Small modular reactors

 Last month Sam Altman, the (in)famous founder of OpenAI, posted a picture on social media of an elegant A-frame wooden building in a verdant tropical setting.

 It looks like a billionaire’s weekend pad. However, what the image actually depicts is the putative design of a small modular (nuclear) reactor invented by Oklo, a company that Altman has chaired since 2015.

 On Thursday the United States Air Force announced plans to use Oklo’s reactor for the Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska — seemingly the first potential use of commercial SMRs by the Federal Government on American soil.

 A rival company called TerraPower, backed by Bill Gates, is also developing reactors. So is NuScale, which listed via a Spac last year and recently received $275mn in funding from variety of governments for a Romanian project.

Industrial giants such as Britain’s Rolls-Royce are jumping into the action while GE Hitachi is building an SMR plant in Canada. 

 But since SMRs are small and use factory-produced designs, they are much cheaper and faster to build, and can be moved close to the electricity demand. Moreover, the tech developed at companies such as Oklo and TerraPower uses recycled nuclear waste as fuel, potentially reducing the waste disposal headache.

Gillian Tett Financial Times 31 August 2023

https://www.ft.com/content/0faade4f-d239-47ed-a041-f7a503fef500

Inlägg med etikett 2050

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/search/label/2050