Preface. Peak conventional oil, which supplies over 95% of our oil, may have peaked in 2008 (IEA 2018) or 2018 (EIA 2020). We are running out of time. And is it really worth building these small modular reactors (SMR) given that peak uranium is coming soon? And until nuclear waste disposal exists, they should be on hold, like in California and 13 other states.

And since trucks can’t run on electricity (When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation 2015, Springer), what’s the point? Nor can manufacturing be run on electricity or blue hydrogen (Friedmann 2019). Once oil declines, the cost to get uranium will skyrocket since oil is likely to be rationed to transportation, especially agriculture.

Alice Friedemann   www.energyskeptic.com  author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, and “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, KunstlerCast 253, KunstlerCast278, Peak Prosperity , XX2 report

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Hyman L et al (2023) Small Modular Reactors Struggle With Scalability. oilprice

https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Small-Modular-Reactors-Struggle-With-Scalability.html

There may be roughly 70 different permutations of SMRs being considered around the world today. But they all use either water, molten salts, or sodium as a moderator for the nuclear reaction. Too much variety makes it more difficult to achieve scale. Since the waste may be greater than what’s produced from conventional reactors, waste disposal should be part of the cost analysis. As for siting, district heating facilities need to be located near the users. Will local governments in the US permit SMRs near urban areas? That may be the biggest question mark of all.

Gilinsky V (2021) Dangerous Decisions about Advanced Nuclear Reactors Could Lead to New Threats. The National Interest.

Congress should have answers to tough questions before giving the Energy Department’s Advanced Reactor Development Program additional funding.  A good start would be to ask: Can we be sure that we will not end up with plutonium-fueled reactors coupled with reprocessing? 

The Department of Energy’s recently launched Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) is slipping by without any close Congressional oversight. The program was launched with an award of $160 million to TerraPower for its Natrium design and X-energy for its Xe-100. Each is to build a full-scale nuclear reactor within the next seven years, one that could be duplicated and sold commercially. While not a huge sum, it is intended to be the down payment on over $3 billion, a sum that is supposed to be cost-shared by the companies, with more for other projects.

At a March 25 Senate Energy Committee hearing on “advanced” reactors, executives of the two companies described a future with almost unlimited opportunities worldwide. No one asked how the reactors will be fueled. Will they be fueled with nearly highly enriched uranium, or with plutonium? And what will be the security consequences of selling and encouraging reactors fueled with such fuels around the world?

And they aren’t advanced: These reactors are re-engineered versions of old designs, some over fifty years old. “Advanced small modular reactors” trips off the tongues of people who think they are talking about the nuclear future, whereas in fact, they are talking about reviving the past.  

Small is inaccurate too. TerraPower envisions a 300 MW plant and growing it to gigawatt scale.

The Natrium reactor TerraPower has promised to build with DOE funds is not, as many people think, the highly advertised “traveling wave” reactor design that TerraPower pursued when started by Bill Gates. That idea involved the active (fissioning) reactor region slowly “traveling” from the center of the reactor core over the life of the reactor, “breeding” plutonium from uranium and fissioning it in place, therefore with no need for reprocessing. That Bill Gates was assumed to be a shrewd investor boosted the company’s credibility. The traveling wave idea didn’t work, but TerraPower retained the label for a different design, apparently because it aids marketing. 

The Natrium reactor is a scaled-up version of a General Electric design for a small sodium-cooled, plutonium-fueled fast breeder reactor (natrium is German for sodium, and “fast” means it relies on energetic neutrons). This is the reactor the nuclear enthusiasts have wanted to build since Congress canceled the Clinch River Fast Breeder Reactor in 1983. But it makes no sense to create many tons of plutonium when just a few pounds are needed for a bomb.

That’s why Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter made it U.S. policy to discourage commercializing of plutonium-fueled reactors. Enthusiasts tried but failed to revive fast reactors as part of the second Bush administration’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership program. It appears they are trying again. 

Cho A( 2020) Critics question whether novel reactor is ‘walk-away safe’. Science 369: 888-889

Engineers at NuScale Power believe they can revive the moribund U.S. nuclear industry by thinking small. Spun out of Oregon State University in 2007, the company is striving to win approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for the design of a new factory-built, modular fission reactor meant to be smaller, safer, and cheaper than the gigawatt behemoths operating today (Science, 22 February 2019, p. 806). But even as that 4-year process culminates, reviewers have unearthed design problems, including one that critics say undermines NuScale’s claim that in an emergency, its small modular reactor (SMR) would shut itself down without operator intervention.

NuScale’s likely first customer, Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), has delayed plans to build a NuScale plant, which would include a dozen of the reactors, at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Idaho National Laboratory. The $6.1 billion plant would now be completed by 2030, 3 years later than previously planned, says UAMPS spokesperson LaVarr Webb. The deal depends on DOE contributing $1.4 billion to the cost of the plant, he adds.

In March, however, a panel of independent experts found a potential flaw in that scheme. To help control the chain reaction, the reactor’s cooling water contains boron, which, unlike water, absorbs neutrons. But the steam leaves the boron behind, so the element will be missing from the water condensing in the reactor and containment vessel, NRC’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) noted. When the boron-poor water re-enters the core, it could conceivably revive the chain reaction and possibly melt the core, ACRS concluded in a report on its 5–6 March meeting.

NuScale modified its design to ensure that more boron would spread to the returning water. The small changes eliminated any potential problem, Reyes says. However, at a 21 July meeting, ACRS concluded that operators could still inadvertently drive deborated water into the core when trying to recover from an accident.

The issue pokes a hole in NuScale’s credibility, says Edwin Lyman, a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “This is a case of the public relations driving the science instead of the other way around,” he says. Sarah Fields, program director of the environmental group Uranium Watch, says the safety questions argue against NuScale’s request to operate without an emergency planning zone. “That’s a crazy thing to do for a reactor design that’s totally new and with which you have no operating experience.”

NRC plans to publish its safety evaluation report next month, and by year’s end it is expected to issue draft “rules” that would essentially approve the design. But that won’t end the regulatory odyssey. The current design specifies a reactor output of 50 megawatts of electricity, whereas the UAMPS plan calls for 60 megawatts. The change requires a separate NRC approval, Reyes says, during which NuScale will resolve the outstanding technical issues. That additional 2-year review should start in 2022.

References

• EIA. 2020. International Energy Statistics. Petroleum and other liquids. Data Options. U.S. Energy Information Administration. Select crude oil including lease condensate to see data past 2017.
• Friedmann J, et al. 2019. Low-carbon heat solutions for heavy industry: sources, options, and costs today. Columbia University.
• IEA. 2018. International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook 2018, figures 1.19 and 3.13. International Energy Agency.