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submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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[-] [email protected] 93 points 4 months ago

While clearly biased and theres some wording and cherrypicking of studies (that isn't very egregious, to be clear!) that I'd take issue with in a more formal setting, the content of the article thru to point two are really quite an alright summary of the issues and raises some very valid questions the industry has yet to answer.

However it throws itself off the credibility cliff riiiiiight around this point:

In any event, regulators are loosening safety and security requirements for SMRs in ways which could cancel out any safety benefits from passive features. For example, the NRC has approved rules and procedures in recent years that provide regulatory pathways for exempting new reactors, including SMRs, from many of the protective measures that it requires for operating plants, such as a physical containment structure, an offsite emergency evacuation plan, and an exclusion zone that separates the plant from densely populated areas. It is also considering further changes that could allow SMRs to reduce the numbers of armed security personnel to protect them from terrorist attacks and highly trained operators to run them. Reducing security at SMRs is particularly worrisome, because even the safest reactors could effectively become dangerous radiological weapons if they are sabotaged by skilled attackers. Even passive safety mechanisms could be deliberately disabled.

What in the fearmongering fuck is this? "Oh no, terrorists!" And it's debunked on the first page of one of its own sources. Regulators have NOT put any pathways in place to "exempt SMRs from many of the protective measures." If you read the sources, what they have done is put in place guidelines for the evaluation of the current measures, to judge if those measures merit being re-evaluated. Its a path for a path to judge if maybe we should have a path.

And fucking hell, yes of course they would have smaller security contingents, the installations are physically smaller! There's less to guard! Thats in no small part the point!

Look there are a lot of problems with SMRs and even more questions we just don't have answers for yet. Those questions need answers before any progress can be made with SMRs. The benefits of lower transmission losses, dedicated power generation for industrial complexes being at all beneficial, or remotely finalized designs for the reactor technology needed here are all MASSIVE outstanding issues that have yet to be solved.

But this shit? "we cant have this source of green energy because terrorists!!!"

Fuck off with that.

There are more than enough issues with SMRs to justify extreme skepticism, hell microsoft wanting a bunch is probably reason enough to abandon the whole concept. We dont need to stoop to disinformation and blatant lies, what the fuck. This is why "nuclear bros" (Which great idea, lets "other" the critics, that's not a red flag at all...) get so much traction, because they dont stoop to conspiracy theory tropes to support their arguments.

[-] [email protected] 39 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

There's so many people paranoid about the remote possibility of dirty bombs. Meanwhile, Norfolk Southern is actually spilling tankers full of toxic chemicals that get set on fire by being incredibly negligent.

If terrorists did want to poison an area, there's plenty of insanely toxic and commercially available compounds to choose from. The fixation on nuclear fuel is an indicator of someone who is just repeating a ghost story and doesn't actually know/care what the biggest sources of danger are.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Though to be fair, using dirty bombs or radioactive material has waaaaay larger "fear" factor than a random chemical that kills just as well.

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this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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