European Leadership Network, Alice Saltini |Research Coordinator, 28 July 2023
TAIPEI 2029, Tensions have risen sharply between the US and China as the Taiwan war has drawn the US and its allies into the Pacific theatre. Both countries, having suffered immense losses in the initial months of the war, are at an impasse. For the previous four years, the US has depended on its advanced nuclear command, control, and communication (NC3) detection systems. These systems utilise a deep learning model regarded as the world’s most advanced, trained on synthetic data. Its track record of perfect accuracy in detecting previous test launches has yet to falter. Suddenly, a warning flashes, detecting a barrage of JL-3 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The threat level escalates drastically, and a human operator assesses the findings. Time constraints make additional verification impossible, and the decision to launch a counterattack is finally taken. However, the initial wave of detected SLBMs turns out to be a false alarm – a “hallucination”.
This rapid response was fueled by unwavering trust in the system’s impeccable past performance. No one can pinpoint exactly what led the system to make the erroneous detection because of the black box nature of the deep learning model, though some attribute it to an unusual mix of a routine submarine surfacing drill and peculiar atmospheric conditions on that day.
This scenario underlines the chilling reality of the risks associated with integrating neural networks and deep learning models into NC3 systems. A nuclear exchange is not in the interest of any nation, and ensuring robust and reliable NC3 systems is critical in avoiding one. There is then an urgent need for a moratorium on the integration of neural networks into critical NC3 systems until the technology is fully explainable and the technological limitation with these models is solved.
Amongst the gravest risks posed by the integration of AI are in nuclear command, control, and communication (NC3) systems.
As deep learning based artificial intelligence (AI) is adopted, there is a growing eagerness in industries and governments to incorporate AI into various applications. Amongst the gravest risks posed by this integration are in NC3, where discussions are underway. AI is a broad field, and a form of AI is already implemented in NC3 systems. This AI is distinctly different from deep learning and relies on rule-based systems, which perform poorly in unpredictable scenarios. As part of their modernisation efforts, nuclear-armed nations are now investigating the potential advantages of integrating deep learning models into some NC3 systems.
Deep learning is loosely modelled by how neurons function in the brain, with artificial neurons transmitting signals to each other. In a deep neural network, these neurons are organised in layers and progressively extract higher-level features from an input, resulting in a prediction as the output. As they are trained on large datasets, they learn to identify patterns and a representation allows them to make predictions. These models are not given instructions to follow and don’t operate on pre-programmed algorithmic principles.
Technical risks of AI integration into NC3
The integration of neural networks into NC3 poses a multitude of risks to global security due to the technological limitations of neural networks.
Interpretability
Interpretability relates to the ‘black box’ nature of AI and is a significant challenge with neural networks. As the model is trained, the way it processes the input changes by adjusting the weights across countless neurons. This makes it extremely challenging to understand the internal mechanisms that guide the model towards the output. In a domain as sensitive as NC3, comprehensible and explainable results are essential to maintain credibility. The predictions made by the model are inscrutable, and the reasoning impossible to elucidate. If integrated into NC3, this would leave no accountability or method of verification for predictions and decisions.
Hallucinations
“Hallucinations” are a phenomenon where deep learning models confidently make unfounded assertions that aren’t supported by their training data. These hallucinations can also manifest in object detection models, where an AI might incorrectly mislabel a dog as a cat. In the context of NC3, an AI system might misinterpret unfamiliar atmospheric phenomena as incoming missiles or misinterpret incoming missiles as a meteor. Alternatively, the model could erroneously assess threats and targets in a decision-support context.
TAIPEI 2029, Tensions have risen sharply between the US and China as the Taiwan war has drawn the US and its allies into the Pacific theatre. Both countries, having suffered immense losses in the initial months of the war, are at an impasse. For the previous four years, the US has depended on its advanced nuclear command, control, and communication (NC3) detection systems. These systems utilise a deep learning model regarded as the world’s most advanced, trained on synthetic data. Its track record of perfect accuracy in detecting previous test launches has yet to falter. Suddenly, a warning flashes, detecting a barrage of JL-3 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The threat level escalates drastically, and a human operator assesses the findings. Time constraints make additional verification impossible, and the decision to launch a counterattack is finally taken. However, the initial wave of detected SLBMs turns out to be a false alarm – a “hallucination”. This rapid response was fueled by unwavering trust in the system’s impeccable past performance. No one can pinpoint exactly what led the system to make the erroneous detection because of the black box nature of the deep learning model, though some attribute it to an unusual mix of a routine submarine surfacing drill and peculiar atmospheric conditions on that day.
This scenario underlines the chilling reality of the risks associated with integrating neural networks and deep learning models into NC3 systems. A nuclear exchange is not in the interest of any nation, and ensuring robust and reliable NC3 systems is critical in avoiding one. There is then an urgent need for a moratorium on the integration of neural networks into critical NC3 systems until the technology is fully explainable and the technological limitation with these models is solved.
Amongst the gravest risks posed by the integration of AI are in nuclear command, control, and communication (NC3) systems. Alice Saltini
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As deep learning based artificial intelligence (AI) is adopted, there is a growing eagerness in industries and governments to incorporate AI into various applications. Amongst the gravest risks posed by this integration are in NC3, where discussions are underway. AI is a broad field, and a form of AI is already implemented in NC3 systems. This AI is distinctly different from deep learning and relies on rule-based systems, which perform poorly in unpredictable scenarios. As part of their modernisation efforts, nuclear-armed nations are now investigating the potential advantages of integrating deep learning models into some NC3 systems.
Deep learning is loosely modelled by how neurons function in the brain, with artificial neurons transmitting signals to each other. In a deep neural network, these neurons are organised in layers and progressively extract higher-level features from an input, resulting in a prediction as the output. As they are trained on large datasets, they learn to identify patterns and a representation allows them to make predictions. These models are not given instructions to follow and don’t operate on pre-programmed algorithmic principles.
Technical risks of AI integration into NC3
The integration of neural networks into NC3 poses a multitude of risks to global security due to the technological limitations of neural networks.
Interpretability
Interpretability relates to the ‘black box’ nature of AI and is a significant challenge with neural networks. As the model is trained, the way it processes the input changes by adjusting the weights across countless neurons. This makes it extremely challenging to understand the internal mechanisms that guide the model towards the output. In a domain as sensitive as NC3, comprehensible and explainable results are essential to maintain credibility. The predictions made by the model are inscrutable, and the reasoning impossible to elucidate. If integrated into NC3, this would leave no accountability or method of verification for predictions and decisions.
