Canadian initiative - Small Modular Reactor MOU

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OVERKILL

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Today, the premiers of Ontario, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan have announced a joint initiative to deploy what distills out of the Federal SMR roadmap, which is quite close to delivering its first test design with the first unit in the Environmental Assessment phase. While Ontario and New Brunswick had each previously announced investment intentions in these technologies, this agreement, to do this together is new.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/gr...lop-nuclear-reactor-technology-1.5380316

Originally Posted by CBC
The premiers of Ontario, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick have committed to collaborate on developing nuclear reactor technology in Canada.

Doug Ford, Scott Moe and Blaine Higgs made the announcement and signed a memorandum of understanding on Sunday in advance of a meeting of all the premiers.

They will be working on the research, development and building of small modular reactors as a way to help their individual provinces reduce carbon emissions and move away from non-renewable energy sources like coal.

Small modular reactors are easy to construct, are safer than large reactors and are regarded as cleaner energy than coal, the premiers say. They can be small enough to fit in a school gym.

*snip*


Despite the claim that designs "aren't close", there's already one that's passed all three stages and just needs a valid EA to build.
 
Originally Posted by P10crew
What is the nameplate output mva?


Varies significantly by design. The unit that's completed all three phases is quite small @ 5MWe or 10MWe, as it is designed to provide both power and process heat to remote communities and mining operations. More details on it here:
Stage 3 EA process: https://ocni.ca/news/article/global-first-power-enters-stage-3-of-cnl-smr-programme/
Design overview: https://www.globalfirstpower.com/the

Some of the other designs are significantly larger:
- NuScale: each module is 50MW
- Moltex SSR: each module is 150MW (https://www.moltexenergy.com/learnmore/An_Introduction_Moltex_Energy_Technology_Portfolio.pdf)
Moltex shows an example 1,200MW config in that document.
- GE-Hitachi - 300MW
- Terrestrial IMSR - 200MW
 
From the ocni article "In 2009, according to the report, the cost of solar was US$359/MWh. In 2018, that figure dropped to just US$43/MWh - a fall of 88% over nine years."
Does that include the cost of parallel conventional power sources needed to 100% backup solar, when the sun doesn't shine? Something not meeded with this power system?
 
Originally Posted by Danno
From the ocni article "In 2009, according to the report, the cost of solar was US$359/MWh. In 2018, that figure dropped to just US$43/MWh - a fall of 88% over nine years."
Does that include the cost of parallel conventional power sources needed to 100% backup solar, when the sun doesn't shine? Something not meeded with this power system?


Nope, and it never does. It's like folks telling me that new wind capacity is super cheap, but never factoring in the idling gas plant, paid a premium to be idled, read to step-in, to replace the output.
 
Canada has the oil sand oil , why go nuclear ? Global warming / climate change ? Give me a brake , much of Canada could use some warming !
 
Originally Posted by OVERKILL
Originally Posted by Danno
From the ocni article "In 2009, according to the report, the cost of solar was US$359/MWh. In 2018, that figure dropped to just US$43/MWh - a fall of 88% over nine years."
Does that include the cost of parallel conventional power sources needed to 100% backup solar, when the sun doesn't shine? Something not meeded with this power system?


Nope, and it never does. It's like folks telling me that new wind capacity is super cheap, but never factoring in the idling gas plant, paid a premium to be idled, read to step-in, to replace the output.


Interesting.....By any chance would you happen to have/know of any articles about stuff like this? I like reading about these things but I can't find any no matter how much I try to google.
 
Originally Posted by P10crew
Very interesting I've never heard of micro nukes. Sounds promising.

The Russians do it - it's mounted on a barge and delivered to remote areas in their Arctic.
 
Originally Posted by WyrTwister
Canada has the oil sand oil , why go nuclear ?


Because Trudeau is in charge in Ottawa.

There's no sensible reason to do it. Just politics.
 
