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Five Things the “Nuclear Bros” Don’t Want You to Know About Small Modular Reactors (blog.ucsusa.org)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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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?]

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[–] 19 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (11 children)

The economic advantage of SMRs is that when you make reactors in a location, the 1st is always more expensive than any following reactors. Just a reality of construction, permits, designs, etc. So if you have 4 reactors in one place, that's pretty nice. They also have the advantage of being able to turn one off for maintenance and then having 2, 3, 4 other reactors in the same vicinity that can pick up the slack for the duration.

As for waste, yeah it's the same problem. But it's important to note that the volume of material is not that big. The entire volume produced by all us nuke energy ever takes up a football field stacked 10 yards high. All told, that's a smaller problem than I ever thought.

I'm not a big nuclear advocate, I'm pretty mid on it. This is where I got all of the above information, an interview with the head of the US DOE loan program https://www.volts.wtf/p/nuclear-perhaps?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    The nice thing about nuclear waste is that it kind of just sorts itself out too. I half suspect not knowing what to do with it and kicking the can down the road is sort of the whole point. Nominally it's pretty easy to deal with nuclear waste, you seal it up somewhere and leave it to not be radioactive any more. The problem is it takes a long time, and we don't really know how to communicate to anyone 1000 years in the future "there's nuclear waste here, stay the fuck away". Making sure it's an active topic for discussion kind of keeps it at the forefront and means it's not forgotten about.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    I also learned in that interview that after a relatively short period, the aggressive decay is over and you're left with a barrel of waste that isn't actually shooting off radiation very often.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (4 children)

    Except that is hardly unique to nuclear waste. A wide variety of industrial processes produce high grade chemical waste, especially electronics like computers, solar panels, and inverters. This is just as deadly as any nuclear waste, and if stumbled upon will kill just as quickly in a hundred years, a thousand years, million years, or a billion years.

    There is however a well established solution to this problem, and that is making sure the government knows what and where it is as well as that someone it monitoring and securing the site. The actual chemical makeup of the stuff that kills you doesn’t actually matter all that much compared to makeing sure it stays where it’s supposed to be.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    You uh... want to give a single example of solar panel manufacturing waste that is as deadly as nuclear waste in a thousand years?

    Humanity has never built anything that has intentionally lasted 10,000 years, much less 250,000.

    It's the height of arrogance to think your society will last a thousand times longer than any in the history of the world.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Arsenic, mercury, gallium, tellurium, and cadmium are all heavy metal waste products produced in quantity for semiconductor manufacturing, are commonly landfilled, pose extreme risk to human health if they ever managed to leach out of the landfill and into a aquifer, and being heavy metals have no non-nuclear method of decay. Given the primary risk of high grade nuclear is also that it is made up of toxic hevey metals that might be dangerous if lost to the local aquifer, it seems fair to compare the two.

    Semiconductor manufacturing also makes heavy use of PFAS materials, which while less directly dangerous to human health still do end up measurably entering and contamating the environment through plant wastewater streams. Once in the environment, these also tend to last for between six hundred to a thousand years before being broken down or sequestered.

    I don’t think my society will last a hundreds of thousands of years, but i’m pretty sure a society of people in the area will, and if not, then it isn’t a problem because evidently there is evidently no one around to harm. Structures like landfill barriers are not likely to last that long on their own, and as such it falls on people to renew and maintain them for as long as there are people around anyway. Hence why it is imperative that the local government knows about and monitors the site.

    All of this is true regardless of which specific heavy metal or acid is stored at the site, though given the small quantity of nuclear waste makes up of similarly harmful industrial wastes it is going to be easier to manage on that face alone.

    Obviously humanity hasn’t made anything that lasted tens of thousands of years, we weren’t building anything significant tens of thousands of years ago. We do however have plenty of local governments and buildings that have lasted thousands of years, and which are probably not going anywhere anytime soon.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

    Thank you for sharing this link. It was very interesting listening to someone from within the US that is head of an office now and started from Shell Solar.

    There is a reasoning that I didn't get. Maybe I misunderstood something or I lack some information/knowledge. Anyways, here it is:

    At 1:02 they talks about nuclear waste saying that all the nuclear waste produced in the US by the nuclear power plants is like a football field that is 10 yards tall and then he talks about why this waste is not concerning.

    Later at 1:07 He mentions that the US is not reprocesing the uranium fuel rods, in which 95% of the energy is still there, and that the US should do reprocessing like other countries do.

    Doesn't that mean that these unprocessed rods in the US that are in the "football field of nuclear waste" are therefore a concern?

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    So energy remaining and radioactivity are separate. The isotope that it becomes has a decently long half life, but it might only be a few protons or neutrons away from something really radioactive.

    I do believe that the fuel rods count towards that pile of waste. I think the US has laws or rules that make it hard or impossible to recycle these back into the good stuff, but it's very doable. France does it to a high degree.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Thank you for taking the time to reply. I think I kinda understand what you say but I have more reading to do. Currently I'm on some relevant wiki pages trying to get a better understanding [Spent nuclear fuel, Radioactive waste, Long-lived fission product].

    In case you (or anyone) have any other links to suggest, please do not hesitate.

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