A realistic understanding of their costs and risks is critical.
What are SMRs?
-
SMRs are not more economical than large reactors.
-
SMRs are not generally safer or more secure than large light-water reactors.
-
SMRs will not reduce the problem of what to do with radioactive waste.
-
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.
-
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?]
My first issue with this, is that he’s still using his information from 2013. For instance, he claims that the spent fuel is just as dangerous. Yet we have proven time and time again, that the spent fuel rods can be used in other nuclear facilities to generate even more power off of them. We have the technology (theoretically of course, you need to actually build the facilities for this to work…) get even more energy off this “waste”, in turn also making it far less dangerous!
Second issue being he says the reactors would need a secondary power source in case of emergency. Duh? Thats his reason, is that they would need a backup power source to keep the coolant system running… Duh.
Not to mention that nuclear waste is a ridiculously small problem.
France has mainly worked off of nuclear for 40+ years now, and the entirety of our nuclear waste takes about a swimming pool worth of volume… I think we should be able to handle that kind of output for a while.
That’s actually a thing against nuclear power. For decades it’s the best thing. But often drawbacks are only solved in a new design that isn’t in a lot of nuclear power stations. And if they’re actually build then the cost overrun by a factor of 2 and more.
It’s always the next iteration that’ll solve things. It seems to be like a costly way to produce power if it’ll be built. Existing ones can be cheap, but then there are often several technical versions out of date.
Yes, nuclear if always hindered by money. It doesn’t have to be that way, and one way to help nuclear is by correcting the information of old, and embracing the new technology we do have.