A realistic understanding of their costs and risks is critical.

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?]

  • federalreverse-old@feddit.de
    141·
    6 months ago

    New reactors are expensive. New reactors are late. New reactors can basically only be built by nation states but not privately. Nuclear is not insurable. Nuclear produces waste with excessive half-life. Nuclear steals resources and mindshare from other options. Nuclear energy output can’t be moderated well (basically for economic reasons, it runs full steam all the time and for safety reasons, you can only moderate output a little), so it does not effectively augment wind and solar, rather leading to wind/solar having to be turned off.

    Wind and solar meanwhile can be built cheaply, quickly, privately, locally, site sizes easily scale between kW or GW of output and they only produce a little regular waste at the end of their life. (Okay, granted, Neodymium mining does produce some nuclear waste too — but definitely nowhere what uranium mining produces.)

    Wind+solar+hydro+better national/continental grids+batteries+flexible demand is a much better combination.