@colinmegson/p-138216375
congratulations once again on having no substantive arguments engaging with the actual content of the post. All you've got here is an appeal to authority. "They are 1/3 the MW output with half the material content" is the exact point and why they are uneconomic. You're beloved BWRX-300 is not going all that well at Darlington my friend...
You've got all the terms, haven't you.
In your eyes, 'an appeal to authority' completely negates a study of this magnitude, complexity, cost and scientific man/woman hours that have gone into it?
What have you got other than the opinions of your two buddies, based on a historic, befuddled events?
This study flies in the face of your super-simplistic "...why they are uneconomic...". Why don't you engage with the actual content of this study and 'do the numbers'?
I've done them and your beloved Large Reactors don't come out of it that well, my friend.
Please explain why you won't discuss this study with Abdalla Abou-Jaoude. You have such a humongous following and power where it matters. It's simply not fair that you persist airing your SMR-belittling opinions without giving him the chance to explain how their study can predict figures for both SMRs and Large Reactors out to 2050, that can be of great significance to decision makers.
Regarding Darlington - you may recall that you laughingly compared the early, bare OCC costs from GEH for the BWRX-300 with the CAD20.9 billion. This "...Canada's first SMR project: How is CAD20.9 billion cost calculated?..." is the actuality:
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/what-is-the-budget-for-canadas-first-smr-project#:~:text=The%20BWRX%2D300%20is%20a,will%20the%20first%20SMR%20cost
Canada should be building their own Canadian designed reactors. If they want to buy foreign they would be better off buying from China or Russia. The US is following unfair trade practices and doesn't deserve to sell reactors they won't build themselves.
Besides the Thorcon power reactors are vastly superior to the expensive dead-end technology BWRX-300s. If you are going to buy American get an exceptional reactor like the Thorcon 250MW barge built, fuel efficient, high temperature, high efficiency SMRs. Now that is practical tech. And institute factory production, which is the absolutely critical for the World's energy future.
After seeing the energy disaster unfolding in the Middle East, building assembly line reactors should be the #1 priority of all governments. France figured out after the Arab Oil Embargo that going on a large nuclear build was economic survival.
SmithFS, see my question to the Decouple editors concerning the possibility of a 300 megawatt CANDU-based SMR:
https://www.decouple.media/p/small-modular-reactors-have-combined/comment/233087801
The basic reason one would ask that question is the same basic reason we would take a serious look at any 300 MW reactor design.
Even if the 300 MW SMR has an equivalent or even larger CAPEX price per kilowatt than does a 1,200 MW reactor, we can deploy more SMRs in more places which are either geographically dispersed and/or which can't locally support the CAPEX costs of the larger 1,200 MW plant.
For myself, my favorite SMR is the NuScale design. IMHO, it has the least technical risk for the most day-to-day operational benefit.
However, the NuScale design's first-of-a-kind CAPEX per kilowatt is the same or larger as is the CAPEX per kilowatt of the latest GenIII+ 1200 MW reactors.
The benefits of continuous SMR production in factories will not kick in unless and until a high-efficiency industrial support base can be established for these SMRs.
Someone has to pay the upfront costs of initially establishing that high-efficiency SMR industrial base.
Here in the US, only the state and federal governments have the resources needed to handle the financial risks of creating a robust SMR industrial base, and of placing enough firm orders to get the industrial base tuned up to its highest possible efficiency.
At any rate, going with nuclear is strictly a public policy decision. We buy nuclear for purposes of gaining energy reliability and security, not because it is the cheapest means of generating electricity.
That honor goes to CCGT -- assuming one can get past the climate change nonsense and be allowed to build CCGT.
Climate change may be nonsense but that hasn't stopped them from throwing $7T down the sewer on Wind & Solar (incl transmission, storage etc), all based upon climate change. Big result, World primary energy is now up to 2.5% wind/solar. Yeah, that'll save us. Whereas Nuclear gets less subsidized than fossil. They need to be held to account for their hypocrisy. A small fraction of that would have paid for setting up assembly line production of SMRs, of various types. As it did for wind & solar. The subsidies should be over for wind & solar, mass scale production was developed over 10yrs ago. And yet the massive unheard-of-ever subsidies continue unabated.