Hallucinations
“Hallucinations” are a phenomenon where deep learning models confidently make unfounded assertions that aren’t supported by their training data. These hallucinations can also manifest in object detection models, where an AI might incorrectly mislabel a dog as a cat. In the context of NC3, an AI system might misinterpret unfamiliar atmospheric phenomena as incoming missiles or misinterpret incoming missiles as a meteor. Alternatively, the model could erroneously assess threats and targets in a decision-support context.
Cyber security threats
Amongst cyber security threats, integrity attacks, including data poisoning and evasion techniques, pose a significant risk. In data poisoning, an adversary subtly modifies the training data, misleading the model into learning incorrect patterns. A single tampered data point can compromise a system. Evasion attacks exploit inherent flaws in even the most robust models and could cause false identifications in an NC3 detection system. These vulnerabilities would provide untold opportunities for adversaries and non-state actors to develop methods to compromise NC3 systems.
TAIPEI 2029, Tensions have risen sharply between the US and China as the Taiwan war has drawn the US and its allies into the Pacific theatre. Both countries, having suffered immense losses in the initial months of the war, are at an impasse. For the previous four years, the US has depended on its advanced nuclear command, control, and communication (NC3) detection systems. These systems utilise a deep learning model regarded as the world’s most advanced, trained on synthetic data. Its track record of perfect accuracy in detecting previous test launches has yet to falter. Suddenly, a warning flashes, detecting a barrage of JL-3 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The threat level escalates drastically, and a human operator assesses the findings. Time constraints make additional verification impossible, and the decision to launch a counterattack is finally taken. However, the initial wave of detected SLBMs turns out to be a false alarm – a “hallucination”. This rapid response was fueled by unwavering trust in the system’s impeccable past performance. No one can pinpoint exactly what led the system to make the erroneous detection because of the black box nature of the deep learning model, though some attribute it to an unusual mix of a routine submarine surfacing drill and peculiar atmospheric conditions on that day.
This scenario underlines the chilling reality of the risks associated with integrating neural networks and deep learning models into NC3 systems. A nuclear exchange is not in the interest of any nation, and ensuring robust and reliable NC3 systems is critical in avoiding one. There is then an urgent need for a moratorium on the integration of neural networks into critical NC3 systems until the technology is fully explainable and the technological limitation with these models is solved.
Amongst the gravest risks posed by the integration of AI are in nuclear command, control, and communication (NC3) systems. Alice Saltini
Share
As deep learning based artificial intelligence (AI) is adopted, there is a growing eagerness in industries and governments to incorporate AI into various applications. Amongst the gravest risks posed by this integration are in NC3, where discussions are underway. AI is a broad field, and a form of AI is already implemented in NC3 systems. This AI is distinctly different from deep learning and relies on rule-based systems, which perform poorly in unpredictable scenarios. As part of their modernisation efforts, nuclear-armed nations are now investigating the potential advantages of integrating deep learning models into some NC3 systems.
Deep learning is loosely modelled by how neurons function in the brain, with artificial neurons transmitting signals to each other. In a deep neural network, these neurons are organised in layers and progressively extract higher-level features from an input, resulting in a prediction as the output. As they are trained on large datasets, they learn to identify patterns and a representation allows them to make predictions. These models are not given instructions to follow and don’t operate on pre-programmed algorithmic principles.
Technical risks of AI integration into NC3
The integration of neural networks into NC3 poses a multitude of risks to global security due to the technological limitations of neural networks.
Interpretability
Interpretability relates to the ‘black box’ nature of AI and is a significant challenge with neural networks. As the model is trained, the way it processes the input changes by adjusting the weights across countless neurons. This makes it extremely challenging to understand the internal mechanisms that guide the model towards the output. In a domain as sensitive as NC3, comprehensible and explainable results are essential to maintain credibility. The predictions made by the model are inscrutable, and the reasoning impossible to elucidate. If integrated into NC3, this would leave no accountability or method of verification for predictions and decisions.
Hallucinations
“Hallucinations” are a phenomenon where deep learning models confidently make unfounded assertions that aren’t supported by their training data. These hallucinations can also manifest in object detection models, where an AI might incorrectly mislabel a dog as a cat. In the context of NC3, an AI system might misinterpret unfamiliar atmospheric phenomena as incoming missiles or misinterpret incoming missiles as a meteor. Alternatively, the model could erroneously assess threats and targets in a decision-support context.
Cyber security threats
Amongst cyber security threats, integrity attacks, including data poisoning and evasion techniques, pose a significant risk. In data poisoning, an adversary subtly modifies the training data, misleading the model into learning incorrect patterns. A single tampered data point can compromise a system. Evasion attacks exploit inherent flaws in even the most robust models and could cause false identifications in an NC3 detection system. These vulnerabilities would provide untold opportunities for adversaries and non-state actors to develop methods to compromise NC3 systems.
Scarcity of real-word data
A model’s reliability is directly linked to the quality of its training data, and even minor errors can have severe implications for the model’s predictive capacity. The scarcity of real-world data for training prospective models is a significant concern. Any effort to create such a model would have to rely on a dataset built largely on synthetic data. Imperfect data amplifies the risks associated with hallucinations and cybersecurity threats.
Why a moratorium is needed and how NPT meetings can facilitate dialogue
A moratorium, ideally by all nine nuclear-armed states (China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), on the integration of neural networks into NC3 systems would be an important step to reduce the inherent risks and uncertainties involved. The nine states should uphold the moratorium until comprehensive exploration and mitigation of these risks can be achieved and formal regulations are instituted.
Given the current global tensions, it is imperative for all nine nuclear powers to pursue this initiative. However, as some states are already reluctant to engage in nuclear arms control-related dialogues, this will be difficult. With this in mind, it is critical for at least the five nuclear weapon states (NWS) to start engaging in discussions aimed at establishing a moratorium.
