"SMALL MODULAR REACTORS” NO PANACEA FOR WHAT AILS NUCLEAR POWER

[kristopher]

Press release from IEER/PSR

IEER/PSR: “SMALL MODULAR REACTORS” NO PANACEA FOR WHAT AILS NUCLEAR POWER

Fact Sheet Explores Cost, Safety, and Waste Issues Glossed Over by Industry

WASHINGTON, D.C. – September 29, 2010 – The same industry that promised that nuclear power
would be “too cheap to meter” is now touting another supposed cure-all for America’s power
needs: the small modular reactor (SMR). The only problem is that SMRs are not only unlikely
live up to the hype, but may well aggravate cost, safety, and environmental problems, according
to a new fact sheet prepared by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER)
and Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR).

Titled Small Modular Reactors: No Solution for the Cost, Safety, and Waste Problems of
Nuclear Power, the new IEER/PSR presentation is available online at
http://www.ieer.org/fctsheet/small-modular-reactors2010.pdf.

The small modular reactor is being pitched by the nuclear power industry as a sort of
production-line auto alternative to hand-crafted sports car, with supposed cost savings from the
“mass manufacturing” of modestly sized reactors that could be scattered across the United
States on a relatively quick basis.

The facts about SMRs are far less rosy. As the IEER/PSR document notes: “Some proponents
of nuclear power are advocating for the development of small modular reactors as the solution
to the problems facing large reactors, particularly soaring costs, safety, and radioactive waste.
Unfortunately, small-scale reactors can’t solve these problems, and would likely exacerbate
them.”

Co-author Arjun Makhijani, the president of IEER, holds a Ph.D. in engineering (specialization:
nuclear fusion) from the University of California at Berkeley. He said: “Amidst the evaporating
hopes for a nuclear renaissance, nuclear power proponents are pinning their hopes on small
modular reactors without thinking carefully about the new problems they will create such as
inspecting production lines in China, procedures for recalls, or the complications and costs of a
variety of new forms of nuclear waste.”

The supposed cost benefits of SMRs are also subject to debate. The costs of mass
manufacturing would be offset at least in part by loss of economies of scale. Further, modular
construction will impose much higher costs on the first units, increasing the uncertainty and risk
of initiating nuclear power projects. As IEER/PSR researchers note: “The cost picture for
sodium-cooled reactors is also rather grim. They have typically been much more expensive to
build than light water reactors, which are currently estimated to cost between $6,000 and
$10,000 per kilowatt in the US. The costs of the last three large breeder reactors have varied
wildly. In 2008 dollars, the cost of the Japanese Monju reactor (the most recent) was $27,600
per kilowatt (electrical); French Superphénix (start up in 1985) was $6,300; and the Fast Flux
Test Facility (startup in 1980) at Hanford was $13,800. This gives an average cost per kilowatt
in 2008 dollars of about $16,000, without taking into account the fact that cost escalation for
nuclear reactors has been much faster than inflation ... Spent fuel management for SMRs would
be more complex, and therefore more expensive, because the waste would be located at many
more sites.”

The IEER/PSR fact sheet also raises significant safety-related concerns. Eliminating secondary
containment would decrease costs but raise safety issues, while including that containment
would raise costs. As regards sodium-cooled reactors they note: “The world’s first nuclear
reactor to generate electricity, the EBR I in Idaho, was a sodium-potassium-cooled reactor that
suffered a partial meltdown. EBR II, which was sodium-cooled reactor, operated reasonably
well, but the first US commercial prototype, Fermi I in Michigan had a meltdown of two fuel
assemblies and, after four years of repair, a sodium explosion. The most recent commercial
prototype, Monju in Japan, had a sodium fire 18 months after its commissioning in 1994, which
resulted in it being shut down for over 14 years. The French Superphénix, the largest sodium-
cooled reactor ever built, was designed to demonstrate commercialization. Instead, it operated
at an average of less than 7 percent capacity factor over 14 years before being permanently
shut.”

The Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) exemplifies the types of problems that SMR
technology has encountered in the past two decades. The factsheet concludes that “Despite 50
years of research by many countries, including the United States, the theoretical promise of the
PBMR has not come to fruition. The technical problems encountered early on have yet to be
resolved, or apparently, even fully understood. PMBR proponents in the US have long pointed
to the South African program as a model for the US. Ironically, the US Department of Energy is
once again pursuing this design at the very moment that the South African government has
pulled the plug on the program due to escalating costs and problems.”

