Tiny modular nuclear reactor

The Sierra Club is working on a Beyond Coal campaign and they are sending groups out to educate the public on the dangers of coal.  The group came to my city and their presentation was worth hearing.   Coal is incredibly toxic and dangerous, and it will never be “clean,” so we have to get off coal as soon as possible.  I’ll write more about this presentation later, but one thing we all discussed was decentralizing the power grid.  Spreading the grid all over with “modules” of power generation would be beneficial for many reasons, and one is that it would prevent major blackouts.  A centralized power grid, which we have now, with large power stations,  means that if it fails, big segments of the country will find themselves without power.  It’s also a large target for terrorists.  Can you imagine a terrorist attack on a large coal ash waste pond?  It could disperse toxins and cancer-causing elements to a very big area.

Getting rid of coal plants, which we eventually have to do,  will mean we have to replace them with various types of power, an “all of the above” answer to energy.  All of the above will mean solar, wind power, geothermal, hydroelectric and probably nuclear — but not fossil fuels.  Unlike huge coal plants, the new nuclear plants can be small, or modular.  One type of small nuclear plant is discussed below, for people who are new to this idea.  The beauty of small reactors is that they can power just a city block, or a large building, or an industrial park.

The article below is an opinion piece that recently appeared in a local newspaper, and it’s unusually informative for an article like this.  From the title, it seems as though the author wants to beat wind, but I think he meant that nuclear power can outperform wind power and can even come in less expensive in the long run.  And to nuclear detractors, I’d tell them that yes, companies are investing in nuclear power. Not the giant nuclear plants of the old days but new, smaller, modular nuclear reactors.

Small reactors can beat wind

“The U.S. wind power market broke records in 2009 with 9.8 gigawatts of new projects, bringing U.S. total wind name plate capacity to 35 GW — the equivalent of 35 large coal or nuclear power plants.

But in 2009, variable winds meant that wind turbines produced an average of 27 percent of name plate power (or capacity factor) to the electric grid. Off-shore wind farms with better wind should gradually raise that capacity factor to 30 percent by 2020.

By comparison, our 104 U.S. nuclear power plants in 2010 have a total name plate capacity of 100 GW, with a capacity factor of 90 percent, providing an effective 90 GW today.

Most forecasts predict continued strong worldwide wind power growth, especially from offshore with its more consistent wind. The Department of Energy projects U.S. [...]