Nuclear engineer dismisses claim that modular reactors could be viable soon

I believe Admiral Rickover made a very similar case with his "Paper Reactor" memo back in 1953[1]:"The academic-reactor designer is a dilettante. He has not had to assume any real responsibility in connection with his projects. He is free to luxuriate in elegant ideas, the practical shortcomings of which can be relegated to the category of “mere technical details.” The practical-reactor designer must live with these same technical details. Although recalcitrant and awkward, they must be solved and cannot be put off until tomorrow. Their solutions require man power, time, and money."

1. https://whatisnuclear.com/rickover.html

Engineering with Rosie is a great channel with insights into the energy system in Australia - she worked in Denmark too and has lots of interesting things to say:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_47LWFAG6g

Roughly - why would you spend a dollar on a long term return risky nuclear venture when you could spend it on something certain and get a result tomorrow? Doubly so in a hot sunny country like Australia.

The background here is that Peter Dutton, the conservative opposition leader in Australia, has recently announced a plan to switch to nuclear energy instead of renewables. However it isn't a serious policy. Instead it's just political cover to kick the climate change can down the road and allow the existing highly subsidised fossil fuel industry in Australia to continue operating for a few more decades.

For example here is Dutton just a few days ago using the old trope that taking action on climate change would destroy the economy https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2024/jun/12/...

It can't be done, until someone does it. There is nothing from a physics standpoint preventing modular reactors. Many advanced large US Navy vessels have reactors.

Technological moonshots are great. Modular reactors, renewable energy grids with large scale storage, are all very exciting.

But with the climate emergency and its potential tipping points being a decade away, we should immediately fix the problem with clean tech that already works.

Classical nuclear reactors are great, scalable, proven and clean. They just have bad public image from PR disasters of the past. We don't have time for fancy rebrands like SMRs, MSRs, fusion, and other stuff that could take half a century

Australia can deal with all energy needs with wind/solar. In 5 years Perovskite/Silicon solar cells will get to 35% efficiency, perhaps more, and Australia has huge useable areas with the needed insolation as well as temperate weather. lithium cells are not economic or suitable - they need to build Vanadium Flow cells. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery. Flow cells are made with 2 liquid vats - one for charged liquid and the other for discharged. Operational parameters are vat size(how many megawatt-hours stored) and the charge/discharge cell between the vats which determines the rate at which used fluid is charged and charge fluid is discharged to the grid. Commercial Vanadium redox cells are made now and are being ramped up steadily. So you need vat space for the time you need to store the power, and you need enough charge/discharge cells for the max rate of charge/discharge. And, of course, enough wind/solar to achieve load needed. Land is cheap in Australia and large cheap fields of vats and the needed conversion cells can be laid out as solar cell field first story - it is just a large building, and in that climate, could even be built outside with the right cladding, all piping can be surface runs as nothing in Australia will damage them, but I suppose fences against 'roos/rabbits/snakes ight come in handy. Stats on operational Vanadium cells are out there, as this search shows. https://www.google.com/search?q=Vanadium+redox+cells&rlz=1C1...

Western Australia and Queensland have a good deal of Monazite sands that one can extract Thorium from. This would greatly reduce the need for more complex safety and disposal regulations necessary with larger fission reactors.

A small college in Texas was able to build and run a Thorium reactor, so it can't be that far out of reach for a small country : https://youtu.be/kCrrrmh-eMo?si=NChlWACDXajKm9hr

I think modular reactors certainly could be build with some investment and in a different world it might make sense to build lots of them (and if possible underground, to contain the worst in the worst case).

But the required security alone, to prevent the spread of material to all kind of terrorist organisations or rougue states, will likely not make them a economical alternative.

Regardless of your stance on nuclear energy, can we all agree that articles of the form of "Person X of Authority Y dismisses Z as unviable" is a non-headline? It's basically "Person of vaguely adjacent qualification has opinion". I see it everywhere and it's the "cures cancer (in vitro)" of engineering articles.

Cynically I think the intent of this push is to stimy the lefts push for Solar / Wind without evoking 'climate change denialism.' I.e. the liberals are acquiescing on the point of need for green energy and proposing this as an alternative solution. That nuclear is unpopular with the left helps stake the ground for the boarder culture war.

The problem is that it's likely that tariffs will be raised on cheap solar imports from China so either way, nuclear or solar, there will be no cheap electricity for Australians.

In my view, either a corrupt nuclear firm syphons off a bunch of public money, or another bunch of money will be wasted trying to get Australian solar manufacturing competitive with China. Sadly not wasting a bunch of money is not an option. That's the problem with the government funded ventures, trying and failing makes more money than trying and succeeding.

At least they're not pushing clean coal anymore.

... in Australia.

Likely to be viable a lot sooner in countries that already have a nuclear industry.