And what about SMRs as some kind of “silver bullet” for averting global warming?

The IEER/PSR fact sheet points out: “Efficiency and most renewable technologies are already
cheaper than new large reactors. The long time — a decade or more — that it will take to certify
SMRs will do little or nothing to help with the global warming problem and will actually
complicate current efforts underway. For example, the current schedule for commercializing the
above-ground sodium cooled reactor in Japan extends to 2050, making it irrelevant to
addressing the climate problem. Relying on assurances that SMRs will be cheap is contrary to
the experience about economies of scale and is likely to waste time and money, while creating
new safety and proliferation risks, as well as new waste disposal problems.”

CONTACT: Leslie Anderson, [phone] or [e-mail].

The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research provides policy-makers, journalists, and
the public with understandable and accurate scientific and technical information on energy and
environmental issues. IEER’s aim is to bring scientific excellence to public policy issues in order
to promote the democratization of science and a safer, healthier environment.

The Physicians for Social Responsibility Safe Energy program focuses on protecting public
health, taxpayer dollars, and national security by preventing the construction of expensive, dirty,
and dangerous new nuclear reactors. More than 60 years since the first civilian nuclear reactor
was turned on, a mature industry is still dependent on government subsidies and economically
unsound, mired in unresolved safety issues, and a threat to public health.

[joshcryer]

1. They neglect LFTR / MSR completely here.

There's an inconsequential blurb to their ineffective paper entitled "Thorium Fuel: No Panacea for Nuclear Power" but as yet they've yet to comprehensively explain their issues with LFTR.

[kristopher]

2. Translating Joshspeak: "I can't figure out a way to perform character assassination on this guy..."

"...but give me a while, I'm trying".

Back from LV already?

[joshcryer]

3. What's LV? And no, I pretty much agree with the authors on reactor technology.

It's just that they gloss over reactor technology that is actually good. I look forward to what they have to say about TWR. I expect you to post their article when they write it.

[kristopher]

5. They don't "gloss over" good nuclear technologies.

They point out the shell game the nuclear industry plays by pretending to *have* good technologies.

It is like whack-a-mole or a shell game; the discussion turns to problem A of the many associated with nuclear and they trot out a technology Z that will solve it. But then you have to point out that though that particular tech solves that particular problem, it makes problems B, C, and D worse. They then pick D from the list and start extolling the virtues of tech X and telling you how X is *the* answer to that minor little thing that you mentioned...

And so it goes ad infinitum....

That is how you end up with a series of articles on these "this is the silver bullet" technologies that all need to include "NO PANACEA" in the title.

[madokie]

6. There is no good nuclear technology

for producing our electrical energy as you point out. I've been watching this game of whack-a-mole for damn near 60 years now and it hasn't changed one bit, only the players change the message stays the same.

leopards don't change spots.

What we need to do is get our asses in gear on alternates instead of wasting precious time and money on this nuclear hog that will never pan out.

[kristopher]

9. IT makes no sense to me that someone would trust ANY INDUSTRY like nuclear supporters...

...trust the nuclear industry. With one breath they will rail against fossil fuel industry generated claims that are obvious BS and with the next they are cheering the latest nuclear industry generated claims that are also obvious BS.

Both industries are a solid part of the entrenched energy establishment - nuclear isn't an "outsider". Both fossil fuel generation and nuclear generation allow for centralized control by an economic elite that wants to continue business as usual. They will defend coal as long as they can because it is more profitable, but they will take nuclear over renewables because renewables break their stranglehold and makes those now controlling the energy supplies into little more than bit players 50 years from now.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=264407&mesg_id=264407

[joshcryer]

26. I don't trust the "nuclear industry," because I find the best nuclear technologies against it.

Try harder.

[Name removed]

38. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[joshcryer]

29. Good nuclear technologies remove external reprocessing from the equation.

Good nuclear technologies have passive safety systems.

Good nuclear technologies reduce nuclear proliferation risk (not eradicate it, because that's impossible).

Good nuclear technologies run against the grain of the nuclear industry and aren't profitable from a fuel processing standpoint.

Good nuclear technologies reduce radioactive waste by orders of magnitude.

[joshcryer]

25. Good nuclear technologies are unconventional anti-industry technologies, and you know it.

So your double sided response falls flat. Indeed, one of the biggest arguments *against* technologies like LFTR, which you have *personally* used is that they use non-conventional nuclear fuel. Nuclear fuel processing being the most profitable aspect of nuclear technology.