Although achieving a moratorium from all nine countries is a challenge, the NPT provides an opportunity for initial discussions, particularly among the NWS. To pave the way for such a moratorium, NPT State Parties should build upon the common ground established in 2022 and reflected in a paragraph of the draft final document, which received no objections from any state party………………………………
The importance of human judgment, particularly in the context of critical decision-making, has also been emphasised by all NWS in several unilateral statements. These shared understandings can serve as a stepping stone towards a common recognition of the risks posed by neural networks, setting the stage for a moratorium. The 2023 NPT PrepCom thus presents an excellent opportunity to initiate this crucial dialogue…………………………………………………………………………………………
NASA will test launch nuclear-powered spacecraft for the first time to try and get to Mars faster. Nasa has revealed that it plans to use nuclear-powered spacecrafts to help humanity land on Mars. Whilst it sounds like the stuff of science fiction, the space agency has been perfecting the technology for over 60 years and the first rockets could soon be blasting off. In fact, the insane tech could be tested within the next couple of years.
The ”tech bro” libertarian culture that valorizes new technology, loathes regulation, and embraces the marketplace has spawned a new generation of, according to the Washington Post, “nuclear bros.”
The media has become an echo chamber, with each outlet clambering over the next to crow about the great benefits of nuclear power in misleading language that suggests this technology is already entirely proven out.
The end of Oppenheimer’s energy dream
iai news,Allison Macfarlane Allison Macfarlane is the director of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia and former chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 21st July 2023
Nuclear energy is both lauded as a baseload renewable power and decried as risky, expensive and outdated technology. Small modular reactors have received billions in venture capital and unprecedented media attention, but are they a red herring, with philosophy, rather than science, driving our fixation? Professor Allison Macfarlane explores the current sombre state of the technology, where it is falling short, and what philosophy is driving the interest in this unpromising tech.
From the inception of Oppenheimer’s harnessing of the power of the atom, first as a device for war, and later, as a means of peaceful energy production, nuclear energy has possessed both promise and peril. With large nuclear power plants struggling to compete in a deregulated marketplace against renewables and natural gas, small modular reactors (SMRs) offer the promise to save the nuclear energy option. In the past few years, investors, national governments, and the media have paid significant attention to small modular nuclear reactors as the solution to traditional nuclear energy’s cost and long build times and renewable’s space and aesthetic drawbacks, but behind the hype there is very little concrete technology to justify it. By exploring the challenges facing small modular reactor technology, I will demonstrate that this resurgence in nuclear energy speaks to the popular imagination, rather than materializing as actual technological innovation.
News broke last week that Oklo, a company that has designed an advanced micro-nuclear power plant, will go public via a merger with AltC Acquisition Corporation. Co-founder of AltC Acquisition and Chair of Oklo’s board, Sam Altman, hopes to raise US$500 million with this offering. Oklo’s news is a sample of the almost-constant barrage of excitement around the potential of small modular reactors (SMRs) to help mitigate climate change.
But can they?
The Oklo story is intriguing, since its license application to build and operate its Aurora design reactor was outright rejected by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the country’s nuclear safety regulator (full disclosure: I was Chairman of the NRC from 2012-2014). And note that such rejection is an accomplishment: the NRC rarely outright rejects an application, instead working with licensees until they either get the application right or decide to walk away. In this case, Oklo refused to fill “information gaps” related to “safety systems and components.”
Most of these designs are just that: designs. Very few of the proposed SMRs have been demonstrated and none are commercially available.
There are many new SMR companies in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Europe, China, and elsewhere, and the reactor designs themselves are numerous as well. There are smaller versions of existing light water reactors, like those in the U.S., France, Japan, and elsewhere. There are more “advanced” designs like sodium-cooled fast reactors (like Oklo and Bill Gate’s company Terrapower’s design), high-temperature gas reactors, and molten salt reactors.
…………………………….. One U.S. company, NuScale, is the only SMR design in the US to received “design certification” from the NRC. NuScale has an agreement with UAMPS, a consortium of utility companies, to build the first NuScale reactors in Idaho in the U.S. But NuScale won’t build the already-certified design in Idaho; the company has a new application at the NRC to build a larger, and presumably more economic, model of the reactor. Nonetheless, cost estimates for the reactor have risen from US$55/megawatt electric (MWe) in 2016 to $89/MWe in 2023, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
Many of the non-light water SMR designs will likely be even costlier, based on recent analyses. A recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology study suggests that SMRs will run significantly higher in cost than large light water reactors, especially in per MW comparable “overnight” costs (how much it would cost to build a new reactor if one could do so overnight) and operations and maintenance costs.
Advanced reactors do not solve the problems of nuclear waste and may, in fact, exacerbate the problem.
Recent construction experience in the US and Europe does not herald success for SMR new builds. The two French-design evolutionary power reactor (EPR) builds have been far over budget and schedule. The EPR in Finland was originally supposed to cost 3 billion euros and open in 2009. It finally began producing electricity in 2023 at a cost of 11 billion euros. There is a similar story in France, where the EPR at Flamanville was set to begin operation in 2012 at a cost of 3.5 billion euro. Instead, it is still under construction and costs have ballooned to 12.4 billion euros.
And Europe is the rule, not the exception. US – based Westinghouse’s AP-1000, a robust design with passive safety features has suffered similarly. The two units under construction in South Carolina were abandoned in 2017, after an investment of US$9 billion. The two AP-1000 units in Georgia were to start in 2016/2017 for a price of US$14 billion. One unit started in April, 2023, the second unit promises to start later in 2023. The total cost is now over US$30 billion.
SMR designers appeal to factory construction to avoid some of the pitfalls of large reactor construction (thus the “modular” in Small Modular Reactor). But the AP-1000 should provide a cautionary tale: ……………………………………
One of the reasons SMRs will cost more has to do with fuel costs. Most non-light water designs require high-assay low enriched uranium fuel (HALEU), in other words, fuel enriched in the isotope uranium-235 between 10-19.99%, just below the level of what is termed “highly enriched uranium,” suitable for nuclear bombs. Currently, there are no enrichment companies outside of Russia that can produce HALEU, and thus the chicken-and-egg problem: an enrichment company wants assurance from reactor vendors to invest in developing HALEU production. But since commercial-scale SMRs are likely decades away, if they are at all viable, there is risk to doing so. Use of HALEU will also result in increased security and safeguards requirements that will add to the price tag.
The ”tech bro” libertarian culture that valorizes new technology, loathes regulation, and embraces the marketplace has spawned a new generation of, according to the Washington Post, “nuclear bros.”
