alt Hacker News> how are these different?
Well, if you have 1000 places of 1 square mile and 0 space of 4 square miles, the available space is 1000 square miles. If you have 100 places of 4 square miles, the available space is 400 square miles.
You cannot say that the first sentence means the same thing that the second sentence, and you cannot say that "there is not enough space" is only something you can say in the first-sentence situation and not in the second-sentence situation.
Maybe what you meant to say is not "there is not enough space", but "there is plenty of small space but not a lot of large space" (which I doubt is true in the real world: space occupancy is usually regrouped in dense areas, leaving non-dense areas).
> if i cannot fit something large ... i only have so much physical space to work with
First, the idea that, for a domestic power plant, you only have limited space, seems very unrealistic. The real world is not a submarine or a 7/11: you want your power plant at the periphery of cities, not squeezed between 2 buildings in the middle. There is only disadvantage of doing so: you cannot distribute high power lines from the middle of the city safely, you probably need facilities to deal with the fuel, probably need water for cooling, probably need a security perimeter as you have around any typical factory, the cost of the square meter is more expensive, ...
But secondly, you need the power plant to produce some power. If your country needs X GWh, and you need either 1 large power plant of 4 square miles or 10 SMR of 1 square mile and you just have few places where you can put a power plant, the "the unit itself is more compact" does not matter . I only have so much physical space to work with. If the surface needed to get X GWh using SMR is too big, it's too big.
> you cannot fit a reactor from three mile island into a submarine
Yep. Similarly, you cannot fit a SMR in a bicycle. But how is that relevant? In real life, domestic power plant do not have the constraints of being in thigh places (on the opposite, it is better for a power plant to be in regions that also happen to not have thigh places).
>Maybe what you meant to say is not "there is not enough space", but "there is plenty of small space but not a lot of large space"
my bad, i forgot i was on HN where this type of pedantry is the national sport. it sure sucks any tiny little bit of enjoyment one might get out of having a conversation. it's evident from the rest of your comment you knew exactly what i meant.
>First, the idea that, for a domestic power plant, you only have limited space, seems very unrealistic [...] But how is that relevant? In real life, domestic power plant do not have the constraints of being in thigh places
part of the point of SMRs is to be able to have them in space-constrained places where you otherwise cannot build a large facility. that's the appeal! google and meta aren't looking at them so they can power san fransisco or the country with multiple GW. they want to power a datacenter. i can think of other examples of space-constrained places where an SMR is appealing and a traditional facility is impossible, but you've managed to kill any interest i had in having a conversation.