TWR and LFTR are *not* "nuclear industry" technologies because they change how things are done dramatically.

[joshcryer]

27. And yes, they do gloss over LFTR with the weakest "fact check" I've ever seen.

I really do look forward with what they say about TWR.

[joshcryer]

28. What's LV? Really, I want to know.

I expect it's some childish insult by our favorite scare monger.

[billlll]

4. operator error.... disaster at nuke-- not so at solar

Or wind

Windmills don't leak carcinogens after some big human error

"All uranium back in the ground"

Is a superb motto.

[GliderGuider]

7. No.

Not at a properly designed nuke, like all the ones being installed today.

[madokie]

10. Do you really believe that?

properly designed nuclear, like all the ones being installed today. Hell that is words that was used 50 years ago and we've had two near misses since then that we know of and no telling how many that we don't know of. We can do better and nuclear is only getting in the way not helping at all against gw. When taken in context of from concept to grave nuclear barely breaks even co2 wise, barely. So how is it even considered?

[GliderGuider]

11. Yes, I do.

I think nuclear is utterly safe when compared to a lot of generally accepted human activities, and I don't think that operator error typically results in "disaster" in a modern plant design.

I totally disagree with the idea that it's "not helping at all against GW". Here's my thinking:

• The energy that nuclear power has produced in the last 50 years would have had to come from somewhere if it hadn't been produced by nukes.
  
• The most likely candidate for a replacement energy source would have been coal.
  
• Coal is responsible for a million or more premature deaths world-wide every year.
  
• A reasonable figure to put on the death rate from coal is about 100 per TWh.
  
• Nuclear power has generated about 67,000 TWh of electricity since 1965.

Thus I conclude that perhaps 6.5 million deaths that would otherwise have occurred from coal burning since 1965 have been avoided through the use of nuclear power.

Unless you can show me that nuclear power has caused more than 6.5 million deaths in the last 45 years, I'd say this is a net win for the human race.

[kristopher]

12. That is a red herring and you are again misusing statistics

You can make the same argument *for* coal in relation to statistically avoided deaths from causes related to lack of affordable energy.

The discussion is about selecting an energy source moving forward - and nuclear power is as bad as coal in the long term. We are perfectly capable of replacing coal with renewable sources and we can do it far faster than with nuclear.

As to your conclusion regarding 6.5 avoided deaths, you have not proven that nuclear has actually reduced the IMPACT of coal to an extent that has saved even one life; much less 6.5 million.

Your logic is like looking at an instance where 1000 pounds of cyanide in a city water supply killed 3,000,000 people; then saying that if we had replaced 20 pounds of the cyanide with arsenic (nuclear generates only 2% of world energy consumed), it would have saved 60,000 people.

Pure hokum.

[XemaSab]

13. I'll bet you a thousand dollars ($1000)

that in 5 years California will not be producing 5,000 gwh a year from solar, or one sixth the amount produced by hydro or nuclear.

http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/electricity_generation.html

[kristopher]

14. And on a related note did you have fish for dinner last night?

Yeah I know that has nothing to do with the conversation, but neither does your "bet".

[XemaSab]

15. Nah, I had grapes, cheese, crackers, and half an avocado

:9

What did you have?

[kristopher]

33. Well, let's see...

Feta cheese, jalapeno and onion quessadilla and a Greek salad with (more) feta and Calamata olives.

Yummy.

[XemaSab]

34. We have finally found agreement

That sounds hella yummy. :)

[kristopher]

16. Beuhler?

[GliderGuider]

17. Careful, you'll throw your back out doing that.

Energy is essential to modern civilization. The argument that nuclear power has directly displaced coal in electrical generation is a pretty strong one. Given that there is still plenty of coal around, if we hadn't had nuclear power it would have been trivial to build the additional coal capacity instead.

My comment was directed at madokie's contention that nuclear power isn't helping.

Nuclear power generated 13.4% of the world's electricity in 2009, not 2%. In 2009 alone, nuclear power helped avoid over a quarter of a million deaths that would have occurred if we'd gotten our power from coal instead.

Regarding nuclear power's influence on GW, a 2002 University of Wisconsin study entitled "Life Cycle Assessment of Electricity Generation Systems and Applications for Climate Change Policy Analysis" (PDF) concluded that nuclear power has a life cycle CO2 emission profile of 17 tonnes CO2e per GWh, while wind clocked in at 14, and solar PV in that study was more than double at 39 tCO2/GWh. In comparison, coal has an emission profile of around 1,000 tCO2/GWh.

