[HN Gopher] Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci mic...
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Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci microreactor
Author : akeck
Score : 80 points
Date : 2022-11-23 21:01 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.power-eng.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.power-eng.com)
| nwatson wrote:
| After ethics reviews, send some prototypes to Ukraine this
| winter.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Sounds like something you don't want Russians to target
| thought.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| > Commercial deployment is targeted for 2027.
|
| (Sounds like the new fuel might be available sooner, but
| probably not for this winter?)
| sebmellen wrote:
| I love seeing innovative tech like this spring out of the
| Pittsburgh region... Once the nation's capitol of industry
| innovation, maybe it can be again.
| riffic wrote:
| the rust belt has _good bones_ , as they say.
| ngvrnd wrote:
| Wow... Walt's Mill. My mom worked there, I have a photo of her
| standing above a fuel storage well... It used to be a test
| reactor with a channel of water through the core that they would
| send boats through to test samples of materials for radiation
| exposure effects.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| I feel that this reactor is _too small_ for actual usage. It 's
| about wind turbine sized. But better to err on this side, if you
| want the iteration speed up and start mass production. Future
| versions can always be scaled up.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| DARPA and NASA have some combined projects developing small
| reactors suitable for both mars and deep space exploration as
| well as replacing oil tanks for generators in remote military
| installations like in the arctic. This is almost certainly
| chasing that, not consumer generation.
| ripe wrote:
| From Robots In Plain English [1]:
|
| The Curiosity and Perseverance rovers each carry an old kind
| of power supply: a nuclear power generator that runs on
| radioactive plutonium dioxide.
|
| This generator has been used on many missions since the
| 1960s.
|
| It produces a steady 110 watts of electricity. The decay of
| the radioactive material also emits heat, which helps keep
| the electronics onboard warm through the freezing nights on
| Mars.
|
| Supplemented by rechargeable batteries, the generator
| provides enough power to let the rover pull all-nighters for
| years to come.
|
| [1] https://www.robotsinplainenglish.com/e/2020-08-09-nuclear
| .ht...
| cjtrowbridge wrote:
| The keyword in Small Modular Reactor is Modular. 5mw is not
| "too small for actual usage." You can connect many of them
| together in one plant to produce however much power you want.
| Just like wind turbines, a typical design includes more than
| one.
| masklinn wrote:
| Seriously, 5MWe is what, a few thousand homes? Low thousand
| if you need to plug in local commons and you've got lots of
| EVs around maybe.
|
| Alongside a few MWt to shed into district heating, that seems
| pretty nice in a distributed grid context.
|
| > Just like wind turbines, a typical design includes more
| than one.
|
| Wind farms are a thing because location is an issue, and
| there's a lot of nimby-ism, so if you can plop down turbines
| you plop down a bunch.
|
| Though I guess nimby would also affect SMRs, location is way
| less of an issue, if you have space for a farm you might as
| well use a classical nuclear plant.
|
| Plus the capacity factor of nukes is way higher than
| turbines. Assuming SMRs follow the nuclear norm you don't
| need to overbuild to compensate.
| multiplegeorges wrote:
| Northern communities in Canada are a perfect application of this
| tech. Currently, they mostly burn diesel for power.
| rx_tx wrote:
| > The microreactor can generate 5 MW of electricity or 13 MW of
| heat from a 15 MW thermal core. Exhaust heat from the power
| conversion system can be used for district heating applications
| or low-temperature steam.
|
| They are aiming 8 years planned service life, and one novel thing
| is the use of heatpipes (like your CPU cooler) using liquid metal
| as a working fluid.
|
| They actually don't say how big it is, I guess still quite
| sizeable given the heat output. Definitely not a single-family
| home device.
| cjtrowbridge wrote:
| It's a shipping container, same type of footprint and install
| as the tesla battery packs. They have pictures and videos if
| you google it.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| 4 trucks for the whole setup
| masklinn wrote:
| > I guess still quite sizeable given the heat output.
| Definitely not a single-family home device.
|
| I'd think the 5MWe would be a hint. Standard residential
| service drop is like 40kW.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| My understanding is on-shore windmills cost about ~$1.5M and
| $50k in maintenance per year - last for 20 years - for 1MW.
|
| I'm skeptical this can come anywhere close to that.
|
| But if it's within an order of magnitude - it could replace old
| coal powerplants as they're decommissioned.
| beambot wrote:
| Apples & oranges: wind is an intermittent generator versus
| eVinci for base generation
| aeyes wrote:
| A problem with on-shore wind is that it is already getting
| hard to find more space for it in some European countries.
| You also can't put windmills in densely populated areas where
| most power is needed so you have to take energy transmission
| cost into account as well.
|
| If it can be demonstrated that these reactors are safe, you
| could put them almost anywhere.
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(page generated 2022-11-23 23:00 UTC)