A realistic understanding of their costs and risks is critical.

A realistic understanding of their costs and risks is critical.

What are SMRs?

  1. SMRs are not more economical than large reactors.

  2. SMRs are not generally safer or more secure than large light-water reactors.

  3. SMRs will not reduce the problem of what to do with radioactive waste.

  4. SMRs cannot be counted on to provide reliable and resilient off-the-grid power for facilities, such as data centers, bitcoin mining, hydrogen or petrochemical production.

  5. SMRs do not use fuel more efficiently than large reactors.

[Edit: If people have links that contradict any the above, could you please share in the comment section?]

  • @Warl0k3
    97•26 days ago

    While clearly biased and theres some wording and cherrypicking of studies (that isn’t very egregious, to be clear!) that I’d take issue with in a more formal setting, the content of the article thru to point two are really quite an alright summary of the issues and raises some very valid questions the industry has yet to answer.

    However it throws itself off the credibility cliff riiiiiight around this point:

    In any event, regulators are loosening safety and security requirements for SMRs in ways which could cancel out any safety benefits from passive features. For example, the NRC has approved rules and procedures in recent years that provide regulatory pathways for exempting new reactors, including SMRs, from many of the protective measures that it requires for operating plants, such as a physical containment structure, an offsite emergency evacuation plan, and an exclusion zone that separates the plant from densely populated areas. It is also considering further changes that could allow SMRs to reduce the numbers of armed security personnel to protect them from terrorist attacks and highly trained operators to run them. Reducing security at SMRs is particularly worrisome, because even the safest reactors could effectively become dangerous radiological weapons if they are sabotaged by skilled attackers. Even passive safety mechanisms could be deliberately disabled.

    What in the fearmongering fuck is this? "Oh no, terrorists!" And it’s debunked on the first page of one of its own sources. Regulators have NOT put any pathways in place to “exempt SMRs from many of the protective measures.” If you read the sources, what they have done is put in place guidelines for the evaluation of the current measures, to judge if those measures merit being re-evaluated. Its a path for a path to judge if maybe we should have a path.

    And fucking hell, yes of course they would have smaller security contingents, the installations are physically smaller! There’s less to guard! Thats in no small part the point!

    Look there are a lot of problems with SMRs and even more questions we just don’t have answers for yet. Those questions need answers before any progress can be made with SMRs. The benefits of lower transmission losses, dedicated power generation for industrial complexes being at all beneficial, or remotely finalized designs for the reactor technology needed here are all MASSIVE outstanding issues that have yet to be solved.

    But this shit? "we cant have this source of green energy because terrorists!!!"

    Fuck off with that.

    There are more than enough issues with SMRs to justify extreme skepticism, hell microsoft wanting a bunch is probably reason enough to abandon the whole concept. We dont need to stoop to disinformation and blatant lies, what the fuck. This is why “nuclear bros” (Which great idea, lets “other” the critics, that’s not a red flag at all…) get so much traction, because they dont stoop to conspiracy theory tropes to support their arguments.

    • @[email protected]
      39•26 days ago

      There’s so many people paranoid about the remote possibility of dirty bombs. Meanwhile, Norfolk Southern is actually spilling tankers full of toxic chemicals that get set on fire by being incredibly negligent.

      If terrorists did want to poison an area, there’s plenty of insanely toxic and commercially available compounds to choose from. The fixation on nuclear fuel is an indicator of someone who is just repeating a ghost story and doesn’t actually know/care what the biggest sources of danger are.

      • AnonStoleMyPants
        4•26 days ago

        Though to be fair, using dirty bombs or radioactive material has waaaaay larger “fear” factor than a random chemical that kills just as well.

    • @[email protected]
      19•26 days ago

      There are plenty of good arguments against SMRs: none of them include terrorism.

      The theory was always that you could get economies of scale if you were building the same reactor every time in a factory and transporting it to install somewhere else. In practice those economies never materialized (did they even exist?)

      Meanwhile solar, wind, and batteries have plummeted in cost. There is no need for base load power generation if we have sufficient battery storage and an oversupply of generators - which is entirely feasible for wind and solar.

      • @Warl0k3
        10•26 days ago

        I’m sorry, I think you may not be using ‘baseload’ correctly. We will absolutely always have to meet the requirements for baseload power generation, otherwise we aren’t making enough power and we will have brownouts.

        If what you meant was that a grid relying on solar and wind for primary generation and supplemented with battery facilities can make up the deficit at night/on calm days, then while that would be ideal it is extremely unlikely to happen in the next several decades. Battery technology is not anywhere near ready for this solution, and while ESS are making extremely impressive advances, they are such a new technology that it would be intellectually dishonest for me to list their shortcomings here. They are simply too new to know which problems are inherent to the concept, and which are due simply to flawed engineering of a new technology.

        For matters of logistics, a few large generating sources linked together are much more desirable than a distributed network. In fact the issue with economies of scale in power generation is one of the arguments against SMRs made by the above linked article’s author. One of the biggest concerns with truly distributed power generation is safety - namely, how can you safely work on a downed line when every single house has the independent capacity to energize the lines? But those large power generating stations run into the same issue that SMRs are in vogue to solve; what do we do about crypto miners besides grinding them all up into dog food, which gets my vote. Their drain, and those of industry and data centers and so on, on local power infrastructure remains despite the source of the power in the system.

        • @[email protected]M
          8•26 days ago

          At temperate latitudes, you can actually get something like 95% of the way there using wind, solar, and reasonable amounts of storage in addition to existing hydropower.

          This leaves a fairly small chunk which needs either long-duration storage or firm generation. Nuclear might be able to fill part of that, but only if it comes in at a lower price than currently seems likely. Other technologies, such as induced geothermal and sodium-ion flow batteries are a lot more likely-looking right now.

          • @Warl0k3
            4•26 days ago

            Yes, exactly! Err, but I’m not sure where the ‘actually’ comes in. It looks like we’re agreeing. Am I misunderstanding? I can try to be a little bit more belligerent if that would help! This is internet commenting, we’re supposed to be at each other’s throats by this point in the comment chain…

            While battery technology is making grand strides, it’s my understanding that we’re not to a point where we can even speculate on how to renovate our entire grid with them for a vast host of reasons. Using them to cover while switching to other higher-capacity ESSs seems to be the role they are best suited for, and outside of a few experimental exceptions that looks like the role they’re stepping into in the current industry. I have high hopes for the future, but we still have a long way to go, especially in longevity. I’m not advocating for SMRs nor expansion of nuclear, solar or wind, just that we should not limit ourselves to considering a subset of our options because of ideological beliefs.

            (And I’m sorry, but I have no idea what induced geothermal is. Sounds potentially volcano-y though, so that’s always a plus in my book.)

            (I don’t really see any possible downsides to giving IBM a small nuclear reactor. They seem so nice.)

        • @[email protected]
          5•26 days ago

          No need for power generation dedicated to the base load.

          Nuclear power generation is base load only: it does not full the role of a peaker.

          Battery + renewable technology is already the primary source of power on many grids and the trend continues accelerating in that direction.