What to do going forward is a different argument. The fact that nuclear power has avoided deaths and CO2 production over the last 45 years is pretty incontrovertible.

[kristopher]

18. Fail.

The original post in the subthread said nuclear wasn't safe, you said the "the ones being installed today" were safe.
Madokie said "We can do better and nuclear is only getting in the way not helping at all against gw. When taken in context of from concept to grave nuclear barely breaks even co2 wise, barely", to which you responded,

...I totally disagree with the idea that it's "not helping at all against GW". Here's my thinking:

* The energy that nuclear power has produced in the last 50 years would have had to come from somewhere if it hadn't been produced by nukes.
* The most likely candidate for a replacement energy source would have been coal.
* Coal is responsible for a million or more premature deaths world-wide every year.
* A reasonable figure to put on the death rate from coal is about 100 per TWh.
* Nuclear power has generated about 67,000 TWh of electricity since 1965.

Thus I conclude that perhaps 6.5 million deaths that would otherwise have occurred from coal burning since 1965 have been avoided through the use of nuclear power.

Unless you can show me that nuclear power has caused more than 6.5 million deaths in the last 45 years, I'd say this is a net win for the human race.

And I responded

That is a red herring and you are again misusing statistics
You can make the same argument *for* coal in relation to statistically avoided deaths from causes related to lack of affordable energy.
The discussion is about selecting an energy source moving forward - and nuclear power is as bad as coal in the long term. We are perfectly capable of replacing coal with renewable sources and we can do it far faster than with nuclear.
As to your conclusion regarding 6.5 avoided deaths, you have not proven that nuclear has actually reduced the IMPACT of coal to an extent that has saved even one life; much less 6.5 million.
Your logic is like looking at an instance where 1000 pounds of cyanide in a city water supply killed 3,000,000 people; then saying that if we had replaced 20 pounds of the cyanide with arsenic (nuclear generates only 2% of world energy consumed), it would have saved 60,000 people.

The thread is about a "new" this-one-gets-nuclear-right claim that is being pushed by the nuclear power industry.

In light of all of that, your claim that you were not intending to comment on what we do going forward is obviously not in accord with what happened. What you *did* do was attempt to make an argument based of a false presentation of the epidemiology of coal-related mortality.

Two points related to the facts you dispute - in case I wasn't clear:
nuclear provides about 2% of the global energy reaching the end user and the fuel input represents about 6% of the total energy input into the energy production system. If you say that production of electricity by nuclear has declined to 13.4% of global electricity I'll accept that; but my 2% number is accurate and represents the number most relevant to judging nuclear against renewables since renewables largely do not have the massive energy losses of thermal generation.

The second point is the carbon emissions of nuclear. While the number you cite is in line with most data out there, it is not a well established figure as it is based completely on INDUSTRY COLLECTED DATA.

Storm van Leeuwen is a very competent independent researcher* that has published a troubling accounting of the carbon emissions from nuclear. His work has been criticized by the nuclear industry for some legitimate causes. However, the conclusion drawn by the nuclear industry from their ability to level some sort of criticisms was that the work itself was invalid. That conclusion is not supported by the evidence they presented.

What van leeuwan found was that CO2 emissions from nuclear are EXTREMELY sensitive to the grade of ore being recovered and that a very slight drop in the quality of the ore (such as would result from a significant increase in demand) pushed nuclear's CO2 emissions up to about the same level as natural gas.

I was particularly appalled by the anecdotal "proof" that the World Nuclear Association tried to foist on the public where they used record keeping from an actual mining site as proof that the entire paper was worthless. There is little doubt that since the fundamental paper is based on well established chemistry it is is essentially valid, and that the more likely explanation for the discrepancy between the anecdotal "proof" they attempt to use and the predictions embodied in the paper is that the record keeping regarding the precise quality of the ore at the site chosen is not accurate.


http://www.stormsmith.nl/

The Integrated Sustainability Analysis (ISA)of The University of Sydney reviewed the report*
of Storm van Leeuwen and Smith 2005, upon request of the government of Australia.
The numerical conclusions are very close to our results, though the ISA authors disagree
with us on one point, which is the methodology to estimate the energy requirements of construction
and dismantling. We still think our methodology is sound, it is validated extensively in the
1980s by a number of well-known experts. ISA does not contradict our main conclusions
concerning uranium. Even using the lower figures of the energy requirements of construction
and dismantling, as proposed by ISA, the conclusions with regard to the scenarios of
uranium depletion, CO2emission rise and net energy decline by the years remain unaffected.
For an evaluation see http://www.lbst.de/publications/studies__e/2006/EWG-paper_1-06_Uranium-Resources-Nuclear-Energy_03DEC2006.pdf

From CIVIL NUCLEAR POWER, SECURITY AND GLOBAL WARMINGSECURE ENERGY?
by the Oxford Research Group
http://www.oxfordresearchgoup.org.uk


Why do you trust the nuclear INDUSTRY?

