The last line of the article surprises me:<p><i>However, we're hoping that by the time Gen IV reactors are ready for construction (sometime in the 2030s), fusion power will have completely taken over electric power generation.</i><p>Based on the current trends, it seems like renewable energy will be set to take over energy production before fusion power.
"[During failure,] only a small amount of water transfer (about ten garden hoses worth) is necessary [...] to keep the reactor stable."<p>How much is "ten garden hoses worth"? Are we talking running ten garden hoses at full capacity for a few seconds? A couple hours? I very much dislike comparisons like these in reporting, especially when discussing safety.
I wonder how this new plant will affect the power costs to consumers and especially wholesale power costs.<p>The Chattanooga area just turned up their municipal fiber network to 10 Gbps and a lot of tech companies are moving there. With inexpensive power and good connectivity, it might be a prime location for data centers.
So, where do Small Module Reactors (SMR) fit onto the authors timeline of reactor development? Do SMRs show any promise, or are they just an iteration of the same ideas, but at a smaller scale.
Exciting, but too little too late? As I understand it, there's a good chance we've already doomed ourselves to the necessity of using geoengineering to fix our climate.