World’s First Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Starts Producing Energy in China
interestingengineering.com
As the country bids to become the world leader in nuclear power, it plans surpassing the U.S. in 15 years.

China connected its first small modular nuclear reactor to its power grid, making it the first country in the world to draw power from such a machine. Its small size allows for greater scalability as well as reduced operations and deployment costs.

The new modular nuclear reactor is the world's first pebble-bed modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactor. Instead of heating up water, it heats helium to produce energy. The machine is designed to quickly shut down if an error occurs.

  • learntocod [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Absolutely. Big, centralized power requires a grid to deliver it. Grids are not only expensive, but subject to issues in regions lacking “stability” Also consider improved energy storage options that might allow grid less distribution: a battery rail car, or maybe methanol created with carbon capture.

    • Multihedra [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      This seems pretty big — 200 MW. I think individual windmills are roughly 2-5 MW for the smaller ones, don’t know much about solar

      Here’s a map of power plants in the US https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-the-us-generates-electricity

      (probably not exhaustive?) with generation capacities listed. I’m seeing 131 MW oil/gas plants run by my local power monopoly near Lake Erie, which powers some fairly high-density US lifestyles (in addition to a 1312 MW nuclear plant nearby lol).

      So honestly only an order of magnitude smaller than extremely costly US nuclear, capacity-wise

      • learntocod [they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I like the empiricism. You’re right, but it’s still a promising trend toward smaller reactors. I wonder if they have an estimate for how much more they could scale it down.