Nuclear powerSome see small modular reactors as offering a better future for the nuclear industry
A full-size reactor costs up to $8 billion, takes years to build, and decades to achieve a return on investment. Some experts say the future of the nuclear industry should be based on small underground reactors, which are cheaper and quicker to build. Other experts say that smaller reactors mean needing many more of them to produce the same amount of power as traditional reactors, and having more reactors means increasing security concerns.
William Magwood, the incoming director of the Paris-based Nuclear Energy Agency, recently voiced his support for small underground nuclear power plants, arguing that they could be cheaper to build than traditional plants, possibly making them the future of nuclear energy. The modular plants, about the size of a few semi-trailers, would have factory-built parts which could be transported by train or truck, allowing developers to assemble them anywhere. KEYC-TV News 12 reports that the United States expects the first licensing applications to build a small modular nuclear reactor to be submitted later this year.
The Department of Energy has spent about $450 million in an effort to convince energy companies that small underground nuclear plants could be profitable, but companies are discouraged by lack of funding and regulatory questions. Magwood noted that it would take at least six years before a small reactor could be built. “Anything with nuclear takes a while, and that’s appropriate when you’re talking about a technology that has to be built correctly,” Magwood said. “We haven’t built one, so we don’t know whether they’re going to be financially successful.”
The March 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi plant disaster caused many countries including Italy, Malaysia, and the Philippines to scale back their plans for new nuclear reactors. Germany announced that it would phase out nuclear power by 2022.
Nevertheless, Microsoft founder Bill Gates expects small nuclear reactors to provide affordable electricity to developing countries. According to Gates, a major investor in the reactor development firm TerraPower, “if you could make nuclear really, really safe, and deal with the economics, deal with waste, then it becomes the nirvana you want: a cheaper solution with very little CO2 emissions.” TerraPower works with large-scale reactors that make and consume their own fuel, but it is also developing steel alloys that could be used for small modular reactors.
University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute physicist Robert Rosner cautions against seeing small nuclear reactors as a solution for developing countries, due to the safety risks. “The people that operate them have to know what they’re doing and they have to mean it. They can’t be complacent about safety and security,” Rosner said. Rosner acknowledged that the technology for small reactors is present in U.S. nuclear submarines.
KEYC-TV notes that a full-size reactor costs up to $8 billion, takes years to build, and decades to achieve a return on investment, but it can produce enough to power more than 700,000 homes, more than ten times the output of a small modular nuclear reactor.
France relies on its fifty-eight full-sized nuclear reactors to produce 75 percent of its energy needs, and has no current plans to build small modular reactors. The concept of having small reactors spread throughout a country raises security concerns. “A similar (Fukushima) accident in Europe would involve several countries, and we are currently in a situation where our decision-making criteria are not the same, in terms of sheltering the population, evacuating, distributing iodine pills,” said Pierre-Franck Chevet, president of France’s Nuclear Safety Authority.
Acknowledging the security concerns and the economics of small modular nuclear reactors, Magwood noted that the countries most able to invest in small reactors have less incentive to do so. France and the United States may extend the life of their aging plants to sixty or eighty years. “The fact that they are old doesn’t necessarily mean that they are not safe,” Magwood said.
