The Forgotten History of Small Nuclear Reactors
Forgotten History of Small Nuclear Reactors (2015)
Small modular reactors (SMRs) are often touted as the key to reviving nuclear power, promising lower costs and easier construction. But history shows these claims are nothing new. From the U.S. Air Force's failed billion-dollar bomber reactor to the Army's problematic Antarctic plant, small reactors have a long track record of high costs and technical troubles. This article digs into that past, revealing why SMRs may not be the silver bullet the industry hopes for.
As the history makes clear, small nuclear reactors would be neither as cheap nor as easy to build and operate as their modern proponents are claiming they would be.
- leonidasrup
The author of the article "M. V. Ramana" is long-time opponent of nuclear energy , mostly because of nuclear weapon proliferation concerns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._V._Ramana
See for example:
"Bombing Bombay? Effects of Nuclear Weapons and a Case Study of a Hypothetical Explosion", 1999 International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW)
https://www.ippnw.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Bombing-Bom...
"Costing plutonium: economics of reprocessing in India", M.V. Ramana, J.Y. Suchitra, 2007
https://www.geocities.ws/m_v_ramana/nucleararticles/IJGEI_Vo...
"India, Pakistan and the Bomb", Scientific American, 2001
- Honali
What I find interesting is how little the sales pitch seems to have changed. "Yes, smaller reactors lose economies of scale, but we'll make it up through factory production, standardization and repetition" apparently sounded plausible in the 1950s too
- jl6
Feels like there is a "too small" range where fixed costs make a reactor design uneconomic, and perhaps a "too big" range where they cost so much that they are rare strategic investments without the benefit of a production line.
Is there a happy medium? Some of the modern SMR proposals aren't all that small. There's a 470MW Rolls Royce unit, for example.
- bruce511
Look, I prefer nuclear over fossil fuel every day of the week. It's the great hope of the non-carbon electricity sources.
In practice it is expensive to build, expensive to run, and really expensive to clean up. And that's before we add the risk of meltdowns.
Economically it makes no sense, not at the returns level, not at the timescale level, and certainly not at the political level. (If a US president can shutter an offshore wind farm unilaterally, imagine the risk to a nuclear plant that is 50% complete, and not yet fueled.)
There's a reason they're mostly run by govts. Govts are the only providers who don't have a money motive.
Personally I think research into storage, coupled with "wider" grids geographically, make solar and wind far more financially attractive.
Private capital has no appetite for nuclear, and few govts are left with both financial ability, and political will, for 30 year projects.
And if you think fission is expensive, wait till you find out what fusion-on-earth costs...
- riffraff
Seems there's no mention of Russia in the article, but they seem to have a rich tradition of small reactors[0].
My understanding is there's still ongoing research/commercialization work but the fabled "many and cheap" production state hasn't been reached there either
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_small_nuclear_...