nuclear-news

We need proven renewable energy technology, NOT General Atomics’ small nuclear reactor gimmickry

Laurel Kaskurs, 15 July 16  With all the generous subsidies General Atomics has received thanks to its friendly military industrial complex Congressional friends in the area, I would have hoped they might repay the taxpayers for their generosity by working on something that does not put people and the environment at risk for plutonium contamination, which is a very real possibility whenever you talk about burning spent fuel.

First of all, if this is designed to burn spent fuel down to just 3% of what it was before, then why do you say you could burn the spent fuel from the EM2? There are all different kinds of spent fuel with different grades of uranium and plutonium left. So are you claiming it works for any of these? What about the fact that the spent fuel at San Onofre, Pilgrim, and many other commercial nuclear power plants is leaking and already unsafe to transport?

Some dry cask containers contain damaged fuel rods and the DOE will not touch them. Is this really being designed to solve a nuclear waste problem, because it sounds like a way the nuclear industry will just cling in desperation to so they can keep producing more nuclear waste.

I would like to know exactly what fuels General Atomic has designed this SMR to run on. If it’s traditional nuclear fuel, every step of the uranium fission process is extremely carbon intensive, from mining, milling, construction, the ceramic making, and each step of the fuel cycle creates heaps of radioactive waste we have no way to dispose of.

If it’s actual spent fuel we are talking about, how do you propose we transport the spent fuel from their leaking dry casks that sit rusting on a seaside cliff to these little fast breeder reactors? If they are for remote locations, how will emergency personnel get there if an emergency happens? Accidents involving plutonium mixed fuel are far more dangerous than those involving uranium fuel, and those are downright deadly! (I would love to post links to back up everything I am telling you, but the site [San Diego Union Tribune ] will not allow me to).

What we need is not more atomic pipe dreams producing separated plutonium as waste. That is what SMRs amount to. There are triple renewable hybrid plants, like Stillwater in Fallon, NV that produce zero waste and can compete with SMRs to deliver flexible power to the grid by using geothermal storage to convert heat from daytime sunlight to keep the lights on at night while Solar and solar pv handle the load all day. It’s not a theory on paper. It’s an operational power plant designed by Enel Green Power and I read about it in a renewable energy magazine.

That is where our government subsidies should go. Not to another plutonium making weapons contractor that is decades away from a prototype.  For the sake of the DNA of future generations, we can not keep draining the economy by subsidizing an industry that kills us slowly with cancer and genetic instability. If you want to solve the climate problems, the time is now, with proven renewable technology, not 2030 with an atomic fantasy.

July 16, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general