The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread

[LP]

You've been reading too much sci fi LP 

Most planned Small Modular Reactors will be water-cooled as it's the cheapest and most reliable form of cooling.  The two Russian SMRs in operation are located on a floating power station for cooling purposes.

Nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers use highly purified sea water for cooling.  The Russians used lead-bismuth for cooling but its corrosive and radiotoxic properties were too problematic. One US nuclear submarine was sodium-cooled but its reactor was replaced with a conventional pressurised water reactor within 12 months.

Up to 12 SMRs have to be clustered together to provide equivalent power to a conventional nuclear or fossil fuel power plant.  The advantage is that SMRs don't have to be constructed on site but can be assembled from modular components shipped to installation sites.  As SMRs weigh 500-700 tonnes, I think we're going to need a bigger helicopter  :

You are being quite selective in your choice of examples and language, is it deliberate or accidentally naive?

An SMR of the type you refer to is the 1980s version, originally proposed by GE, although few were built, the are several companies developing fast breeder reactors of that type to use U238.

What I'm referring to are modular thorium or pebble bed reactors, and they are the size of a small house at the biggest, and as explained in the video, further the generation currently being developed is about the size of the semi-trailor. Which is why they are sometimes referred to as nuclear batteries.

We are discussing 2020 technology, and you are telling us it's no good with 1980s example designs.

The world has moved on beyond 1980 and it is not science fiction! .