The ‘phoenix of nuclear reactors’ – or just another distraction?
A deep dive into the debate over small modular reactors.
I’m taking a guess here, but chances are pretty good that you probably don’t know much about building nuclear reactors. Why would you? You can count on one hand how many new reactors the United States and Europe combined have built in a generation.
That is starting to change. The atomic energy industry is angling for a nuclear renaissance – and betting on small modular reactors to deliver that revival.
So, what are small modular reactors, known more commonly by the acronym SMR? These machines are essentially just shrunken down fission reactors, similar to the large-scale versions that power most of the world’s nuclear plants. They are, for the most part, similar to what powers a nuclear submarine – the likes of which predated any commercial atomic station. So why is this technology rearing its head now?
In the few places where Western companies have tried building large-scale reactors, the costs have multiplied into the billions of dollars and projects meant to take a few years end up lasting a decade or more. Depending on whom you ask, there are all kinds of things to blame for this: Onerous regulations, out-of-practice workforces, bad project management. But the solution most widely talked about involves building new reactors in bundles, rather than one big one at a time. That means reactors should be small, so you need to order multiple to equal what would have been one large reactor, and modular, so components can be manufactured in factories.
Among those who want more nuclear power, few argue that SMRs aren’t useful. Producing smaller fission technologies means the benefits of nuclear power can be extended to places where large-scale reactors don’t make sense – say, for example, a remote Alaskan village or military base, or an island nation like Jamaica. But skeptics fear SMRs are just the latest shiny object distracting utilities and policymakers from the hard but worthwhile work of building new large-scale reactors, especially in a country like the U.S. where gigawatts of clean electricity are needed if there’s any hope of weaning off fossil fuels.
There’s also a fierce debate over what kind of technology SMRs should use. The companies making the most progress on the regulatory front right now are developers shopping around SMRs based on the light-water reactors that make up the vast majority of the global fleet. But plenty of other startups are pushing “advanced” reactors that use molten salt or high-temperature gas to cool down atom-splitting reactions instead of water. There’s a lot of hope for those, especially as a way to recycle and reduce the spent nuclear fuel currently sitting around at power plants across the country. But there are steep challenges ahead.
To explore these complicated issues, I spent months talking to dozens of people, touring nuclear giant Holtec International’s facilities in New Jersey, and fielding a range of opinions from physicists, executives, government officials, and analysts who track the nuclear sector. The result is my latest deep-dive story, which may make a good weekend read.
The full story contains lots of nuance and juicy details, and you can read it here on HuffPost.
“Climate-focused clients tend to be rude. White-collar people looking down on blue-collar is the last acceptable prejudice.
I’ve definitely experienced it with doctors, for example. I have, like, a personal struggle, internally, with doctors. I view them as arbiters of good things—I view them as intelligent, because they made it through medical school. Not that I couldn’t have. That wasn’t the path that I chose. But I still feel bad that I oftentimes get talked down to. And there can be innate assumptions that my time doesn’t matter.”
– an HVAC installer “Nate the House Whisperer” to The American Prospect’s Lee Harris on why environmentalists make decarbonization work worse.
Some stuff worth reading
USA LNG. New federal data show the unrivaled growth of U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas, especially as Europe quits Russian imports. As Cipher’s Amy Harder noted, “the rest of the world doesn’t even come close.”
A fresh spin on “going Dutch?” In just one day, the government of the Netherlands won a legal case to halt the expansion of Amsterdam’s airport on climate grounds, and then collapsed over a dispute within its coalition over immigration.
Microsoft is going nuclear. The tech giant signed a power deal with a nuclear plant in Virginia. The deal won’t cut emissions, since the reactors in question weren’t in danger of going out of business. But it does set a precedent for future power-purchase agreements that could help save financially-troubled nuclear plants elsewhere.
Flipping the birds? A startup plans to build a floating luxury club at which Florida yachters can party -- right next to a centuries-old bird sanctuary, risking scaring off pelicans and cormorants with noise and destroying seagrass on which manatees and turtles graze, reports the Miami New Times’ Alex DeLuca.
Andrew Cuomo’s billion-dollar Elon Musk boondoggle. In a hefty new feature in The Wall Street Journal, a state lawmaker from the region where New York taxpayers helped build a $1 billion factory for Tesla concluded: “It was a bad deal…A cautionary tale is you can’t give governors too much power to get on the phone with egotistical billionaires.”
“We were considered the freaks. The guys who were saying something completely impossible.” So say the researchers who now claim to be able to generate renewable electricity straight from the humidity in the air. The Guardian has the story.
Some stuff worth watching
On the growing tensions in Moldova’s Gagauzia region:
On Rwanda’s economic rise:
On Honolulu’s newly-opened subway system:
Thank you for your time and attention, I hope, as always you, felt it was earned. Here’s a nice song I think you’ll like.
Sending you love from overcast Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where the scumbags with Jersey plates aren’t just speeding through our intersections and bike lanes but literally shooting people with guns in broad daylight.