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  • Hacker News
  • What a waste of money, manpower and space.
    by PowerElectronix
  • Hell yes!
    by exabrial
  • In other news, SMRs appear to be fading away in Canada.

    RIP SMRs: Is It the End of the Line for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors? [in Canada]

    https://www.theenergymix.com/rip-smrs-is-it-the-end-of-the-l...

    by pfdietz
  • Place your bets now.

    Time until first power generated, and actual final total cost.

    I’ll go 15 years and $10 Billion.

    by testing22321
  • A nuclear power plant is essentially a coal power plant with free fuel. Today, if you literally built a coal power plant with free fuel it would not be cheaper than solar. My question: If you built a small modular coal power plant, would that be cheaper than solar? It necessarily has to be cheaper than nuclear.
    by idontwantthis
  • The BWRX-300 footprint is so large they might as well just build large nuclear power units again and get 3-4x the power
    by preisschild
  • First, the Wiki page[1] for this reactor design has so little technical information. Frankly, it is a disappointing. For example, no where on the page does it explain that "300" means 300MW nameplate capacity. I had to Google for that info.

    The canary in the coal mine is already happening in Canada.

    From Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BWRX-300#Canada

        > On December 1, 2021, Ontario Power Generation (OPG) selected the BWRX-300 SMR for use at the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station.  The final investment decision in May 2025 to proceed with the build of a BWRX-300 was based on a forecast cost of Canadian $7.7 billion (US$5.6 billion), with an estimated cost of Canadian $13.2 billion (US$9.6 billion) for the three further units on the same site.
    Yikes. Estimated cost of 15.2B USD for 1200MW of capacity. I am taking bets: How much will this project overrun its estimates? My guess: 25-50%. I don't get it. Why are these better than just building one big reactor with 1000MW+ of capacity?

    Also, it looks like Darlington Nuclear Generating Station originally planned to build 4x 1200MV Advanced CANDU reactors. These were cancelled and replaced with a plan to build 4x BWRX-300 reactors.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BWRX-300

    by throwaway2037
  • This is a 10th Generation Boiling Water Reactor. Here's some relevant links:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BWRX-300

    https://www.gevernova.com/nuclear/carbon-free-power/bwrx-300...

    Interesting point: no pumps; convection flow for 100% of the operational envelope.

    by CobaltFire

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