HALEU fuel is needed to offset the smaller size of the reactor core, which results in increased neutron leakage – and neutrons are the initiators of fission reactions that release the energy harnessed as electrical power. Smaller reactor sizes can also result in comparatively more waste volume, next to existing large light water reactors. In fact, a recent U.S. National Academy of Science analysis noted that advanced reactors do not solve the problems of nuclear waste and may, in fact, exacerbate the problem. Some reactor designs will produce significantly more high-level waste by volume that current light water reactors, other designs will produce waste the requires chemical processing prior to disposal. These types of issues are relatively little examined and will add to the final price tag of the new technology.
With all these potential drawbacks and delays, why would anyone invest in an SMR company? I put a similar question to Ray Rothrock, a venture capitalist, at a meeting of a committee of the National Academy of Engineering that was studying the potential of these new reactors (and of which I was a member). If these reactors won’t be commercially available for a decade or more, how do investors make money? His response? “Even before they sell [energy], they go public and that’s how early investors make money…it fits the model – the company hasn’t made money, but the investors have made money.” He goes on to say that going public opens the door to much more money that is needed.
But all of this in the future. If SMRs are not ready to deploy in the next ten years, what are the implications? There are two significant ones. The first is that, given the development timelines for these new reactor designs, they are not likely to have a significant impact on CO2 emissions reductions for decades, and as a result their relevance to the climate argument shrinks.
The media has become an echo chamber, with each outlet clambering over the next to crow about the great benefits of nuclear power in misleading language that suggests this technology is already entirely proven out.
More significantly, if, as a recent study showed, that SMRs will be significantly more expensive than solar photovoltaic (PV) and on-shore wind, and even geothermal, what will the marketplace look like in 20 or 30 years, when renewables will presumably be even cheaper?
………………….. So why there so much hype around new nuclear power technologies that so far, largely, don’t exist and will likely be very costly? The need to decarbonize energy production plays a role
The advent of large amounts of available venture capital in the past decade is another factor. One analyst told me, “there’s a lot of stupid money out there right now [for investing].”
The ”tech bro” libertarian culture that valorizes new technology, loathes regulation, and embraces the marketplace has spawned a new generation of, according to the Washington Post, “nuclear bros.” Naomi Oreskes notes that an appeal to nuclear power to address our energy needs in a warming world reflects our “technofideism,” the faith that technology will solve our problems.
In the nuclear celebratory mood of the moment, there is little patience or political will for sober voices to discuss the reality that new nuclear power is actually many decades away from having any measurable impact on climate change – if at all. https://iai.tv/articles/the-end-of-oppenheimers-energy-dream-auid-2549
“Without civilian nuclear energy there is no military use of this technology — and without military use there is no civilian nuclear energy,” admitted French President Emmanuel Macron in 2019. No surprise then, that France is investing billions in SMR technology.
If you didn’t know better, you’d think Lloyd Marbet was a dairy farmer or maybe a retired shop teacher. His beard is thick, soft, and gray, his hair pulled back in a small ponytail. In his mid-seventies, he still towers over nearly everyone. His handshake is firm, but there’s nothing menacing about him. He lumbers around like a wise, old hobbling tortoise.
We’re standing in the deco lobby of the historic Kiggins Theater in downtown Vancouver, Washington, about to view a screening of Atomic Bamboozle, a remarkable new documentary by filmmaker Jan Haaken that examines the latest push for atomic power and a nuclear “renaissance” in the Pacific Northwest. Lloyd, a Vietnam veteran, is something of an environmental folk hero in these parts, having led the early 1990s effort to shut down Oregon’s infamous Trojan Nuclear Plant. He’s also one of the unassuming stars of a film that highlights his critical role in that successful Trojan takedown and his continued opposition to nuclear technology.
I’ve always considered Lloyd an optimist, but this evening I sense a bit of trepidation.
“It concerns me greatly that this fight isn’t over yet,” he tells me in his deep baritone. He’s been at this for years and now helps direct the Oregon Conservancy Foundation, which promotes renewable energy, even as he continues to oppose nuclear power. “We learned a lot from Trojan, but that was a long time ago and this is a new era, and many people aren’t aware of the history of nuclear power and the anti-nuclear movement.”
The new push for atomic energy in the Pacific Northwest isn’t just coming from the well-funded nuclear industry, their boosters at the Department of Energy, or billionaires like Bill Gates. It’s also echoing in the mainstream environmental movement among those who increasingly view the technology as a potential climate savior.
In a recent interview with ABC News, Bill Gates couldn’t have been more candid about why he’s embraced the technology of so-called small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs. “Nuclear energy, if we do it right, will help us solve our climate goals,” he claimed. As it happens, he’s also invested heavily in an “advanced” nuclear power start-up company, TerraPower, based up in Bellevue, Washington, which is hoping to build a small 345-megawatt atomic power reactor in rural Kemmerer, Wyoming.
The nuclear industry is banking on a revival and placing its bets on SMRs like those proposed by the Portland, Oregon-based NuScale Power Corporation, whose novel 60-megawatt SMR design was approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 2022. While the underlying physics is the same as all nuclear power plants, SMRs are easier to build and safer to run than the previous generation of nuclear facilities — or so go the claims of those looking to profit from them.
NuScale’s design acceptance was a first in this country where 21 SMRs are now in the development stage. Such facilities are being billed as innovative alternatives to the hulking commercial reactors that average one gigawatt of power output per year and take decades and billions of dollarsto construct. If SMRs can be brought online quickly, their sponsors claim, they will help mitigate carbon emissions because nuclear power is a zero-emissions energy source.
Never mind that it’s not, since nuclear power plants produce significant greenhouse gas emissions from uranium mining to plant construction to waste disposal. Life cycle analyses of carbon emissions from different energy sources find that, when every stage is taken into account, nuclear energy actually has a carbon footprint similar to, if not larger than, natural gas plants, almost double that of wind energy, and significantly more than solar power.
“SMRs are no longer an abstract concept,” Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Kathryn Huff, a leading nuclear advocate who has the ear of the Biden administration, insisted. “They are real and they are ready for deployment thanks to the hard work of NuScale, the university community, our national labs, industry partners, and the NRC. This is innovation at its finest and we are just getting started here in the U.S.!”
A Risky (and Expensive) Business
Even though Huff claims that SMRs are “ready for deployment,” that’s hardly the case. NuScale’s initial SMR design, under development in Idaho, won’t actually be operable until at least 2029 after clearing more NRC regulatory hurdles. The scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are already calling for fossil-fuel use to be cut by two-thirds over the next 10 years to transition away from carbon-intensive energy, a schedule that, if kept, such small reactors won’t be able to speed up.
