There’s been a lot of talk about SMR’s over the years, it’s nice to see one finally being built.
Even if it comes in over budget, getting the first one done will be a great learning experience and could lead to figuring out how to do future ones cheaper.
Assuming it’s on time, completion in 2029, connected to grid in 2030.
Just buy batteries for the nuclear power plant as well. If you have to turn it off, you’re making a mistake with our current tech.
Assuming you still need the nuclear power to fill those batteries that is. Given the rate of solar adoption, that might well become unnecessary.
Assuming all power was handled by a single entity and not various businesses, there’s no point in building new solar (or any new capacity) when you can just build batteries for the existing nuclear plant that you have to shut down in the evening.
You should only build new power generation once you are able to drain the nuclear plants battery each day (or have the logistical planning to know when that will be the case anyway)
edit: made up numbers example: If a 300mw plant can power 300,000 homes but has to shut down in the overnight, that same plant with batteries can maybe power 400,000 homes.
Except people will just purchase their own solar, because it’s cheaper than getting nuclear power from a battery. They won’t wait for demand to catch up, they’ll make sure their own demand is fulfilled so they won’t have to purchase power anymore.
It’s a simple economic rule, if there’s a cheaper option people wi shift towards it. You can’t force people to purchase your power. You can’t stop it unless you ban buying solar, which won’t be received well.
Nuclear fills a rapidly shrinking niche in the power mix of tomorrow, and it’s economics that’s squeezing it out. There’s no point in fighting that unless you want to pay more for power than is necessary (which nobody does).
Why would you use the batteries for nuclear when solar is so much cheaper?
If there’s any excess capacity (solar/wind/geothermal/nuclear/coal/natural gas), batteries extend it’s usefulness and help manage any peaks better and can help you avoid building another generation facility for peak times. It also takes much less land than solar and with SMRs can in theory be brought much closer to population centers reducing transmission losses.
Edit: 300mw of solar would be between 1,500 and 3,000 acres of land. 300mw SMR could be as low as 10-20 acres.
In theory you can setup electricity intensive operations that can use extra energy and power down when supply is tight. Things like water desalination or hydrogen production. You have the problem of capital not being used but desal plants are often cycled off already.
Rooftop solar takes basically no extra space and it’s hard to get even closer to population centers than that.
In that context, it may still be better to plan for solar panels on all roofs in new developments.
Just taking one example of Whitby, Ontario, which only has a population of around 140,000. Using a quick and dirty measurement of the developed area from the waterfont to Taunton Rd., there’s over 12,000 acres of area used up by mostly homes and other buildings (schools, retail, etc.).
You may not even need to have EVERY roof covered to meet the demands of a municipality like that. This makes it even more compelling because you have room to expand the capacity, if needed. And it still comes with the benefit of having multiple redundancies, being self-sustainable, offering residents free or extremely low-cost electricity (or even be paid to put energy back into the grid!), etc.
Anyway, this fantasy is unlikely to happen in Ontario. LOL
It might happens eventually for new builds at least… It just did in the UK!