China Starts Up World's First Fourth-Generation Reactor, Readying Giant Nuclear Ship
hackingbear writes: China has started commercial operations at a new generation nuclear reactor that is the first of its kind in the world, state media said on Dec 5. Compared with previous reactors, the fourth generation Shidaowan plant, a modular 200 megawatt (MW) high-temperature, gas-cooled...
hardware.slashdot.org
Reactor at Shidaowan plant in China’s eastern Shandong province is part of global push for safer, more sustainable and efficient nuclear operations.
www.scmp.com
China has started commercial operations at a new generation nuclear reactor that is the first of its kind in the world, state media said on Wednesday.
www.reuters.com
Looks pretty good, I think gas cooled nuclear reactors are a smart way to go, they are using helium gas as the coolant, using an inert gas like helium solves the problem of the coolant reacting with anything inside the vessel or the vessel walls. It seems as if we like to make reactors with a coolant we can hold in our hands either water or some kind of salt, but from a science/engineering perspective using a gas coolant makes more sense from what I have read.
Here is the gist of how this reactor works.
Gas cooled reactors (GCR), used in Japan and the UK, use graphite as a moderator and pressurized CO2 as a coolant. It is a double-circuit power plant.
www.energyencyclopedia.com
The first of two units at China’s much-watched high-temperature gas-cooled modular pebble bed (HTR-PM) demonstration project was successfully connected to the grid on Dec. 20. The achievement marks a major
www.powermag.com
A lot of gas cooled SMR micro reactors are being designed that aim to be roughly the size of a shipping container or a couple of shipping containers and generate 15MW of electricity like this one below.
Micro Modular Reactor - North America's leading high temperature gas cooled reactor (HTGR), fueled with our TRISO particle fuel.
www.usnc.com
15MW might not sound like much, but if you compare the 24/7 output of a 15MW micro reactor it is actually about the same out put as a 550MW 25km2 solar farm in terms of total MWh output over a year.
Let's take the flag ship Topaz solar farm for example.
en.wikipedia.org
Generation (MW·h) of Topaz Solar:
| Average Annual Production (years 2015-2019) ---> | 1,279,216 |
|---|
That's 1,279,216MWh generated total average for a whole year, that's because it might only reach 550MW output during some good days in summer for a few hours each day, during the winter months it's MW output sometimes halves.
But a 15MW gas cooled micro reactor can possibly run at 15MW 24/7 for one whole year and might average 90% capacity factor like a lot of current nuclear reactors do for refuelling etc.
So 15MW x 8,760hours-in-a-year =
131,400MWh of total energy generated for a year.
So a tiny shipping container sized nuclear reactor could in fact generate more electricity over a year than a 25km2/9.5 square miles solar farm located in one of the sunniest parts of the USA desert. And the issue is with solar/wind projects is all the material will have to be cleaned up and disposed of one day. 25km2 of toxic cadmium based solar panels as listed in the Topaz solar farm Wikipedia is a remarkably huge mess to leave behind for someone to clean up, and I can't even imagine the amount of energy/chemicals it will require to properly dispose them on a level compared with the standards required by for nuclear energy.
brusselssignal.eu