CCGT is cheaper because gas happens to be very low cost in the US. Although it is being subsidized heavily by banks and by environmental exemptions that nuclear doesn't get. It ain't cheaper in most of the World, marginal cost of gas is LNG price and that is expensive energy. No way it can compete with nuclear in a fair and free market. Even more so if a carbon tax is included. And Peak Oil & Peak Gas is coming as it has already in most of the World, most notably Europe. And that doesn't include disastrous, economy-destroying geopolitical events. Which likely are going to increase. The cost of this latest war is going to far succeed what it would cost to setup assembly line production of SMRs.
As for SMRs, we should have a go at some PWRs but my view is they are a dead end for the SMR future. They are good in naval reactors which is where they got their start and pushed forward by Admiral Rickover to the objection of the nuclear scientists at the time. They work good for naval reactors because they burn highly enriched uranium, which gives them a compact core and a long period before refueling.
For SMRs you want high temperature, so they are efficient and can produce local process heat, low pressure, compact and amenable to fuel reprocessing. That puts molten salt reactors as the most likely path forward. China's success with their TMSR has led them to plan on a 200MW version to power giant container ships. No ship would be able to compete on fuel cost. MSRs being ideal for ship propulsion as well as most other applications. The only problem is corrupt regulators who are blocking MSR development. They don't want solutions and they don't want nuclear replacing fossil.
SmithFS, I don't particularly care what happens in the rest of the world with nuclear power, only what happens in the US and in Canada.
Further, I care what happens in Canada only to the extent that their well-practiced approach to nuclear technology and to nuclear project management might have good application to the US nuclear program.
Worldwide peak oil will happen some day in the future, as will peak gas. But we will know it has happened only when it is already in the rear view mirror.
But for now, and for decades into the future, there is no sign that the world as whole intends to abandon fossil fuels, the current Middle East war not withstanding. The world economy is not going to decarbonize at any point in the near to mid-term future.
As for SMR designs, one can play the game, 'Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who has the best SMR of all.'
I don't get too deeply into that game, because I see that some SMR designs have distinct advantages over others within the nuclear power ecosystem which exists here in the US.
I like the NuScale design, but the fact is that the BWRX-300 design has a leg up simply because the Canadians have made a firm commitment to it and have actually placed a firm order for one.
It is clear to me at least that Ontario is setting itself up as the go to place on the North American continent for SMR expertise.
OPG is using the GE Hitachi/BWXT team's BWRX-300 as their starting point because nuclear reactors are already being produced by BWXT in Ontario for the US Navy, and so OPG can leverage on the existing industrial base to get that first SMR reactor out the door.
Canada buying from China or Russia - in these days of energy security I'd only expect to hear that from a stand up comedian.
There'll be terrific PWR SMRs from the UK and France online in the 2030 - you can have some of each for your two languages🤪
LWRs - Large Reactors or SMRs - will be the commercial market's NPP of choice, with their 80 years/100 years of profitable income, until the end of this century and probably well beyond.
It's not worth engaging with anyone now who thinks thorium-fuelled NPPs will have anything of significance in the market place for at least 4 decades. Start your serious 'campaigning' then.
And, good luck to Canada's nuclear power industry if they decide to stick with the 2% of the market CANDU's will manage.
OTOH, BWXT alone could 'enrich' Canada's manufacturing industries beyond compare if they invest and expand to meet the exponential build out of LWR NPPs that Darlington is helping to kick off right now.
Everyone is already buying almost all their Solar and most of their Wind from China. That's vastly more than the nuclear market right now. And most of the nuclear is coming from Russia. What rock have you been living under?
They won't be terrific PWR SMRs, that's a dead end. MSRs are the best tech for SMRs, possibly PBRs and LSFRs may be competitive. PWRs application is really big GW scale power plants and Naval HEU fueled reactors. That's about it.
