Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire

Major Energy and Environmental News and Commentary affecting the Nuclear Industry.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

SMRs


See also:
"Current Status, Technical Feasibility and Economics of Small Reactors" OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, June, 2011.  This report compares how small reactors stack up against other generating alternatives at a variety of locations around the world, given local availability of fossil fuels, or "green alternatives", current local electricity costs, etc. Levelized over 40 yerars, small reactors sstack up very well against things like coal and gas firing, but the small reactors always have a LUEC higher than large reactors. 

See also:


http://0101.nccdn.net/1_5/2ce/1b0/0d3/On-Economics-of-SMR_Shropshire.pdf


If you want to see the B&W First of a Kind Reactor plans and costs see these PDFs.

Bloomberg Energy has some really cutting edge targets to view on when natural gas costs rise to $8.00 mmbut and that’s where Nuclear becomes competitive again. They predict 2017, about the time the SMRs gain full permits. B&W plans on having the TVA Reactors operational in about 96 months. Costs about $5,000 kW to build and bus bar rates of .09cts kwh. Its still cheaper than solar and it works at night and can load follow.

http://www.naruc.org/Grants/special/Chris%20Gadomski_NARUC%20nuclear%20webinar.pdf

Also see ORNL presenation here.http://www.tnengineering.net/AICHE/DTI_SMR%20and%202nd%20Nuclear%20Era_AIChE_17Nov11.pptx

See the B&W internal staff presenation on the status of the mPower reactor plants.

http://www.efcog.org/library/council_meeting/12SAECMtg/presentations/GS_Meeting/Day-1/B&W%20mPower%20Overview%20-%20EFCOG%202012-Ferrara.pdf
 


One aspect of the B&W design that lends itself to load follow is that they don't use soluble boron for reactivity control. Here's a good article that describes their core design that gives some insight into their operating strategies:
http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?storyCode=2063269
 

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