Stephan BowmanSMRs are getting a lot of press lately. But I remain skeptical in their application in remote communities. Cost, community/utility capacity, social acceptance are all major hurdles. Also, a big community in the North would have a peak demand of 12MW.
Bryce@Thesix we will see how the #technology shakes out. #nuclear SMR and micro #reactors are technically different. As for peak demand, that’s where #renewables and #battery #storage help a lot. A 1-3 MW reactor may actually allow the #diesel #generator to be decommissioned. #Integration with #solar / #wind / #batteries can be sized for peaking.
@Thesix #social acceptance is a big one. I was #nuclear meh, not against it but not super for it either most of my life. Recently, I started learning about the industry and #technology in addition to see the shear scale of #renewables and how we’re not really close to achieving #carbon reductions timely and realized just how amazing #nuclear can be.
Then I realized just how hard #diesel #generators were to replace…. #california of all places is adding tens of thousands of generators #now !
@coffeemayonnaise Interesting. I imagine they are only being used in the event of outages. So hopefully not producing meaningful emissions. In the few remote communities that are able get off diesel (via small hydro) they’ll likely keep the diesels as backups (with the cost of maintaining a redundant system).