this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
171 points (94.3% liked)
Technology
59329 readers
4477 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'd say it's imaginary if they don't exist. Your claim that, "They’re currently being deployed in industrial settings around the US." isn't really accurate, is it?
Edit: some context I was able to find:
"The US has approved a single design for a small, modular nuclear reactor developed by the company NuScale Power. The government's Idaho National Lab was working to help construct the first NuScale installation, the Carbon Free Power Project. Under the plan, the national lab would maintain a few of the first reactors at the site, and a number of nearby utilities would purchase power from the remaining ones.
With the price of renewables dropping precipitously, however, the project's economics have worsened. Some of the initial backers started pulling out of the project earlier in the decade, although the numbers continued to fluctuate in the ensuing years.
The final straw came on Wednesday, when NuScale and the primary utility partner, Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, announced that the Carbon Free Power Project did not have enough utility partners at a planned checkpoint and, given that uncertainty, would be shut down. In a statement, the pair accepted that "it appears unlikely that the project will have enough subscription to continue toward deployment.""
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/11/first-planned-small-nuclear-reactor-plant-in-the-us-has-been-canceled/
I'd consider signed agreements as part of the "being deployed" process but yeah, I haven't been able to find evidence of any currently active deployments. I wouldn't call it a "moonshot" though when there's so many in the works is all.
Not really sure how NuScale is relevant as that's (or at least the project in the article is) utility-level power and not really the same thing.
They're both SMRs, right?