I Believe the Physics, Show Me the Welding: Small Modular Reactors

Deep End Era. Engineering with Sankalp · Oct 28, 2026 · 50m

Fictional utility planner Hollis Bracken has to tell her board whether to build a small modular reactor. In episode one hundred and thirty we answer the way her reactor-physicist friend Ruth would. We start with fission's 200 MeV, the multiplication factor, moderators, enrichment and HALEU, the 0.65 percent of delayed neutrons that make reactors controllable, Doppler and void feedback, and Chernobyl's positive void coefficient. Then decay heat, about six to seven percent of full power at shutdown, and how losing it destroyed Fukushima Daiichi. We explain what small actually buys (square-cube…