The report, press release, and press conference audio are at http://ieer.org/resource/nuclear-power/light-water-designs-of-small-modular-reactors-facts-and-analysis/

From the press release at http://ieer.org/resource/nuclear-power/light-water-designs-of-small-modular-reactors-facts-and-analysis/

From the press release:

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And I've never heard of a solar panel blowing up . . .

Did I miss something?

CC

Assuming that their mininukes produce 250 MW each : 100 x 250MW/each
and that photovoltaic generation costs a dollar per watt: 90,000 MW

The nukes would still need fuel and would need ratepayers to pay off most of the cost of deployment.

but the manufacturing of the silicon necessary to make those panels isn't entirely safe, clean, and/or stable.

MEMC has a plant here that makes a large portion of the silicon necessary (I've read there are only two manufacturers of granular silicon in the US) to make the panels. I've also worked briefly at the plant here, and they use furnaces operating at around 1200F each in that process (I lost about thirty pounds in the three weeks I worked there due to being around that heat; the furnaces aren't well-insulated.)

So, that's quite a bit of energy going into five furnaces to make the processed silicon necessary for solar panels. It's hardly carbon-neutral.

Personally, I would rather see the development and implementation of both Polywell Fusion and solar rectennas (they absorb larger portions of the spectrum and can be tuned to specific wavelengths, such as IR to work at night!)

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Once the solar panels are made, their use to create power is certainly much safer than nuclear.

Nuclear plants are one huge time-bomb - ask Japan or the old USSR about that one, remember Three Mile Island?

And there are millions of tons of nuclear waste that continue to be a hazard for the planet.

Hydroelectricity is probably the cleanest available, but the environment takes a toll there also,

as areas of wildlife and even towns are consumed by the change in the flow of whatever river gets dammed/diverted.

When you get right down to it, almost NOTHING we manufacture is entirely safe, clean, and/or stable.

So that is not a valid argument against solar IMO.

CC

Only adding that while the panels can't blow up, the manufacturing process can.

And Fusion isn't fission, the latter of which comprises the entirety of nuclear. Polywell fusion also isn't the same as any of the other types in that there's no boiling of water to make steam. It's an electrostatic process. That is, the fusion is converted directly to electricity. That makes it incredibly efficient, even higher than solar. The fuel proposed is a combination of boron and tritium. As I recall the process of this, the boron ends up in the fusion process longer than merely being "split". I don't understand the physics in order to explain how that works, only that it does work.

I'd love to see all alternatives to burned fuels used, though Polywell fusion offers a higher concentration of energy (fuel) in a smaller package, with no waste (other than the creation of helium), and no fears of explosion or contamination. That's probably why the Navy is putting more funding into developing it. I'm sure they'd like to get rid of their fission reactors, too.

However, I would truly love to see the solar-rectenna technology developed. Imagine getting your solar power at an 80% efficiency rating, and the current not stopping when the sun goes down!