And keep in mind that the seemingly prohibitive costs of the SMRs are a distinct problem. NuScale’s original estimate of $55-$58 per megawatt-hour for a proposed project in Utah — already higher than wind and solar which come in at around $50 per megawatt-hour — has recently skyrocketed to $89 per megawatt-hour. And that’s after a $4 billion investment in such energy by U.S. taxpayers, which will cover 43% of the cost of the construction of such plants. This is based on strikingly rosy, if not unrealistic, projections. After all, nuclear power in the U.S. currently averages around $373 per megawatt-hour.
And as the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis put it:
“[N]o one should fool themselves into believing this will be the last cost increase for the NuScale/UAMPS SMR. The project still needs to go through additional design, licensing by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, construction, and pre-operational testing. The experience of other reactors has repeatedly shown that further significant cost increases and substantial schedule delays should be anticipated at any stages of project development.”
Here in the Pacific Northwest, NuScale faces an additional obstacle that couldn’t be more important: What will it do with all the noxious waste such SMRs are certain to produce? In 1980, Oregon voters overwhelmingly passed Measure 7, a landmark ballot initiative that halted the construction of new nuclear power plants until the federal government established a permanent site to store spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste. Also included in Measure 7 was a provision that made all new Oregon nuclear plants subject to voter approval. Forty-three years later, no such repository for nuclear waste exists anywhere in the United States, which has prompted corporate lobbyists for the nuclear industry to push several bills that would essentially repeal that Oregon law.
NuScale, no fan of Measure 7, has decided to circumvent it by building its SMRs across the Columbia River in Washington, a state with fewer restrictions. There, Clark County is, in its own fashion, beckoning the industry by putting $200,000 into a feasibility study to see if SMRs could “benefit the region.” There’s another reason NuScale is eyeing the Columbia River corridor: its plants will need water. Like all commercial nuclear facilities, SMRs must be kept cool so they don’t overheat and melt down, creating little Chernobyls. In fact, being “light-water” reactors, the company’s SMRs will require a continuous water supply to operate correctly.
Like other nuclear reactors, SMRs will utilize fission to make heat, which in turn will be used to generate electricity. In the process, they will also produce a striking amount of waste, which may be even more challenging to deal with than the waste from traditional reactors. At the moment, NuScale hopes to store the nasty stuff alongside the gunk that the Trojan Nuclear Plant produces in big dry casks by the Columbia River in Oregon, near the Pacific Ocean.
As with all the waste housed at various nuclear sites nationwide, Trojan’s casks are anything but a permanent solution to the problem of such waste. After all, plutonium garbage will be radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. Typically enough, even though it’s no longer operating, Trojan still remains a significant risk as it sits near the Cascadia Subduction Zone, where a “megathrust” earthquake is expected someday to violently shake the region and drown it in a gigantic flood of seawater. If that were to happen, much of Oregon’s coastline would be devastated, including the casks holding Trojan’s deadly rubbish. The last big quake of this sort hit the area more than 300 years ago, but it’s just a matter of time before another Big One strikes — undoubtedly, while the radioactive waste in those dry casks is still life-threatening.
Nuclear expert M. V. Ramana, a soft-spoken but authoritative voice in Jan Haaken’s Atomic Bamboozle documentary, put it this way to me:
“The industry’s plans for SMR waste are no different from their plans for radioactive waste from older reactors, which is to say that they want to find some suitable location and a community that is willing to accept the risk of future contamination and bury the waste underground.
“But there is a catch [with SMR’s waste]. Some of these proposed SMR designs use fuel with materials that are chemically difficult to deal with. The sodium-cooled reactor design proposed by Bill Gates would have to figure out how to manage the sodium. Because sodium does not behave well in the presence of water and all repositories face the possibility of water seeping into them, the radioactive waste generated by such designs would have to be processed to remove the sodium. This is unlike the fleet of reactors [currently in operation].”
Other troubles exist, too, explains Ramana. One, in particular, is deeply concerning: the waste from SMRs, like the waste produced in all nuclear plants, could lead to the proliferation of yet more atomic weaponry.
Nuclear Hot Links
As the pro-military Atlantic Council explained in a 2019 report on the deep ties between nuclear power and nuclear weapons in this country:
“The civilian nuclear power sector plays a crucial role in supporting U.S. national security goals. The connectivity of the civilian and military nuclear value chain — including shared equipment, services, and human capital — has created a mutually reinforcing feedback loop, wherein a robust civilian nuclear industry supports the nuclear elements of the national security establishment.”
In fact, governments globally, from France to Pakistan, the United States to China, have a strategic incentive to keep tabs on their nuclear energy sectors, not just for potential accidents but because nuclear waste can be utilized in making nuclear weapons.
Spent fuel, or the waste that’s left over from the fission process, comes out scalding hot and highly radioactive. It must be quickly cooled in pools of water to avoid the possibility of a radioactive meltdown. Since the U.S. has no repository for spent fuel, all this waste has to stay put — first in pools for at least a year or more and then in dry casks where air must be constantly circulated to keep the spent fuel from causing mayhem.
The United States already has a troubling and complicated nuclear-waste problem, which worsens by the day. Annually, the U.S. produces 88,000 metric tons of spent fuel from its commercial nuclear reactors. With the present push to build more plants, including SMRs, spent fuel will only be on the rise. Worse yet, as Ramana points out, SMRs are going to produce more of this incendiary waste per unit of electricity because they will prove less efficient than larger reactors. And therein lies the problem, not just because the amount of radioactive waste the country doesn’t truly know how to deal with will increase, but because more waste means more fuel for nukes.
As Ramana explains:
“When uranium fuel is irradiated in a reactor, the uranium-238 isotope absorbs neutrons and [transmutes] into plutonium-239. This plutonium is in the spent fuel that is discharged by the reactor but can be separated from the rest of the uranium and other chemicals in the irradiated fuel through a chemical process called reprocessing. Once it is separated, plutonium can be used in nuclear weapons. Even though there are technical differences between different kinds of nuclear reactors, all reactors, including SMRs, can be used to make nuclear weapons materials… Any country that acquires a nuclear reactor automatically enhances its ability to make nuclear weapons. Whether it does so or not is a matter of choice.”
