Small Modular Reactors or SMRs sound like something that everyone would like to have. They seem to fulfill the promise of fifty-nine years ago that reactors would be small - almost the size of a toaster - and produce electricity that would be “too cheap to monitor”. Knowing that every industry likes to overplay its latest fantasy, what is this kind of gimmick?
The first thing to notice is the absence of the letter “N” for nuclear. These are nuclear reactors, they are not toaster-ovens. They are a long way from risk-free.
Small Modular Nuclear Reactors had been in the nuclear undercurrent since 2016 at least. The nuclear industry had widely advertised its nuclear Renaissance almost twenty years earlier. The Renaissance became more of a funeral. Three of the flagship reactors, Olkiluoto in Finland and Vogtle 3 & Vogtle 4 in the United States, failed to rise to the promise of “rapid, efficient and safe builds”. In fact, Olkiluoto, noisily advertised to be operational four years after construction started in 2005, might be turned on in 2022. The completion date for Vogtle 3 , estimated to now be more than 12 billion over budget, has been pushed back from 2021 to 2022.
Add to the difficulty of getting its Renaissance off the ground were the articles in the Economist and Blah blah which attacked the industry on economic grounds and got in a few other hits as well.
The industry has been desperate to regain access to taxpayers dollars. After bankruptcies of two major reactor-building companies, Westinghouse and Areva, they worked with business, media and lobbiests to create a business case for “modular” builds that would theoretically be such a good product that they would be marketed abroad. All they needed was starter funds. As the fantasy goes, these little toaster-ovens would be rolling off the assembly line to be sold to anyone who wanted to have their own nuclear reactor - mining companies, small Northern communities, for example.
The nuclear industry have been preparing today’s media releases for years. In XXXX, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission lobbied the federal government to eliminate environmental assessments for reactors that produced lass than 300 MW of electricity - or were co-located on existing nuclear power sites. Removing this important challenge to licensing gives the industry carte-Blanche to choose its model without regard to the location.
There have been at least $50,000,000 in research and development funds turned over to the industry for SMNR development. New Brunswick, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta have agreed to support this endeavour.
Think of the fantasy! No one who has lived in an isolated community would not want to pick something off the shelf, take home, turn it on and have unlimited electrical energy for decades. Ditto for mining company, even greater if it’s a uranium mining company because it can see the profits.
To add to the fantasy, advertising has called nuclear power and, by association, small modular reactors, “clean, green, safe and necessary” for a transition to a sustainable energy future.
But it doesn’t work that way.
Nuclear Power is not “clean”. All nuclear reactors release toxic emissions either intentionally or accidentally. The most frequent is that of tritium which must be regularly released. Tritium is radioactive hydrogen. The industry calls it “short-lived” at 12.3 years. A half-lifeof12.3yearsmeansthatitwilltake123years,morethanacenturytodisappeartoalmostzero.
All nuclear reactors create toxic radioactive waste - the “spent” fuel bundles, the reactor vessel, all the metallic components and ultimately the concrete structure becomes contaminated as nuclear waste. Only a very small amount of this can be “recycled” or “reprocessed”.
Nuclear Power is not “green”. At no stage is it green. Theoretically it could be green when operating - if the definition of “green” was limited to “emits no carbon dioxide while operating.
Nuclear power has a massive carbon dioxide foot print during mining, milling, fuel fabrication, reprocessing, enrichment, transportation, decommissioning and waste management. The energy demand for enrichment alone would power a city of 50,000 people.
Nuclear power production pollutes routinely and discharges toxic effluents all along the fuel chain. Northern Saskatchewan already has waste sites that have been abandoned without clean-up and decommissioning particularly in and around Uranium City. Declaring itself “Green” should be considered fraudulent.
Is nuclear power “safe”? Accident for accident, there are probably less on-the-job deaths in the industry than even in hydro dams but when an accident occurs, the area contaminated and the long-term effects of the radioactive fall-out can be devastating. The spent fuel rods are lethal within a few seconds exposure and must be held in a pool of water for up to ten years before the level of radioactivity decreases enough to be parked in concrete storage, dry casks.
It is difficult to reconcile the term “safe” with an industry that requires so many serious precautions with used or “spent” fuel. The question of safety during operation has been studied for over thirty years, the most thorough being the “KiKK study” from Germany. This remarkable study was designed to prove that there was no increase in leukaemia around nuclear power plants and did exactly the opposite.
Calling their new reactors “small” is somewhat disingenuous. “Small”, most people conclude, is about the size of someone’s kitchen when the term really applies only to the amount of electricity, not the physical size of the reactor. They could, with the containment building, exclusion zone, shielding, steam generator, and turbine, be as large as any medium-sized power plant.
Necessary? The idea touted is that solar and wind are intermittent so some form of energy is required to provide a “baseline”, a form of energy supply that chugs along constantly. In fact, with smart technology and integrated grids, the concept of baseline is out-dated. Nuclear cannot be readily powered up or down and lacks the resiliency that the future will demand. Between wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric and battery technology, electrical energy will not need the incredible expense and lack of resilience that comes with nuclear. Why then the hype? Why the federal and provincial eagerness to invest?
The nuclear industry has delivered poorly and inconsistently. Canadian taxpayers have invested a billion dollars and still counting into it with limited pay back. It is the biggest “welfare bum” in the world. The only things that see this kind of investment without significant returns are addictions.
This is not our first rodeo. Public health has had a similar battle and can be said cautiously to have won.
In the middle seventies when I was in medical college, one of our professors never overlooked an opportunity to rail against cigarette smoking. He had few supporters in his own institution. In fact, whenever he rose to speak, an audible sigh would envelope the room. Dr. John Owen was persistent even as he was ridiculed behind his back. He was a short man, a round head and an obvious comb-over. He had a hard sell - his surgical colleagues hastened to their lounge to pull back on their cigarettes between operations.
We had front row seats to their habits because the lounge, hanging blue with smoke, was the place to get free coffee.
Nationally and internationally he was not alone. In Canada, Dr. Andrew Pipe from Ottawa became a national voice for the anti-smoking campaign, a campaign that actually began in earnest in 1953 after a forceful New York Times article was published. The article linked lung cancer (and other lung diseases like emphysema and chronic obstructive lung disease) and heart disease to smoking.
The article also resulted in a push-back campaign from the tobacco industry. In December 1953, representatives of the “Big Five” of cigarettes met in New York with a marketing firm. To their surprise, they were advised to support research, create their own research board and publicly state their concern about the health of their smokers.
In the summer of 1972, I was unwittingly the recipient of some of that research money. I was hired by a professor to inject nicotine into fertilized eggs. He concluded that nicotine caused growth retardation. He published his research. He was happy because he was able to publish, a requirement of his professorship. He would also be able to apply for more funds to inject pregnant mice. The tobacco company was happy because they had funded research although chickens may have nothing to do with humans and no one really cares about the smoking habits of chickens.
The tobacco industry fought back with advertising tools as well. Their new-found concern about health resulted in filter-cigarettes in the late 1960’s. They made use of the woman’s movement by selling “Virginia Slims” as a “life-style choice”. Although mentholated cigarettes had been sold for decades, their new marketed niche was “easy on the throat”. The final stage before they were kicked out of public dining places and pubs was the “low-tar” or “light” cigarette.
The Small Modular Nuclear Reactor is the “light” cigarette of the nuclear industry.
Labels: nuclear power, nuclear waste, Saskatchewan, SMNRs, SMRs