#Nuclear reactor meltdown plus#

This small modular nuclear reactor provides something we’ve all been waiting for – a reactor that cannot meltdown and an emergency safety zone that doesn’t impact anyone around it.The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant, a Japanese nuclear plant with seven units, the largest single nuclear power station in the world, was completely shut down for 21 months following an earthquake in 2007. This first application will take advantage of the SMR’s specific ability to completely load-follow UAMPS new wind farms. It will be operated by the experienced nuclear operator Energy Northwest. Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems ( UAMPS) will own the first NuScale plant, a 12-module SMR, and place it at the Idaho National Laboratory. NuScale’s first customer is certainly ready. ‘We believe the NRC’s findings affirm the foundation of our technology – an inherently safe advanced nuclear reactor.’ ‘When I started out to design the NuScale SMR, safety was paramount for me,’ said Reyes. One of those resolvable reasons is the deployment of new nuclear reactors that cannot melt-down and that are acceptable to the public, specifically SMRs like NuScale’s.

#Nuclear reactor meltdown plus#

Focusing on just renewables plus gas has failed to produce a low-cost, low-carbon solution, just ask California whose power prices rose 25% in 2017 as natural gas supplies could not keep up with demand.Īccording to researchers at Carnegie Mellon and Harvard, ‘It should be a source of profound concern for all who care about climate change that, for entirely predictable and resolvable reasons, the United States appears set to virtually lose nuclear power, and thus a wedge of reliable and low-carbon energy, over the next few decades.’ Nuclear energy is key in our battle against global warming and a host of other environmental issues beginning to affect the planet as a whole. The reactor vessels and other large components can be manufactured with medium-sized forges, something we actually still have here in the United States. It’s probably why this reactor design is sailing through the regulatory approval process faster than any reactor in history.Īll of the components of the NuScale reactor, like most of the SMRs, can be manufactured in a factory prior to shipping by truck or even tug and assembled onsite, removing a major cost issue with building new nuclear plants. The small size and large surface area-to-volume ratio of NuScale’s reactor core, that sits below ground in a super seismic-resistant heat sink, allows natural processes to cool it indefinitely in the case of complete power blackout.Ī couple of additional features are: 1) no one can hack this reactor and 2) refueling of this reactor does not require the nuclear plant to shut down. Jose Reyes, NuScale’s Chief Technology Officer and nuclear engineering professor emeritus at Oregon State University, this modular reactor takes advantage of the small in small modular. In comparison, it takes over 130,000 acres, or about 200 square miles, of wind farms to produce the same amount of energy as one 12-module NuScale plant. The power plant site itself is pretty small to begin with, covering less than a tenth of a square mile or about 60 acres.

So you don’t have to be ready to evacuate everyone who lives nearby. truck or even tugboat, decreasing construction costs enormously. The small size of NuScale’s Small Modular Power Module means it can be factory-built and shipped by.