Is LOS ready to safely manage Nuclear Power.

[david44]

Recent bus tragedy due to corrupt practice leads me to be wary.
However data centres will be power hungry.Meanwhile in USA

reuters.com

WASHINGTON, Oct 14 (Reuters) - AlphabetGoogle said on Monday it signed the world's first corporate agreement to buy power from multiple small modular reactors to meet electricity demand for artificial intelligence.
The technology company's agreement with Kairos Power aims to bring Kairos' first small modular reactor online by 2030, followed by additional deployments through 2035.
The companies did not reveal financial details of the agreement or where in the U.S. the plants would be built. Google said it has agreed to buy a total of 500 megawatts of power from six to seven reactors, which is smaller than the output of today's nuclear reactors.

"We feel like nuclear can play an important role in helping to meet our demand ... cleanly in a way that's more around the clock," Michael Terrell, senior director for energy and climate at Google, told reporters on a call.
Technology firms have signed several recent agreements with nuclear power companies this year as artificial intelligence boosts power demand for the first time in decades.
In March, Amazon.com purchased a nuclear-powered datacenter from Talen Energy and Constellation Energy , openssigned a power deal to help resurrect a unit of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, the site of the worst U.S. nuclear accident in 1U.S. data center power use is expected to roughly triple between 2023 and 2030 and will require about 47 gigawatts of new generation capacity, according to Goldman Sachs estimates, which assumed natural gas, wind and solar power would fill the gap.
Kairos will need to get full construction and design permitting from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as well as permits from local agencies, a process that can take years.

Kairos late last year got a construction permit from the NRC to build a demonstration reactor in Tennessee.
"The NRC is ready to efficiently and appropriately review applications for new reactors," said Scott Burnell, an NRC spokesperson.
Small modular reactors are intended to be smaller than today's reactors with components built in a factory, instead of onsite, to reduce construction costs.
Critics say SMRs will be expensive because they may not be able to achieve the economy of scale of larger plants. In addition, they will likely produce long-lasting nuclear waste for which the country does not yet have a final repository.


Google said by committing to a so-called order book framework with Kairos, instead of buying one reactor at a time, it is sending a demand signal to the market and making a long-term investment to speed development of SMRs.
"We're confident that this novel approach is going to improve the prospects of our projects being delivered on cost and on schedule," said Mike Laufer, CEO and co-founder of Kairos.

[Shutree]

The molten salt reactor is (probably) safe enough for children to play with.
I could fit one in my bedroom. (Possibly not, it wouldn't fit through the door.) It could power all the homes in this fair city.
There are some challenges, particularly the corrosive nature of molten salt. Many fewer challenges than 'conventional' reactors. They can be overcome.
Low environmental impact, no pathetic regimes claiming uranium refining is for civilian use.
There's a lot more Thorium on the planet than there is Uranium. You don't need to be a visionary to see this as the way forward.
The UK's Tory leadership failed to get behind it and I don't see Labour taking up the cause, all because of that word 'nuclear'. The UK should be world leaders, they had the intellectual resources. Now they don't have enough people even to decommission the old reactors, never mind design and build the new ones. This is about world leadership and at this point in time it is gifted to China.

[david44]

Agreed

[kingwilly]

Is LOS ready to safely manage…[anything]

Nope.

[cyrille]

Christ, this has been kicked around for over thirty five years now by barstool experts.

[nidhogg]

Pretty sure Thailand has had a small nuclear research reactor for about 40 years.

[Barty]

Pretty sure Thailand has had a small nuclear research reactor for about 40 years.

Over 60 years now. Comissioned in 1961, operational in 62.

Office of Atoms for Peace - Wikipedia
Overview of Office of Atoms for Peace – สำนักงานปรมาณูเพื่อสันติ

[nidhogg]

^Thanks for the clarification

[Shy Guava]

EGAT had a small group studying the feasibility of using nuclear power for generation back in the 70s when Kasem Chartikavanij (Super K) was still the Governor. The bloke in charge of of it was a mate of mine and they sent him off to France and Japan to study what they were doing. He felt at the time that EGAT didn't have the personnel to do it and that seemed to be the end of it for a while. He was moved over to build the Bang Pakong power station.