They’re untested, they’re just as expensive – small nuclear reactors

Nuclear energy: Flexible fission, Ft.com, By Sylvia Pfeifer 14 Feb 13, At the Baltic Shipyard in St Petersburg squats the hull of the Akademik Lomonosov. It is no ordinary ship. Once it is finished in three years’ time, it will be Russia’s first floating nuclear power plant.Two reactors, similar to those used in Russia’s nuclear-powered ice breakers, will each provide 35 megawatts of power. The floating power plant is one of several planned by the Kremlin to be anchored near towns or industrial sites……

Critics are wary, warning that floating atomic power stations would make an ideal terrorist target and be vulnerable to stormy weather and earthquakes. Others point out that even if smaller reactors had less fuel and were partly buried underground, there would be an increasing number of small facilities dotted across emerging markets, sometimes in places that lack the infrastructure to cope with emergencies….

multiple challenges remain.

There are questions over whether the regulatory regime and siting criteria should be relaxed for these reactors? There are also suggestions the plants could be run with fewer staff, helping to cut the costs even further.

Dame Sue Ion, a nuclear fuel expert and fellow at the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering, says the first small modular reactors will, realistically, be sited on existing nuclear-licensed sites.

“It may be that the physical characteristics make it safer but you would still have to have all the safety arrangements and emergency planning in place,” she adds.

“You still have the same safety, proliferation and accident concerns,” says Doug Parr, chief scientist and policy director at campaign group Greenpeace UK. “You need capacity and supportive infrastructure to respond if there is an emergency.”

Then there is the issue of public acceptance. “To expect the general public to just accept them because they are small is pushing the point. It does not seem obvious to me,” Kevin Hesketh, senior fellow at Britain’s National Nuclear Laboratory, told an industry conference last month…….. “Licensing and public acceptance – both have to be addressed. ..

The biggest challenge facing the model is simply that no one has done it. Nuclear also has a bad record on cost. At the same time, competition from renewables, which are becoming cheaper, is growing.

Dominic Holt, associate director, nuclear advisory, at KPMG, says “none of the positives have been tested yet”. Claims of cost and programme certainty are still unproven. Analysis of a range of available data show that the “levelised cost” – per MW/hour – of SMRs is still similar to that of a large reactor…