Ramana is concerned for good reason. France, as he points out, has Europe’s largest arsenal of nuclear warheads, and its atomic weapons industry is deeply tied to its “peaceful” nuclear energy production. “Without civilian nuclear energy there is no military use of this technology — and without military use there is no civilian nuclear energy,” admitted French President Emmanuel Macron in 2019. No surprise then, that France is investing billions in SMR technology. After all, many SMR designs require enriched uranium and plutonium to operate, and the facilities that produce materials for SMRs can also be reconfigured to produce fuel for nuclear weapons. Put another way, the more countries that possess this technology, the more that will have the ability to manufacture atomic bombs.
As the credits rolled on Atomic Bamboozle, I glanced around the packed theater. I instantly sensed the shock felt by movie-goers who had no idea nuclear power was priming for a comeback in the Northwest. Lloyd Marbet, arms crossed, was seated at the back of the theater, looking calmer than most. Still, I knew he was eager to lead the fight to stop SMRs from reaching the shores of the nearby Columbia River and would infuse a younger generation with a passion to resist the nuclear-industrial complex he’s been challenging for decades.
“Can you believe we’re fighting this shit all over again?” he asked me later with his usual sense of urgency and outrage. “We’ve beat them before and you can damn well bet we’ll do it again.”
A biographer whose Pulitzer prize-winning book inspired the new movie Oppenheimer has expressed support for a US senator’s attempt to bar the use of artificial intelligence in nuclear weapons launches.
“Humans must always maintain sole control over nuclear weapons,” Kai Bird, author of American Prometheus, said in a statement reported by Politico.
“This technology is too dangerous to gamble with. This bill will send a powerful signal to the world that the United States will never take the reckless step of automating our nuclear command and control.”
The diminutive reactors are likely to be just as prone to delays and cost overruns as their behemoth predecessors.
I just read Pal Hockenos’ fine story about small nuclear reactors. But Hockenos is naive to think that Bill Gates and co. give a hoot about our future. What they do care about is their own increasing $squillions. And the coming source of new $squillions is in weaponry – that’s where all sorts of applications for SMRs lie. And Gates etc are well aware that the fixing-climate story is just a cover for the real practical purpose.
IN RECENT YEARS, the nuclear power lobby and its advocates have begun to sing a new song. They have bailed on the monstrous reactors of the 20th century — not because of safety or toxic waste concerns, but because of the reactors’ exorbitant expense and ponderous rollout schedules. And they have switched their allegiance to a next generation nuclear fission technology: small modular reactors, which they claim will help rescue our warming planet, as well as the nuclear power industry— once they exist.
Respected thinkers such as former U.S. president Barack Obama, French president Emmanuel Macron, and Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates have toasted the idea of small modular reactors, or SMRs, as a potentially reliable, almost-emissions-free backup to intermittent renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Advocates claim that because SMRs will be smaller than the giants that currently dominate horizons, they will be safer, cheaper, and quicker to build. Although SMRs will have only a fraction of the power-generating capacity of traditional nuclear power reactors, proponents envision that they will, one day, be assembled in factories and transported as a unit to sites — like Sears’ mail-order Modern Homes of the early 1900s.
Currently, half of the states in the EU, both major political parties in the U.S, and the five BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — have indicated that they want to split atoms for the purpose of generating energy. U.S. President Joe Biden included billions of dollars in tax credits for nuclear energy in the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Gates has gone so far as to invest a chunk of his fortune in a firm he founded, TerraPower, a leading nuclear innovation company. But despite the prodigious chatter, the endeavor to blanket the Earth with SMRs is a Hail Mary pass that’s very unlikely to succeed.
Granted, it is certainly a step in the right direction that most observers now see the postwar, giga-watt-scale water-cooled reactors as obsolete. When constructed new, these behemoths generate electricity at up to nine times the cost of large-scale solar and onshore wind facilities, and can take well over a decade to get up and running. Perhaps for this reason, there has been one, and only one, new nuclear power project initiated in the U.S. since construction began on the last one 50 years ago: a two-reactor expansion of the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia. The first of the reactors came online this year — seven years behind schedule. The staggering $35 billion cost for the pair is more than twice the original projection.
But SMRs are just as likely to face similar delays and cost overruns. Currently, there are just two existing advanced SMR facilities in the world that could be reasonably described as SMRs: a pilot reactor in China and Russia’s diminutive Akademik Lomonosov. More small reactors are under construction in China, Russia, and Argentina, but all of them are proving even more expensiveper kilowatt than traditional reactors.
It’s worth noting that in the U.S., and everywhere else in the world, nuclear policy relies heavily on subsidies to be economically competitive. Starting next year, utilities operating nuclear facilities in the U.S. can qualify for a tax credit of $15 per megawatt-hour — a break that could be worth up to $30 billion for the industry as a whole. However, even these giveaways won’t reduce the projected costs of SMR-generated electricity to anywhere near the going prices of wind and solar power.
In the U.S., the only SMR developer with a design approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is NuScale, which plans to deploy six modules at one site in Idaho that will together generate less electricity than a smallish standard nuclear reactor. So far, however, NuScale has yet to lay a single brick. Its biggest win to date is securing $4 billion in federal tax subsidies. In January of this year, NuScale announced plans to sell electricity not at $58 per megawatt-hour, as originally pledged, but at $89 per megawatt-hour, citing higher than anticipated construction costs. The new projection is nearly twice the average global cost of utility-scale solar and onshore wind, according to calculations by BloombergNEF. And without the government subsidies, NuScale’s price tag would be that much higher.
In fact, there’s a fair chance that not a single NuScale SMR will ever be built: The company has said it will not begin construction until 80 percent of its expected generation capacity is subscribed, and currently buyers have signed up for less than a quarter of the plant’s capacity.
Gates’s TerraPower has an even longer way to go, although it too is cashing in on subsidies. The U.S. Department of Energy has pledged up to $2 billion in matching funds to construct a demonstration plant in Wyoming. Yet TerraPower recently announced it’s facing delays of at least two years because of difficulties securing uranium fuel from its lone supplier: Russia.
Even if the unlikely rollout of SMRs eventually happens, it will unfold too late to curb the climate crisis. And the reactors will face many of the same safety and radioactive waste concerns that plagued their larger counterparts, if only at smaller scales. Meanwhile, the siren song of nuclear energy is diverting critical resources from the urgent task of building out clean technologies. And the idea that nuclear reactors would serve as “backups” for wind and solar is misguided because the reactors can’t be ramped up and down quickly.
