this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
197 points (94.2% liked)

World News

32321 readers
780 users here now

News from around the world!

Rules:

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Nuclear capacity is expected to rise by 14% by 2030 and surge by 76% to 686 GWe by 2040, the report said

This is only good news if it displaces thermal coal and gas generating stations.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] spauldo@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

They can call it whatever they want but PWR is an old design. They polished the design a bit, so what? It's still an overblown pressure cooker.

Industrial scale reactor designs take a ton of time and money and experience to research. Research reactors are only a step in the middle of the process, and nobody's been willing to take any new designs past that.

SMEs have potential not because they're particularly efficient or cost effective, but because stand a chance of pushing the state of the art. They offer a way around the whole "I'm not paying $40bn for an unproven design" problem.