The GKN is a firm believer in competition, most importantly among nuclear vendors. Let a 1000 flowers bloom. As such we avoid commenting on specific technologies. We want the market to decide. But the market is not deciding. Bureaucrats (literally desk potentates or deskpots for short) are and they are deciding it with our money. The DOE recently announced it is doubling down on NuScale. It is time for Congress put a halt to this dead-end, taxpayer ripoff.
The NuScale plan and profile view do not even include the 12 large steam-turbine-generators that each must convert 250 MW(thermal) power to 77 MW(electric) power.
I think that was all related to their “ramping” ability to sound friendly to renewables. Basically they could turn each 77MW module on or off and call it “ramping.” It would probably make more financial sense to use a 300MW turbine design (standard size in CCGT bottom cycle) with 4 modules.
I was reading about EDF's about-face on their SMR design. Apparently to avoid dealing with LOCA regulation complexity they, like NuScale, packed the steam generator into the SMR pressure vessel. No external pipes, no problems.
Then they consulted with their interested buyers who prefer more proven designs and parts with existing supply chains. Similarly, Holtec added a pump to their SMR and doubled design output. As Jack writes, NuScale has led the way in showing that solving regulatory problems with engineering is even more expensive than dealing with them.
Reminds me of Solyndra. I was driving home from work on day, and I saw a new, unique, interesting building being built. I thought "Whoever is building that has more money than they know what to do with". Turned out the government was the source of their money. Cylindrical solar cells - what an Idea. Why? I dunno. Typical Government.
I think the NuScale project was just a mid 2000s design meant to solve the perceived nuclear problems from the mid 2000s (or at least the ones the UCS was bleating about all the time). All of the people working on nuclear back then were in a technical silo with no real understanding or surveys of what the market needed, and as you say, it was all just career bureaucrats who only know how to get grants and not how to sell anything to a market.
The world has just moved on since then and we now know that there are lots of market niches and demands that just weren’t there during the power industry stagnation of that era. We finally have power demand growth again and so customers are finally starting to look into the whole system and find things they might work.
I agree that further taxpayer funding of NuScale makes no sense at this stage. If there are no customers, then let it die and let the people trained up on that project go work on other more promising projects in the space. At this sunk cost level, it is cheaper than the student loan forgiveness nonsense and at least the people on the project learned something for the $0.5 billion invested.
Did the DOE say anywhere that it will award NuScale under this program? It is definitely possible, and perhaps likely, that they will, but this program was almost certainly designed more to funnel money to Chuck Fleischmann's congressional district. He is the congressman who orchestrated the re-appropriation of the $900M for the SMR LWR program from the Civil Nuclear Credit Program in the 2024 Appropriations bill. And since his district includes ORNL, TVA, and the BWRX-300 Clinch River Project, I think it is more likely the desired recipient of funding is GE Hitachi. Either way, it doesn't change the point that NuScale has been a boondoggle.
Also, I believe the DOE and NRC define an SMR as 300 MWe or less.
It only says 800 mill will be split between "up to two teams". The other 100 will be doled out separately. And yes there are several definitions of SMR that DOE could use.
My sense is that DOE is far more heavily invested in NuScale than the BWRX which is a far better design. I will be quite surprised if NuScale does not get thebulk of the money, but then I was not aware of the legislative "history" you cite.
By the way, if the taxpayer must "invest" in nuclear, can we at least insist that it be on terms as least as favorable as private money gets?
The NuScale plan and profile view do not even include the 12 large steam-turbine-generators that each must convert 250 MW(thermal) power to 77 MW(electric) power.
Right, Jack didn't go into that. Couldn't they just use one big generator instead of 12 smaller ones?
Yes, but all I read from NuScale was one TG per module.
I think that was all related to their “ramping” ability to sound friendly to renewables. Basically they could turn each 77MW module on or off and call it “ramping.” It would probably make more financial sense to use a 300MW turbine design (standard size in CCGT bottom cycle) with 4 modules.
I was reading about EDF's about-face on their SMR design. Apparently to avoid dealing with LOCA regulation complexity they, like NuScale, packed the steam generator into the SMR pressure vessel. No external pipes, no problems.
Then they consulted with their interested buyers who prefer more proven designs and parts with existing supply chains. Similarly, Holtec added a pump to their SMR and doubled design output. As Jack writes, NuScale has led the way in showing that solving regulatory problems with engineering is even more expensive than dealing with them.
Table 3 is a comparison of Nuclear Island volumes. None of the numbers include the turbine hall. The views shown are consistent with that table.
NuScale's decision to go with one 77 MW TG for each module is incomprehensible to me, but it has nothing to do with the thrust of this article.
It certainly appears that Rube Goldberg was at the design board.
Reminds me of Solyndra. I was driving home from work on day, and I saw a new, unique, interesting building being built. I thought "Whoever is building that has more money than they know what to do with". Turned out the government was the source of their money. Cylindrical solar cells - what an Idea. Why? I dunno. Typical Government.
I need to remind everybody that GKN will eradicate any comment that smacks of partisan politics. Cliff, pls reword or your comment will be deleted.
Thanks. Reworded.
I think the NuScale project was just a mid 2000s design meant to solve the perceived nuclear problems from the mid 2000s (or at least the ones the UCS was bleating about all the time). All of the people working on nuclear back then were in a technical silo with no real understanding or surveys of what the market needed, and as you say, it was all just career bureaucrats who only know how to get grants and not how to sell anything to a market.
The world has just moved on since then and we now know that there are lots of market niches and demands that just weren’t there during the power industry stagnation of that era. We finally have power demand growth again and so customers are finally starting to look into the whole system and find things they might work.
I agree that further taxpayer funding of NuScale makes no sense at this stage. If there are no customers, then let it die and let the people trained up on that project go work on other more promising projects in the space. At this sunk cost level, it is cheaper than the student loan forgiveness nonsense and at least the people on the project learned something for the $0.5 billion invested.
Did the DOE say anywhere that it will award NuScale under this program? It is definitely possible, and perhaps likely, that they will, but this program was almost certainly designed more to funnel money to Chuck Fleischmann's congressional district. He is the congressman who orchestrated the re-appropriation of the $900M for the SMR LWR program from the Civil Nuclear Credit Program in the 2024 Appropriations bill. And since his district includes ORNL, TVA, and the BWRX-300 Clinch River Project, I think it is more likely the desired recipient of funding is GE Hitachi. Either way, it doesn't change the point that NuScale has been a boondoggle.
Also, I believe the DOE and NRC define an SMR as 300 MWe or less.
Power,
Maybe, the press release is at
https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-announces-900-million-accelerate-deployment-next-generation-light-water-small-modular
It only says 800 mill will be split between "up to two teams". The other 100 will be doled out separately. And yes there are several definitions of SMR that DOE could use.
My sense is that DOE is far more heavily invested in NuScale than the BWRX which is a far better design. I will be quite surprised if NuScale does not get thebulk of the money, but then I was not aware of the legislative "history" you cite.
By the way, if the taxpayer must "invest" in nuclear, can we at least insist that it be on terms as least as favorable as private money gets?
Certainly!