Puerto Rico had a reactor (BONUS),...
Puerto Rico sits near a major fault line and has enjoyed a quiet seismic time in recent history (last 100 years) which is out of step with the geological prevalence of earthquakes and tsunamis in the NE Caribbean,...
Puerto Rico has no large natural or artificial lakes and the rivers flows are seasonal,...
Puerto Rico cannot afford a reactor, any reactor for Puerto Rico will have to be 100% subsidized from outside funds and with Puerto Rico's history of not repaying debt that subsidy will never be recouped, any reactors in Puerto Rico will be "welfare" reactors,...
Because of Puerto Rico's lax zoning and building codes (which make Puerto Rico a wonderful place to build your personal luxury retreat should you be so wealthy) any supportive infrastructure in Puerto Rico is always one major natural event from being off line for an indeterminate amount of time,...
wind and solar (renewables) currently account for ~2% of all Puerto Rico electric generation, that capacity construction was all subsidized by off -island sources and those investments are pretty much losses for the investors immediately prior to the hurricanes, those investors made money on the Puerto Rico specific federal deferments afforded to green energy initiatives and acts between 2010 and 2013, however those green energy facilities on Puerto Rico were already struggling with maintenance issues prior to this years hurricane season knocking them down and out,...
on the flip side, Puerto Rico's fossil fuel plants are mostly online at 93% of pre-hurricane capacity, there is power available, there is insufficient transmission capacity remaining to get that power from the generators to the users,...
so,.........
SMRs are no panacea for Puerto Rico, they are not even a good help,...
the NIMBYs will prevail on siting boogeymen,...
the island economy is too shallow to handle reactors of any sort without 100% off-island subsidy 100% of the time,...
and the indigenous island infrastructure is too weak to justify everything else that goes with nuke reactors,....
Puerto Rico and nuke reactors = not a good fit,...
IMNSHO, low tech fossil fuel plants (particularly coal) are Puerto Rico's best fit because Puerto Rico has a lot of people living in a small place and they need their power production facilities to put out a lot of power off of a small footprint,...
because they are a small place if they could upgrade their transmission quality then these big storms would do less damage to that transmission capacity and Puerto Rico would weather these events much better,...
but, having spent a number of years living on and hanging out in tropical islands, that level of expensive, robust construction for the sake of being robust just never seems to be part of the thinking, until it becomes a "wish scenario",...
which typically, subsides just as soon as Christmas is over and things get half assed back to half ass normal,...
it's not like anybody is gonna freeze to death if they can't stay warm in January you know,...