……………………………The technology of the future is already here. Clean wind and solar energy — coupled with updated smart grids, expanded storage capacity, hydrogen technology, virtual power plants, and demand response strategies — can work. Our energy systems of the future will look like a patchwork quilt, with diverse energy sources kicking in at different times during the day, and with the mix differing from one day to the next.
Bill Gates and like-minded innovators should put their minds and fortunes to work on this futuristic project of the present — and leave the 20th century relic that is nuclear power in the past, where it belongs
Marc Andreessen Thinks Repeating This Nuclear Power Mistake Will Be Catastrophic For AI
by Rounak Jain, Benzinga Staff Writer, July 19, 2023
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has chimed in on the ongoing debate about AI regulation, stating that repeating the mistake of the proliferation of nuclear power again will be catastrophic for AI.
What Happened:Andreessen stressed that trying to regulate artificial intelligence using the same ideas used for regulating and controlling nuclear power would prove fatal for AI in his address during the University of Austin’s 2023 Forbidden Courses program.
“For the last 50 years, we’ve played out this experiment with so-called precautionary principles. It did not work well for the technology it was invented for,” Andreessen said, referring to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that was signed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and technology.
Growing Calls For AI Regulation:OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, Microsoft Corp, Bill Gates and others have called for regulation of AI. Altman testified in a Senate hearing about the risks of AI and called for its regulation. In contrast, Gates called for creating a global regulatory body on the lines of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Elon Musk went a step further and called for a “pause” on the development of AI.
However, Andreessen disagreed and said, “The future hangs in the balance because there are a lot of people pushing for that right now.”
As arms race dynamics push AI progress forward, prioritizing speed over safety, it is important to remember that in races toward mutual destruction, there is no winner. There is a point at which an arms race becomes a suicide race.
Imagine it’s 2032. The US and China are still rivals. In order to give their military commanders better intel and more time to make decisions, both powers have integrated artificial intelligence (AI) throughout their nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) systems. But instead, events take an unexpected turn and spin out of control, with catastrophic results.
This is the story told in a new short film called Artificial Escalation produced by Space Film & VFX for The Future of Life Institute. This plot may sound like science fiction (and the story is fictional), but the possibility of AI integration into weapons of mass destruction is now very real. Some experts say that the United States should build an NC3 system using AI “with predetermined response decisions, that detects, decides, and directs strategic forces.” The US is already envisioning integration like this in conventional command and control systems: the Joint All-Domain Command and Control has proposed connecting sensors from all military services into a single network, using AI to identify targets and recommend the “optimal weapon.” But NC3-AI integration is a terrible idea.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) explored key risks of AI integration into NC3, including: increased speed of warfare, accidental escalation, misperception of intentions and capabilities, erosion of human control, first-strike instability, the unpredictability of AI, the vulnerabilities of AI to adversary penetration, and arms race dynamics. The National Security Commission on AI cautioned that AI “will likely increase the pace and automation of warfare across the board, reducing the time and space available for de-escalatory measures.”
This new rate of warfare would leave less time for countries to signal their own capabilities and intentions or to understand their opponents’ perspectives. This could lead to unintended conflict escalation, crisis instability, and even nuclear war.
As arms race dynamics push AI progress forward, prioritizing speed over safety, it is important to remember that in races toward mutual destruction, there is no winner. There is a point at which an arms race becomes a suicide race. The reasons not to integrate AI into comprehensive command, control, and communications systems are manifold:
Adversarial AI carries unpredictable escalation risk. Even if AI-NC3 systems are carefully tested and evaluated, they may be made unpredictable by design. Two or more such systems interacting in a complex and adversarial environment can push each other to new extremes, greatly increasing the risk of accidental escalation. We have seen this before with the 2010 “flash crash” of the stock market, when adversarial trading algorithms wiped trillions of dollars off the stock exchange in under an hour. The military equivalent of that hour would be catastrophic.
No real training data. AI systems require a lot of data in their training, whether real or simulated. But training systems for nuclear conflict necessitates the generation of synthetic data with incomplete information, because the full extent of an adversary’s capabilities is unknown. This adds another element of dangerous unpredictability into the command and control mix.
Cyber vulnerabilities of networked systems. AI-integrated command, control, and communications systems would also be vulnerable to cyberattacks, hacking, and data poisoning. When all sensor data and systems are networked, failure can spread throughout the entire system. Each of these vulnerabilities must be considered across the systems of every nuclear nation, as the whole system is only as strong as its weakest link.
Epistemic uncertainty. Widespread use of AI to create misinformation is already clouding what is real and what is fake. The inability to discern truth is especially dangerous in the military context, and accurate information is particularly crucial to the stability of command and control systems. Historically, there have been channels of reliable, trustworthy communication between adversaries, even when there were also disinformation campaigns happening in the background. When we automate more and engage person-to-person less, those reliable channels dissipate and the risk of unnecessary escalation skyrockets.
Human Deference to Machines. If an algorithm makes a suggestion, people could defy it, but will they? ……………………………………………………………………………
The UK government is to offer grants of £157m as part of its launch of a new body to support the nuclear power industry.
Great British Nuclear (GBN) will be tasked with helping deliver the government’s commitment to provide a quarter of the UK’s electricity from nuclear energy by 2050.
The new body will help drive rapid expansion of nuclear power plants in the UK, boost energy security and reduce dependence on fossil fuel imports, said the energy security secretary, Grant Shapps.
It is hoped that a competition to develop small modular reactors (SMRs) will drive billions of pounds of investment into the technology, which the government hopes will be cheaper and quicker to build than traditional large nuclear power plants.
However, environmental campaigners and academics have argued that SMRs have no track record and that time and resources would be better spent on renewables such as more offshore wind.
The launch at the Science Museum in London on Tuesday was delayed from last week after it clashed with the government’s public sector pay deal announcement.
The government’s previous attempts to attract funding for conventional large reactors have so far only yielded the much delayed and over-budget Hinkley Point C nuclear plant in Somerset.
Shapps is expected to announce the winners of the competition in the autumn, with a number of manufacturing firms such as Rolls-Royce and Hitachi interested in developing SMRs.
The government said it was still committed to Hinkley Point C and also Sizewell C, a nuclear power plant in Suffolk that was announced last year and has been backed with £700m of public funds.
In addition to the competition launch, Shapps announced that up to £157m of grant funding would be available. There will be up to £77m to accelerate the development of a nuclear business in the UK and support new designs, and a further £58m for the development and design of a new advanced modular reactor that operates at higher temperatures……………………………………….