[XemaSab]

19. You're using the word "industry" like it's a bad word

Who do you think made your computer, your car, your bike, your house, and everything in your house?

[kristopher]

20. So you trust BP, Exxon, and Shell on what they do to and for the environment.

That is certainly the implication of your remark, but I know it isn't true.

Industry data is *always* considered suspect until it is confirmed by independent observation and analysis because industries have a positive motive to lie and very little downside if they get caught.

Note the false cost projections the resulted from analysis that uncritically used raw nuclear industry data:


What was the punishment for this false data? They got $18B+ from Bush and Obama is willing to give them another $39B. Ouch, that will teach them to lie.

I asked you before and you have yet to answer - why do you TRUST the nuclear industry?

[XemaSab]

21. I trust them a hell of a lot more than I trust the solar industry

I've worked on several kinds of FERC documents, and for nukes and big hydro FERC wants ALL the details, and they get ALL the details.

On the other side, I've seen outright LIES in environmental documents for solar.

Why do you TRUST a bunch of sleazy fly-by-night solar companies who want to STEAL AND RAPE public land so they can make a buck?

[kristopher]

23. That doesn't answer the question.

1) FERC isn't an environmental agency.

2) You are engaging in circular reasoning where you say you trust them to give accurate information because they give the information others.

3) Then you attempt to divert the topic to solar and an unfounded attempt to attack me.

Why do you trust the nuclear industry? How are they any different than the oil and coal industries?

[Kolesar]

32. Cypress Semiconductor? eom

[GliderGuider]

8. Self-delete nt

[Nederland]

22. Interesting Analysis

Makhijani and Boyd may prove to be right about the cost of building smaller reactors. Reactor manufacturers obviously disagree, and only time and experience will definitively prove who is right and who is wrong. I found it interesting however, that the authors fail to even mention let alone explain the empirical evidence against them. The historical facts are that nuclear power plants got larger and larger over time, while their cost per kilowatt hour went up. Reactors built before 1972 were built for less than $200/kW, reactors built after 1980 routinely cost more than $2000/kW. Even worse, the reactors built after 1972 are less safe. The five most serious events at nuclear plants since TMI have all occurred at plants built after 1974.

Now, pro nuclear groups will say that the higher costs of later reactors has nothing to do with their size and everything to do with needlessly increasing regulation. This may be true, but I doubt that Makhijani and Boyd and other anti-nuke people would agree. If they do not agree, they need to explain why it is that historically smaller reactors cost more per kW than larger ones.

[kristopher]

24. Makhijani has a long track record of being far more accurate than the industry

The latest example is the cost of the S. Texas project where he predicted the inflated costs while the vendor and it's local purchased regulators were still baldly lying to the public in order to sucker them into a commitment in order to pull a bait and switch on the price.



Nuclear plants got larger and larger to justify through economy of scale the additional expense of slipped construction schedules, the necessary safety features that experience taught us were required, and the normal general problems associated with the complexity of extremely large scale projects like nuclear.

You have no basis for relating the safety features to the failures - that is assigning causation on a very weak correlation. It is the type of slimy sophistry that makes me regret reading any of your posts. If you have direct evidence that those failures were caused by improved safety features then produce it. It is far more likely to be related to an expanded effort to build and a consequent drop off in the actual effort to adhere to all the details required to ensure safety in any nuclear plant.

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[joshcryer]

31. More "anyone who disagrees with me is a conservative" innuendo.

Shameful.

[kristopher]

35. Yes.

[kristopher]

36. Then again, maybe it isn't.

Although I don't think I've ever before seen a case where a link to a legitimate DU post was deleted. Not sure of the logic of that one in the rulebook.

[joshcryer]

37. New rules call for better civility. Expect more attempts to box users in as conservatives...

...to be treated thusly.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9563958

specific example: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=9563958&mesg_id=9564533