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Small modular nuclear reactors get a reality check in new report (newatlas.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

154 comments fedilink hide all child comments

[T]he report's executive summary certainly gets to the heart of their findings.

"The rhetoric from small modular reactor (SMR) advocates is loud and persistent: This time will be different because the cost overruns and schedule delays that have plagued large reactor construction projects will not be repeated with the new designs," says the report. "But the few SMRs that have been built (or have been started) paint a different picture – one that looks startlingly similar to the past. Significant construction delays are still the norm and costs have continued to climb."

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (3 children)

The problem is that "both" isn't a valid option unless a country has unlimited finances.

Otherwise you have to decide on what's the most feasible option and then renewables win big time

I sometimes feel as if the current push for atomic is from the fossil-lobby as they are aware that it either works and they get 10-20 more years to sell oil until the reactors are built - and even if it doesn't work out it still will slow down rollout of renewables

If you have 100 billion to spend on energy producing you have to choose if you want to go all-in with one source or split it up which would move the end of fossil fuels Back further

Not to mention having to buy the radioactive materials from dictatorships and having problems to cool down the reactors with rising temperatures and rivers running dry

I just don't see how atomic isn't a huge gamble that can backfire hard (and I'm not even talking about catastrophic events like Fukushima)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You keep doing the thing. The thing sucks. Please stop.

For one, no, that's not how that works. Money is already being spent in energy generation, mostly towards oil and gas. This isn't your weekly takeout budget.

It's also not a race towards infinite energy where you dump money to make the infinite energy bar go up. Energy generation will continue to be costly and have problems, regardless of the mix of options chosen. There is simply no single silver bullet. Which is, presumably why we already don't go "all-in" on one energy source, which is just about the dumbest possible plan. Energy diversification is absolutely part of this, regardless of where the majority of the output is coming from.

So please stop it. Genuinely stop it. This isn't a zero sum game, it's about finding the mix of energy sources that gets you less killed in the next century or so. Not finding a single source, not backing a single winning horse, not having your stupid team you support for either dumb Internet reasons or disingenuous trolling reasons win.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

If we are thinking of the next century then these discussions are very relevant. A century is a long time. We don't actually have that long for some of these problems though.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Most countries have unlimited finances. They only have limited real resources like labor, concrete, copper, glass, etc. The fact that we still don't understand this and behave as if the metadata of the economy accurately describes reality puts artificial brakes on the solutions of many problems, climate being one of them.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The problem is that if a country treats money as unlimited and without a cost then inflation will mirror that and people in that country will lose their savings, their job will not pay for their bills anymore and so on

It's not as simple as "just spend more"...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Inflation is a symptom of the lack of some real resource. There are many parts of the economies of many countries where there's unused production capacity which simply "turns more natural resources into more stuff" if more money enters that part of the economy, without producing inflation. It's not "just spend more", it's "spend as much as you can on things that you want done, which aren't limited by real resources."

I found Randall Wray's lectures on the topic to be eye-opening. If what I wrote sounds strange, and it might, I highly recommend watching some of them. There are a few recordings on YouTube.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago

having to buy the radioactive materials from dictatorships

Not really, but also kinda. The biggest exporters of ore are Kazakhstan, Namibia, Canada, and Australia.

The only major producers that aren't American puppets stripping themselves of resources to maintain western hegemony are Russia, Niger, China, and India, who total less than 15%.

I wouldn't call Russia or India not-dictatorships, but I don't see them using US weapons and training to put down a restive population and keep the resources and money flowing out like Kazakstan.