OT: Rolls Royce on track to deliver SMR

In central Europe. There's only one I can think of in the UK. Why do you think that might be?

It was always said to be because power stations tend to be located away from populations, where the power is exported south.

well the exit from the final steam turbine is at 60C give or take.

after that its all lost heat even if the condenser outflow is at 20.

Really it all depends on the cost. It may be that if you have pretty much 'free' heat that distillation trumps osmosis

greens don't like power stations in towns.

Is that with an entry temperature of 600C ?

no. That's where you get your power from. Most multistage turbines exit IIRC about 50°C.

They could as easily exit at 100°C with a significant loss in efficiency of you wanted more heat for desalination.

But I am too rusty to do the sums. Its all about capital cost versus loss of income from electrical power.

It's because winters are harder in continental areas. Heating is needed for half the year, which shifts the economics. A lot of people keep a separate set of winter tyres for the same reason.

Also, condensing the vapour is just as necessary as evaporating it. That has a capital cost too.

According to Tim, Tim is good at everything he touches, which is just about everything.

If animal secretions aren't allowed in T i m's household, I guess the Mrs swallowing is out of the question?

This of course is another urban myth. Like the spike in cancer post windscale that was widely publicised as a prediction but *never actually happened*

I wont accept this statement without evidence not of models and predictions but of actual cases.

Well nothing to do with nuclear power of course. All that high activity stuff is contained in the reactor or in water tanks until its fizzled out

Yes. that could be measured.

That however is where facts left the building and modelling based on LNT entered it. Everyone has a *recollection*, but when you actually go looking for data, there isn't any. There were no cancer spikes I can find. There were however *predictions* every day in the papers and the new scientist etc etc

I think the reverse was true.

Both sides in the cold war realised that the military advantages of nuclear weapons were being eroded by smarter and more accurate delivery systems and the collateral damage to civilians and valuable infrastructure was too high.

They were wonderful things to frighten populations with, but not that useful in a war.

Once a smart bomb could take out a dictator, who needed a nuke?

We have far better tactical weapons now than a cold war 5 kiloton nuclear shell

If you want to destroy populations its far better to spread diseases (COVID19) and lies (Climate Change) than radiation

Everyone knew how to make big bombs, and it was an expensive and pointless exercise. So why not get brownie points for virtue signalling a test ban?

Written presumably by someone with an axe to grind

By a couple of years after Chernobyl, any I-131 it released would all have decayed. Every single atom.

Oh yes. I know that. That's why apart from a week after a reactor pops its significant, the stuff people are more worried about is strontium 90 and caesium 137 (half lives 29 and 30 years) because they are active enough to be of possible concern and yet long lived enough to be around for a decade or more and both are biologically active.

both are beta decay I think both end up in bones and teeth. Hence there were scare stories about leukemia...

Calcium analogues.

Exactly so

No, it was a very realistic *risk* and one we could have witnessed a couple of times already, had it not been for luck / circumstances.

'Of course' we would all hope that a mini-nuke-plant designed and built in the UK by RR would be pretty indestructible, but the problem is, if it isn't, the consequences are going to be suffered for many many years to come.

I'm not saying that because I'm against NP, because I'm not, I was just saying most people wouldn't want one in their back yard and you don't need a complete meltdown (or it to 'Blow up' as such), for it to be a massive problem.

Until that happens, the chances are it's 'greener' than many alternatives, possibly including solar and wind (even if they were supported by storage).

Cheers, T i m

Oh indeed, it's just that whilst there is no doubt all these things have and are killing (around the world), they aren't something we have instant control over (but are working on), unlike deciding to build a nuke etc.

Now, it's 'quite likely' that ignoring a major disaster, the vast majority of nukes have been running much cleaner (as in their generation of power), especially when compared with anything that burns fossil fuels, it's just *if* they were to go wrong big-time the consequences can contaminate a large are for a long long time with very little that can be done about it, especially short term.

There is also the 'decommissioning cost / risk and the ongoing waste disposal.

Agreed, along with the likes of this:

My understanding (which is now a bit flaky as it's a while since I read up on it) was that the operators actually didn't know that the regime they were moving the reactor to was dangerous. To move it there they had to disable all the kit designed to prevent them moving it there.

In addition the design of the control rods was bad. The tips of the rods actuallly did the opposite of what the rod is intended to do. It increased reactor output instead of shutting it down. By the time they were scramming the reactor, or trying to, the rod channels had distorted so the rods jammed part-way-in. That just made it all worse.