Originally Posted by WyrTwister
Canada has the oil sand oil , why go nuclear ? Global warming / climate change ? Give me a brake , much of Canada could use some warming !


Oil sands is one of the most if not the most expensive to extract and requires billions of gallons of freshwater.
 
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Originally Posted by JeffKeryk
Nuclear waste...

Germany


Ya I read about that. Those protesters sure do like to take the "head in the sand approach" because my understanding is that the waste MUST go somewhere.

Reminds me the Yucca Mtn fiasco.
 
Originally Posted by JeffKeryk
Nuclear waste...

Germany


What Germany is doing is utterly idiotic, which is why their emissions profile looks like that of a 3rd world country after spending 3/4 of a trillion on wind/solar.

Regarding "waste", used fuel is a valuable asset and can be used as fuel for many of these 4th gen designs. If Germany wasn't stuck heading back to the 1800's, they'd be working on deploying 4th gen designs like we are in Canada. We went the opposite direction as Germany, we phased out coal using Nuclear, rather than using coal to phase out nuclear.
 
Originally Posted by BMWTurboDzl
Originally Posted by WyrTwister
Canada has the oil sand oil , why go nuclear ? Global warming / climate change ? Give me a brake , much of Canada could use some warming !


Oil sands is one of the most if not the most expensive to extract and requires billions of gallons of freshwater.

Western Select sells for about $38 a barrel, quite a bit lower than world crude, and the oil sands companies make a profit. Something doesn't add up.

Billions of gallons of water that are recycled, and reused.
 
If I remember correctly, the oil sands folks have also mused in the past about how useful it would be to have small nuclear reactors to power the oil sands operations. Odd coincidence.
 
Originally Posted by emg
If I remember correctly, the oil sands folks have also mused in the past about how useful it would be to have small nuclear reactors to power the oil sands operations. Odd coincidence.


Odd indeed
wink.gif


This first unit is supposed to basically be a drop-in module that just "works". The nuclear side has a 20 year lifespan without refuelling and after 20 years can be swapped out for a new one.
 
Yes, I remember a consortium was put together to promote a nuclear plant in the oil sands. The problem at the time was that there were no nuclear plants west of Ontario so it was not generally something that Albertans thought useful, given they were sitting on top one of the largest natural gas deposits, which was doing a fine job heating steam to separate the oil from the sand. Also, it was generally thought that the risk of meltdown would destroy the trillions of dollars of future value of the oil sands. It just wasn't something that would fly at the time.

Now, with the global warming issues, (correct or not correct) there may be more interest in it. However, work the economics. Natural gas in western Canada sells for $3.00 CDN per mcf or about $2.10 US per mcf. On the positive side Canada is one of the worlds largest producers of uranium.
smile.gif
 
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It would be useful indeed, if not for cost reason it would be for energy security reason in remote area or military deployment.

The problem though is it might be easy to steal a 50MW micro nuke, and you need to find a way to secure it so terrorists can't steal it and blow it up in your big city. That would likely be a big cost and you would probably still put 20 of them together in one site instead of scatter them around to save transmission cost. Sort of like how Tesla use a bunch of 18650 to build a pack instead of custom design and build a new type of cell to save cost and reduce development risk.
 
Originally Posted by PandaBear
It would be useful indeed, if not for cost reason it would be for energy security reason in remote area or military deployment.

The problem though is it might be easy to steal a 50MW micro nuke, and you need to find a way to secure it so terrorists can't steal it and blow it up in your big city. That would likely be a big cost and you would probably still put 20 of them together in one site instead of scatter them around to save transmission cost. Sort of like how Tesla use a bunch of 18650 to build a pack instead of custom design and build a new type of cell to save cost and reduce development risk.



Yeah, the larger units (not the little guys for powering remote communities, which are about the size of a shipping container) like Moltex are designed to be bundled together in a site. One of their example deployment configurations is a 1,200MWe setup that's a fraction of the size of a traditional 1,200MWe unit. So one could readily build a 5,000MWe site using them if demand dictated.
 
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