Thanks for the clear writing on an important topic... One comment. Expensive? How do we know that? Until 2 companies have factories making something at scale, and have 5 years to streamline the supply chain, no human on Earth can say what the cost will be. There has never been a serious factory making Triso.
So we don't know whether it's expensive or not. It would be expensive as part of a research program, assembled by graduate students or by hand, one at a time by human workers.
But how much would it cost in a factory?
What I can say is all the materials are cheap. It doesn't look much harder to make than an IC chip.
Seems like a TRISO fueled reactor would be more like a mid-merit plant in the disptch stack.
If (big if) the Capex and fixed Opex can be reduced enough, that could be interesting.
I think they have a more obvious fit for remote sites applications and in shipping, where the competing fuel costs are high, and minimizing staffing / install complexity is the top priority.
Fuel costs of nuclear are quite low compared to other technologies.
LWRs can’t do high heat and nobody needs technology demonstrations for those as they have existed forever.
The costs you have quoted are probably way too high as right now everything is pilot scale. Larger factories would run this down the cost curve rather quickly.
TRISO isn’t my favorite, but it has a lot of promise in multiple designs and we will need it for high temp heat in any nuclear future scenario.
Honestly, I would take wickedly expensive to manufacture FUEL, because manufacturing something small and uniform will slide down the manufacturing cost curve. Construction projects are harder. But I haven’t done the math, maybe it’s still too expensive??
Additionally the disposal of pebbles has been estimated as 20 times larger by volume than non coated fuel, though likely similar by weight. Pebbles so far are very difficult to extract isotopes from spent fuel for reprocessing or other uses such as medicine. X energy claims they can configure a gas cooled pebble fuel reactor to convert fertile isotopes to fissile, but that’s likely an immature process that might be costly. All fuels enriched beyond the current level create much larger U238 depleted uranium output though I’m not sure if the overall kW per mined weight is roughly the same.
Thanks for the balanced discussion, but it would be helpful to know how the cost of TRISO compares to conventional fuel or even better, the proportion of the O&M budget for conventional vs TRISO. Knowing $ per lb or “very expensive” doesn’t tell a non-expert like me very much.
Thanks for the clear writing on an important topic... One comment. Expensive? How do we know that? Until 2 companies have factories making something at scale, and have 5 years to streamline the supply chain, no human on Earth can say what the cost will be. There has never been a serious factory making Triso.
So we don't know whether it's expensive or not. It would be expensive as part of a research program, assembled by graduate students or by hand, one at a time by human workers.
But how much would it cost in a factory?
What I can say is all the materials are cheap. It doesn't look much harder to make than an IC chip.
Seems like a TRISO fueled reactor would be more like a mid-merit plant in the disptch stack.
If (big if) the Capex and fixed Opex can be reduced enough, that could be interesting.
I think they have a more obvious fit for remote sites applications and in shipping, where the competing fuel costs are high, and minimizing staffing / install complexity is the top priority.
Good. Will continue to dig in on fuel costs of TRISO, HALEU and LALEU in our internal price matrix
Fuel costs of nuclear are quite low compared to other technologies.
LWRs can’t do high heat and nobody needs technology demonstrations for those as they have existed forever.
The costs you have quoted are probably way too high as right now everything is pilot scale. Larger factories would run this down the cost curve rather quickly.
TRISO isn’t my favorite, but it has a lot of promise in multiple designs and we will need it for high temp heat in any nuclear future scenario.
Honestly, I would take wickedly expensive to manufacture FUEL, because manufacturing something small and uniform will slide down the manufacturing cost curve. Construction projects are harder. But I haven’t done the math, maybe it’s still too expensive??
Additionally the disposal of pebbles has been estimated as 20 times larger by volume than non coated fuel, though likely similar by weight. Pebbles so far are very difficult to extract isotopes from spent fuel for reprocessing or other uses such as medicine. X energy claims they can configure a gas cooled pebble fuel reactor to convert fertile isotopes to fissile, but that’s likely an immature process that might be costly. All fuels enriched beyond the current level create much larger U238 depleted uranium output though I’m not sure if the overall kW per mined weight is roughly the same.
Thanks for the balanced discussion, but it would be helpful to know how the cost of TRISO compares to conventional fuel or even better, the proportion of the O&M budget for conventional vs TRISO. Knowing $ per lb or “very expensive” doesn’t tell a non-expert like me very much.
A little heavy for me.
Thanks for a clear explanation. It seems strange that when we talk about nuclear energy we are still in the age of steam power.
Thanks for the terrific commentary on these advanced reactors. Can I use the illustration graphic or is it copyrited?