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From: Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: power shortages
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2024 21:40:24 +1100
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On 8/03/2024 8:22 pm, Jeroen Belleman wrote:
> On 3/8/24 07:40, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>> On a sunny day (Thu, 07 Mar 2024 07:13:56 -0800) it happened John Larkin
>> <jl@997PotHill.com> wrote in 
>> <h8mjui5kf50de3tkplpf1e12k12r8dgl58@4ax.com>:
>>
>>>
>>> https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/amid-explosive-demand-america-is-running-out-of-power/ar-BB1jtM69
>>>
>>> Increasing demand and declining reliable supply could put people in
>>> the dark.
>>
>> Yesterday I was reading Netherlands gov has decided to build 4 new 
>> nuclear power plants.
>> They still have to find locations for 3, what if next doors?? ??
> 
> These are planned to be the --now old-fashioned-- Westinghouse
> design? Big installations that need ten years to build?
> 
> I wonder if it wouldn't be better to start an industry of
> small modular reactors. Tens of megawatts rather than hundreds,
> Something that could fit on a barge, or a train, transported
> where it's needed, and up and running in months rather than
> years.

Except that they don't exist yet. The technology that could create small 
modular reactors does exist. The production lines that could churn them 
out in months doesn't and would have to be built, and only after the 
modular reactors themselves had been designed.

The small reactors that go into nuclear submarines and nuclear powered 
aircraft carriers were designed a long time ago under very different 
constraints.

If they really were going to produce cheaper electric power than wind 
turbines and solar cells, somebody probably would have designed them by 
now. In fact a few people have, but the designs haven't been attractive 
enough get the kind of start-up capital required, and probably never 
will be.

-- 
Bill Sloman, Sydney