this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2024

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

submitted 5 months ago by machinin@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

68 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."

(page 2) 19 comments

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[–] ricdeh@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Edit: Changed introductory wording to be less belligerent. I am sorry if I have caused a significant level of offense.

~~Just wait for the nuclear shills to flood in and claim that nuclear fission is a sustainable and necessary form of power generation.~~ Some people claim that nuclear fission is a sustainable and necessary form of power generation. It is not. Uranium extraction devastates entire landscapes, the construction of nuclear power plants is too expensive (even for SMRs, as the article explains), ergo electricity prices will climb, it is a hugely wasteful use of so many tonnes of concrete (concrete manufacturing is heavy on the environment too), it creates waste that will still haunt us for hundreds of thousands of years (finding geological structures that are guaranteed to be stable that long is difficult), and relative to the initial construction and set-up effort, they don't provide that much energy. We already have methods that can provide us plenty enough electricity that are entirely sustainable by leveraging large-scale atmospheric aerodynamics as well as the largest nuclear fusion reactor at our disposal (the sun). There's simply no need to go nuclear.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I hate that the conversation is happening on these terms. I hate that we have a bunch of opinionated online "teams" on this issue.

Hey, you know what we need? All of it. Any sort of energy generation that lowers atmospheric emissions in any way we do need. The concept of "nuclear shills" shouldn't exist, the concept of "solar shills" or "hydrogen shills" or "fossil fuel shills" shouldn't exist. The entire conversation is a PR battle by energy corps to get people to buy into marketing so they can get governments to back popular choices so they can get expensive contracts for large infrastructure work.

I hate that we have online keyboard warriors overrepresenting the challenges of one of the contributors to lowering emissions while underrepresenting the challenges of others. Hey, do you think nighttime generation and storage is an issue? Maybe installation costs for domestic solar generation, the state of the grid or the uneven distribution of solar power yields on different territories? Because I do.

And I do think cost and build times for nuclear generators are a problem (which makes it confusing that some countries are dismantling plants that seem to be working safely and are within their expected lifespan, but I digress).

And I do think the impact of hydroelectric power in nearby areas is a problem.

And I do think the open questions for geothermal are a problem.

And I do think the issues with cost, storage and dirty generation of hydrogen are a problem.

And I do think we should be working on all of that. At once. This isn't kids arguing about which game console is better on the backyard, this is a massive existential issue, and would be even if we weren't dealing with a climate change ticking bomb. This report? It's bad news. Any report that tells us any of the ideas we have for weaning off fossil fuels is not working as well as we expected is bad news. Can we all get with that program?

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

All good points, and I’m all for pretty much any technological research, but

And I do think cost and build times for nuclear generators are a problem

Thorium is another form of fission generation that has not been commercialized yet. In the real world, maybe it will be better, or maybe it won’t. But fission generation already takes too long to build out, so why switch lanes to a different form of fission generation that also needs more time and money to be commercialized? Nuclear uranium fission generation had its growing pains over the years, as the technology found challenges to address and areas to improve, but thorium has not yet gotten far enough to run into those so there will be additional challenges requiring time, money, further development

If those were decades ago when the future was bright for fission technology, I’d be all over this. However the future is dark and cloudy for fission generation, nightfall may be approaching. The advantages of thorium are not enough to shine a new light, there’s not enough room for improvement to save fission generation, this is just an expensive detour.

[–] areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This is nonsense. Like someone else said we will need some kind of nuclear power for future space exploration. There are parts of the world that are dark for six months of the year, and plenty of places that don't get enough light for solar to be practical.

Most renewable sources are not consistent enough to be used by themselves, and battery storage isn't practical with current technology. Then there are the concerns with hydro power and biomass and how that affects the environment. I have even been told by leftists that biomass shouldn't be installed as it destroys too many native forests.

Of course the actual best solution is one we don't have the technology for yet: things like nuclear fusion or neutrino capture.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

For the record, I disagree with you both and this narrative is also part of the problem in my book. Screw the futurism and longermism of "we need nuclear power for space exploration". We're not talking about that. We're talking about mitigating runaway climate effects and filling the blanks of an alternate energy mix by using complementary tech.

Absolutely let's keep working on nuclear power. Absolutely let's keep working on battery storage, and potential energy storage and thermal storage and wind and geothermal and whatever else we can come up with. And absolutely let's abandon whatever doesn't work or is made obsolete, starting with no longer burning hydrocarbons as soon as we can stop.

There's this air of erudite dilettantism about this chatter that just pisses me off. People sitting by and idly projecting their sci-fi fantasies about colonizing planets or about a fully solar powered planet and feeling smart about it. Given the short-term, impending human cost of this issue, both for climate reasons and for energy scarcity reasons, that just feels gross at this point.

[–] areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What do you disagree with me? I was trying to back you up up here saying that yes we need nuclear in addition to all the other technologies. I am not saying that you shouldn't use solar, just that it isn't applicable everywhere on earth.

Screw the futurism and longermism of “we need nuclear power for space exploration”. We’re not talking about that.

You should be talking about that. After all climate change is also a future problem. Staying on a single planet isn't safe even if you eradicate climate change, war, disease, and just about everything else. There is pretty much nothing stopping a gamma ray burst or stray blackhole, or any number of other things from killing everyone on this planet. Like yeah climate change is a high priority, but it doesn't make all other issues go away.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 0 points 5 months ago

Look, I'm just trying to impress something very specific here and I can tell I'm not getting through.

I'm not here to call out people arguing for or against one or another type of energy generation. I'm complaining about the discourse about this being about long term hypotheticals and optimal solutions when we should be in emergency mode.

It's like we're in a burning building and people are having arguments about the cost per year of different types of fire extinguishers. But if I make this point about someone criticising nuclear power it comes across as me "siding" or "shilling" for nuclear power, same if I do it when someone argues against solar power.

But I'm neither. I'm arguing for practicality and immediate action. Because we need it now, not because I just finished reading the Dune books and have some really neat ideas about generation ships.

[–] hannes3120@feddit.de 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The problem is that "both" isn't a valid option unless a country has unlimited finances.

Otherwise you have to decide on what's the most feasible option and then renewables win big time

I sometimes feel as if the current push for atomic is from the fossil-lobby as they are aware that it either works and they get 10-20 more years to sell oil until the reactors are built - and even if it doesn't work out it still will slow down rollout of renewables

If you have 100 billion to spend on energy producing you have to choose if you want to go all-in with one source or split it up which would move the end of fossil fuels Back further

Not to mention having to buy the radioactive materials from dictatorships and having problems to cool down the reactors with rising temperatures and rivers running dry

I just don't see how atomic isn't a huge gamble that can backfire hard (and I'm not even talking about catastrophic events like Fukushima)

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Most countries have unlimited finances. They only have limited real resources like labor, concrete, copper, glass, etc. The fact that we still don't understand this and behave as if the metadata of the economy accurately describes reality puts artificial brakes on the solutions of many problems, climate being one of them.

[–] hannes3120@feddit.de 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The problem is that if a country treats money as unlimited and without a cost then inflation will mirror that and people in that country will lose their savings, their job will not pay for their bills anymore and so on

It's not as simple as "just spend more"...

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Inflation is a symptom of the lack of some real resource. There are many parts of the economies of many countries where there's unused production capacity which simply "turns more natural resources into more stuff" if more money enters that part of the economy, without producing inflation. It's not "just spend more", it's "spend as much as you can on things that you want done, which aren't limited by real resources."

I found Randall Wray's lectures on the topic to be eye-opening. If what I wrote sounds strange, and it might, I highly recommend watching some of them. There are a few recordings on YouTube.

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