These reactors are smaller, easier to build, safer to operate

Jan 9, 2014 21:11 GMT  ·  By

Climate scientists might be right when saying that the world needs nuclear power if climate change and global warming are to be put a leash on, but, given disasters such as the Fukushima meltdown in March 2011, it would be difficult to blame people for not being entirely open to the idea of having more such plants around.

According to Our World, scientists believe that this dilemma can be solved by rolling out a new generation of nuclear reactors.

Unlike their forefathers, these new reactors would be significantly smaller. Chiefly due to their not-so-impressive size, they would be easier and faster to build.

What's more, they would be much safer to use. Thus, they can be installed and operated in the underground.

As the specialists working on developing them explain, this means that they would not be as vulnerable to terrorist attacks or natural disaster as previous-generation nuclear reactors are.

The same source tells us that these new energy-generating facilities, dubbed small modular reactors (SMRs, for short) will be factory-built in kit form. Thus, workers would only have to piece them together on site.

The largest of them are expected to have an energy generating capacity of less than 300 megawatts, whereas the really small ones will have an output of about 25 megawatts.

By the looks of it, this means that they will generate about as much power as five run-off-the-mill wind turbines.

Interestingly enough, there are some who say that these small modular reactors could be made to team up with renewables and help people living in remote parts of the world reduce, maybe even eliminate, their dependence on diesel generators.

More precisely, the reactors will be built in a way that will allow them to regulate their power output so as to match fluctuations in demand and in the energy input provided by green sources.

The reactors would only need to be refueled once every ten years and, thanks to the cooling systems they will be fitted with, they will be able to keep up and running safely for seven days in a row without anybody's needing to go in the underground and check up on them.

For the time being, specialists are working on roughly 20 designs for such facilities, and the World Nuclear Association estimates that about 96 reactors of this kind will go online by the year 2030.

Of all the countries in the world, the United States appears to be the one most interested in developing this technology.

Thus, over the past two years alone, the country has made investments of up to $452 million (€332.25 million) in two companies, i.e. NuScale and Gen4 Energy, that are working on rolling out two different designs on small nuclear reactors.