Russia has reportedly made a sinister threat to the West by suggesting it could attack nuclear power plants in retaliation for any strike on its own sites
Russia has reportedly made a sinister threat to the West by suggesting it could attack nuclear power plants in retaliation for any strike on its own sites
It’s certainly dense, in terms of output relative to geographic footprint. I’m not sure how you’re measuring efficiency.
In terms of capital costs and build times, I would not describe the Vogtle 3 & 4 as efficient. The promise of SMRs is, similarly, far more focused on density than cost or reliability.
If your goal is a large scale rapid to expansion of production and you aren’t worried about physical space, you can stand up wind turbines in months and solar farms in a couple years. Then you’ll generate ROI that pays off the hardware investment in 2-5 years, pretty consistently.
By contrast, nuclear plants take decades to come online and generations to pay themselves back. They’re very slow and expensive per MWh.
But if you’re space constrained because your are - say - a massive naval floating fortress or orbital space station or arctic research base? There’s a value in a physically compact system