Five Things the “Nuclear Bros” Don’t Want You to Know About Small Modular Reactors

blog.ucsusa.org Five Things the “Nuclear Bros” Don’t Want You to Know About Small Modular Reactors

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?]

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Nuclear power is simply a smokescreen. It's proponents ultimately just want fossil fuel dependency to last as long as possible by promising silver bullet solutions that will never become reality, instead of focusing on solutions that exist and are effective today.
- We sure can't slip anything by you, can we? Curses...
  
  Basically, Warl0k3 thinks Diplomjodler's argumentation is a conspiracy theory. In his comment, he ironically takes the position of a nuclear bro who finds out that his devious plan was discovered.
  
  This exactly!
  (But jeeze, way to concisely summarize my point without a three-paragraph-long comment. Showoff.)
  
  Well, thanks.
  Otoh, I withheld judgement on your opinion for a reason: I can think of at least one example of a German pro-nuclear pro-coal anti-renewables shill who has rather recently turned into a pro-nuclear anti-climate-change shill.
  [Addendum: In fact, in Germany, associations like Nuclearia (pro-nuclear), Eike (anti-renewables), Vernunftkraft (anti-wind power) are all linked, including in their financing through the Heartland Institute.]
  I understand that the situation might be a little different in other countries, but the whole worldwide civil nuclear field was born out of the military-industrial complex and is still very connected in governments, much more so than solar/wind energy companies are.
  
  I'm of the opinion that a technology should be evaluated on it's own merits, otherwise people start to point out that the field of modern engineering as a whole is the product of the military industrial complex and it gets all reddit-comment-thread-y. I'm not about to argue that there's no astroturfing or outright propaganda in the energy industry (because I don't like looking like a fool or losing arguments because I'm clearly wrong...) though. I wholly agree that it's a hugely manipulated issue, and the mountains of evidence supporting that idea are so large that they threaten to bury you and I and the rest of this comment thread in an avalanche of carefully documented conspiracy and related rat bastardry.
  However, I do take issue with painting all proponents of a particular thing as being some kind of fake 'smoke screen'. While I'm sure some percentage of commenters are serving any number of nefarious agendas, they can take their attempt to de-legitimize an entire opposing perspective by painting them all as "shills" and kindly fuck right off. That's trump-supporter shit, and furthers absolutely nothing except to divide voters on an incredibly important topic. That style of wedge-driving is the kind of thing you find in The Foundations of Geopolitics and is what the 'smokescreen' people actually do use to drive potential allies to infighting instead of coordinating an effective campaign for energy reform.
  (Not that I think the above poster actually is some nefarious shill, but it's a somewhat amusing juxtaposition)
  
  It's a satirical comment made to highlight using mild terms that the comment in question is highly suspect. The implication is that I myself am a member of the 'smokescreen', which is an implied but nonspecific organized group of people engaging with this topic in bad faith so as to shift the narrative in some unfair way, and that I am confessing that the above poster has figured out our secret motivations and because of that, foiled our evil scheme.
  This is, of course, an absurd assertion on my part. I'm not a member of the shadow government. There is no shadow government. The regular government is plenty evil enough as-is. Trust me on that, I'm a member of it.
  To dismiss an extremely effective and proven technology like that is fine, if you provide any evidence to support your position. But that comment is, to put it politely, "horseshit". To call out just one aspect that irked me, it embodies the extremely tired trope of making a claim while not demonstrating any evidence that said claim is true, then asserting their claim as an obvious and correct conclusion. The issue in specific is that they failed in any way to establish how advocating for an alternative source of power would somehow empower the petrochemical lobby.
- Why not use one of the safest and cleanest ways of producing power?
  The wind doesn’t blow all the time, neither does the sun shine all the time, and not everyone is around thermal or wave sources.
  Battery tech is coming along, and we are building more gravity batteries, but nuclear can close right in and replace most fossil fuel plants.
  
  New reactors are expensive. New reactors are late. New reactors can basically only be built by nation states but not privately. Nuclear is not insurable. Nuclear produces waste with excessive half-life. Nuclear steals resources and mindshare from other options. Nuclear energy output can't be moderated well (basically for economic reasons, it runs full steam all the time and for safety reasons, you can only moderate output a little), so it does not effectively augment wind and solar, rather leading to wind/solar having to be turned off.
  Wind and solar meanwhile can be built cheaply, quickly, privately, locally, site sizes easily scale between kW or GW of output and they only produce a little regular waste at the end of their life. (Okay, granted, Neodymium mining does produce some nuclear waste too — but definitely nowhere what uranium mining produces.)
  Wind+solar+hydro+better national/continental grids+batteries+flexible demand is a much better combination.
  
  You’re right that is a great end game
  
  I was very pro nuclear but in the past few years, solar+batteries have become cheaper than nuclear. We can go 100% solar + batteries for less than building nuclear and save the uranium for important things like spaceflight.
  
  It's not just the financial cost though. Going solar+batteries requires a significant increase in lithium production which has all kinds of environmental downsides. New battery tech is in the world to use just sodium and such but we're nowhere near large scale for that yet. Nuclear (alongside other technology and reducing our power usage) could bridge the gap to the new tech.
  Either way, good luck getting anyone in charge to agree on anything, let alone that hurts their coal and gas profits.
  
  Lithium production has dramatically less environmental impact than coal mining.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberfan_disaster
  Sodium just went large scale grid installed:
  https://cnevpost.com/2024/05/13/china-1st-large-sodium-battery-energy-storage-station-operation/
  But for grid, even ancient nickel iron batteries are fine. Lithium is only needed for mobile device (car/bike/laptop/phone).
- This is why it's always the conservative parties advocating for it, as they are in bed with the fossil fuel industry.
  
  Have you got anything to back that up with? Because the problems with nuclear power have been almost exclusively caused by conservative governments. The ludicrous licensure requirements are the largest factor in driving the cost of nuclear facilities so far out of the realm of feasibility, and those have been imposed almost exclusively by conservative governments (~~with a special shoutout to Al Gore~~ Okay that's unfair, his legislation on nuclear power was largely based on anti-corruption ideals and not the ideals of the anti-nuclear movement)
  
  See the Australian conservative opposition (Liberal and National parties), for example. They are bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry, have no actual plan to roll out nuclear, but are using it as a delay tactic. See also how conservative parties are attacking renewables but not directly talking about coal (for the most part) because they know that the general public won't accept it anymore. Conveniently, attacking renewables and talking up nuclear is an easy way to keep coal around for a little longer.
  Your points are more historical, I'm talking more about the last few years or so, the period where most conservatives now won't admit to being climate change deniers, but incidentally have positions that worsen climate change.
  
  It's more your characterization that only conservatives are advocating for nuclear (and by extension that nuclear advocacy is only to serve the interests of fossil fuel companies) that I'm taking issue with, since it's overly reductive, regressive, an opinion which can be trivially shown to be incorrect and is a direct insult to me, personally. You're coming across like an asshole that spouts blatant conspiracy theories when I seriously doubt you'd give that impression IRL.
  
  If Bill Gates likes it, then im out.
  Ill stick with renewables like a fine modern citizen.

58 comments