2% of the market is far, far above anything they will get by building US reactors, with mostly US built components. If they're so good why is the US not building dozens of them? Their market base is 20X that of Canada. And yet the first 3 reactors are to be built in Canada, heavily subsidized by the corrupt, idiots in the Ontario and Federal Gov't, while they proclaim buy Canada, just as Trump proclaims buy USA. Especially with Canada having many advanced reactor designs (not PWR) being developed here. Most notably the IMSR-400. Which would also supply the vital low carbon process heat for the oil sands.
BWXT-300 is a dead end, but were open to proof, so how about building the comparative 60 in the US first, and then maybe you can sell some elsewhere?
One thing I’m not fully convinced by is how much of the result is coming from the technology itself versus the current financing environment.
Nuclear economics have always been extremely sensitive to the cost of capital and construction timelines. In a high rate world, anything with long lead times will screen poorly on LCOE, even if the system actually needs that type of generation. The comparison also assumes power prices are set in a stable market, but in practice a lot of grids are now pricing at the margin off gas or LNG, which makes the whole system more exposed to fuel shocks.
We saw this very clearly in EU, where optimizing for short term cost reduced firm capacity and increased dependence on imported fuel. Once volatility hit, the system cost ended up being much higher than what the project level models suggested.
In that sense, the question for SMRs may not be whether they beat gas on LCOE, but how much volatility and external dependency the system is willing to accept without more firm baseload.
Let’s blow up some more LNG infrastructure.
I agree but for a different reason. The challenges of standardized factory production are daunting but have achievable solutions. The high bar is still the chemistry within the advanced gas and molten cooled reactors and the FOAK problems of the water cooled small reactors. But it looks like Aalo and a few others are making progress. It’s difficult to see any deployment of any kind of small rectors that will add significantly to energy generation before 2035.
The big mistake was not going thorium. We ditched it because it didn't enrich nuclear fuel for bombs. Our old reactors did. Now we lost years of research and development in tmsrs because of the fear of the nuclear accidents in the old reactors blinded opinion to the safety of nuclear.
The bigger mistake would be to stop momentum and the young building because LWR old Karen Reactors didn’t have any kids… A mistake that isn’t being made now, nor again. If the kids make their own mistakes they’ll learn from them… fine.
And the world doesn’t care about money anymore.
Cuz we 🇺🇸 don’t.
Salus Americae Suprema Lucre, Sola Lex.
So is La Vida Loca
We will go on anyway and build anyway. Mock away Boomer.
The SMRs and AI and Musk and the rest are building. They and their backers are not concerned with economics, or regulation or… brace… safety.
Or profits.
Or even as Musk and Altman said explicitly;
Money. Explicitly stating To the extent they succeed they told investors money will become unrecognizable and far less meaningful.
And the investments poured in…
Yes the “money” flooded in response to being told success meant the death of money … so that something else can be born. SURVIVAL.
The Big Shift is happening and it’s completely being missed despite being explicitly told the old world -which is clearly terminal-is going to be consumed by their Chrysalis so the Butterfly 🦋 of human transformation into the infinity ♾️ of Space can be born. That’s why there is great confusion amongst the FIN Quants, who see the AI and tech Lords circling their Capital Wagons (the actual Moat) but see no gains nor maths.
No, because the profit is in gaining other worlds we save our souls.
If you want to know what the food is; 401K, Passive investing and Private Capital, the 🦋 is 🤖 AI, SpaceX, Mars, even Bezos took Captain Kirk into Space: the old die rather nobly so the young can live. This is the best thing the Boomers have ever done; turn over their horded Treasure to be the energy that allows the young to escape and blossom.
…and if you missed it, G0D is American… but G0D needs ENORMOUS amounts of Energy and electricity. We don’t care about money, however nice pile you got there… and something has got to happen to it; building.
AD ASTRA. Salus Americae Suprema Lex.
Suprema Lucre…
🙏🏻
Ite, missia est. *
*Go, message sent.
As opposed to funding, favor, momentum envy?
Karen?
Let em cook