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Small modular nuclear reactors get a reality check in new report (newatlas.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

153 comments fedilink hide all child comments

[T]he report's executive summary certainly gets to the heart of their findings.

"The rhetoric from small modular reactor (SMR) advocates is loud and persistent: This time will be different because the cost overruns and schedule delays that have plagued large reactor construction projects will not be repeated with the new designs," says the report. "But the few SMRs that have been built (or have been started) paint a different picture – one that looks startlingly similar to the past. Significant construction delays are still the norm and costs have continued to climb."

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (55 children)

Nuclear technologies missed their window. The use cases where they are the best technical solution now are extremely limited, and that means you can get the investment going to improve them.

It’s a curiosity now.

There’s an alternative timeline where Chernobyl doesn’t happen and we decarbonize by leaning on nuclear in the nineties, then transition to renewables about now. But that’s not our timeline. And if it were, it would be in the past now.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (25 children)

I disagree, a bit.

Base load is still hard to get with renewables, unless you can get a somewhat consistent level of power from them. That's basically just hydro/tidal and geothermal at this point, and all of those have very limited areas where they can be used.

Nuclear, on the other hand, can be built anywhere except my backyard.

We have four choices:

Discover/build another form of consistent renewable energy (what's left? Dyson sphere?)
Up our storage game, big time (hydrostatic batteries, flywheel farms, lithium, hydrogen, whatever, just somewhere to put all this extra green energy)
Embrace nuclear
Clutch on to fossil fuels until we all boil/choke.

We can do all of them concurrently, provided there's money for it, but we only give money to the last one.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (6 children)

"Base load" is not that much. Off shore wind is almost always blowing, and all the other renewables can be stored via batteries or hydrogen (or tanks, in case of biogas). Yes, that's a whole lot of stuff, but the technology exists, can be produced on large scale and (most importantly) doesn't cause any path dependencies.

Nuclear is extremely expensive, as the article highlighted. And to be cost effective, power has to be produced more or less constantly. Having a nuclear power plant just for the few hours at night when wind and sun don't work is insane - and insanely expensive.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Not to mention slow to build. Takes about a decade to get a nuclear plant going. If that is replacing coal, you are burning that coal during construction. The CO2 cost of that should be taken into account when comparing to much quicker renewables (approx 2 years). Also pouring all that concrete. Once it's build, sure it's green, but that is expensive, takes ages and comes with a big CO2 cost to get going.

Or you go renewable now, turn the filthy coal off about 8 years sooner and save a ton of money and CO2 right now.

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