Dr Doug Parr, the chief scientist for Greenpeace UK, accused the government of “obsessing” over nuclear power and decried SMRs.skip past newsletter promotion.
“As the government tries to whip up investment for the latest generation of reactors, it is striking how many of the nuclear industry’s speculative claims are being repeated by ministers as fact,” he said. “The hype seems to have been enough to convince our government that nuclear’s last gasp is in fact a new dawn, but at their radioactive cores SMRs remain the same bad bet.
“SMRs have no track record, but initial indications are that the familiar problems of cost overruns and delays will be repeated, and the accumulation of unmanageable waste will continue.”
Parr added: “By continually obsessing about nuclear, the government is taking its eye off the net zero ball, which will have to be delivered through a predominantly renewable, modern electricity grid. No number of SMRs will fix the government’s lacklustre effort to address issues of delayed connections, smart local grids and home efficiency.”
Steve Thomas, an emeritus professor of energy policy at the University of Greenwich, said: “Yet again, the British government has proved credulous to the claims of the nuclear industry that a new generation of technology will solve all the problems of its predecessors.
Since the launch of the first Starlink spacecraft in 2019, the SpaceX satellites have been forced to move over 50,000 times to prevent collisions.
Staggering growth in Starlink collision-avoidance maneuvers in the past six months is sparking concerns over the long-term sustainability of satellite operations as thousands of new spacecraft are poised to launch into orbit in the coming years.
SpaceX‘s Starlink broadband satellites were forced to swerve more than 25,000 times between Dec. 1, 2022, and May 31, 2023 to avoid potentially dangerous approaches to other spacecraft and orbital debris, according to a report filed by SpaceX with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on June 30. That’s about double the number of avoidance maneuvers reported by SpaceX in the previous six-month period that ran from June to November 2022. Since the launch of the first Starlink spacecraft in 2019, the SpaceX satellites have been forced to move over 50,000 times to prevent collisions.
The steep increase in the number of maneuvers worries experts because it follows an exponential curve, leading to concerns that safety of operations in the orbital environment might soon get out of hand.
“Right now, the number of maneuvers is growing exponentially,” Hugh Lewis, a professor of astronautics at the University of Southampton in the U.K. and a leading expert on the impact of megaconstellations on orbital safety, told Space.com. “It’s been doubling every six months, and the problem with exponential trends is that they get to very large numbers very quickly.”
1 million maneuvers by 2028
Data compiled by Lewis shows that, in the first half of 2021, Starlink satellites conducted 2,219 collision-avoidance maneuvers. The number grew to 3,333 in the following six-month period ending in December 2021 and then doubled to 6,873 between December 2021 and June 2022. In the second half of 2022, SpaceX had to alter the paths of its satellites 13,612 times to avoid potential collisions. In the latest report to the FCC, the company declared 25,299 collision-avoidance maneuvers over the past six months, with every satellite having been made to move an average of 6 times. ……………………………………………………………………….
Currently there are about 10,500 satellites orbiting our planet, 8,100 of which are operational, according to the European Space Agency. Things only started to get so congested fairly recently…………………………………………………
Imagine! if artificial intelligence had run the Soviet Union’s missile system on September 26 1983, all-out nuclear war would have erupted. It took the imaginative thinking of Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov to prevent that.
With AI in charge, we will not have a Stanislav Petrov to save us.
New Startup Looks To Blend AI And Nuclear Energy, Oil Price, By Haley Zaremba – Jul 15, 2023
AI’s increasing role in the energy sector is challenged by its own high energy demands.
Sam Altman proposes a symbiotic relationship between AI and nuclear energy to address this issue.
……The future of the global energy sector is in the hands of Artificial Intelligence. ……..
…………..But the relationship between AI and energy goes two ways. AI doesn’t just present opportunities to the energy sector; it also presents significant challenges – one of which is the huge amount of energy that AI itself needs for operational purposes. In some cases, the energy footprints of singular AI training models have equaled that of 125 New York-Beijing round-trip flights, or the lifetime carbon footprint of five cars.
Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI – the now (in)famous firm behind ChatGPT – thinks that nuclear energy will play a key role in keeping AI’s carbon footprint in check. “The AI systems of the future will need tremendous amounts of energy and this fission and fusion can help deliver them,” Altman was recently quoted in the Wall Street Journal. Altman also expressed that he thinks that AI will have some positive implications for nuclear-system designs as well, creating a kind of symbiotic AI-nuclear relationship. This is not a new idea – for years now, researchers have been looking into the various ways that AI and machine learning can be integrated into nuclear power production for a more efficient, less expensive, and safer nuclear energy sector.
Altman is clearly serious about his hope for nuclear energy’s role in the future of the energy and technology sectors. Just this week, it was announced that Oklo, an AI-integrated startup specializing in “nuclear microreactors” will go public in 2024.
Oklo is valued at around $850 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company expects that its innovative microreactors will be ideal for military applications where connection to an existing power grid isn’t possible,………… Oklo has already secured $50 million in funding, $420,000 in grants from the Department of Energy (DOE), and a permit to build its first microreactor at the Idaho National Laboratory, the nation’s leading center for nuclear research. The pilot project is slated to come online by 2026 or 2027.
The government delayed the event over “unforeseen circumstances”
Mini nuclear reactor developers including Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC (LSE:RR.) have been left in the dark after the official launch of Great British Nuclear was delayed on Thursday.
Net zero secretary Grant Shapps had been due to unveil the new public body at London’s science museum before the event was cancelled over “unforeseen circumstances”.
Great British Nuclear, originally announced in the chancellor’s spring budget, will be an arms-length body set up to support the roll-out of small modular reactors (SMRs) in the UK……………..
Rolls-Royce and General Electric (NYSE:GE) had been among those due to attend the event, having both proposed designs for prospective use in the UK.
Rolls is currently the only company which has an SMR design currently passing through regulatory assessments though, carried out by the Office for Nuclear Regulation, Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales.
2 Mycle Schneider, who produces the World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR) says that the recent announcements by the Ontario government about new nuclear reactors at Darlington and Bruce amount to “a mixture of tech fantasy and collective denial of the state of the industry.”
He gave evidence to the Belgian Parliament on SMRs on 20 June 2023, following a first hearing on 30 May 2023. Six of ten presentations were given by technology providers, one by a former administrator of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), one by an International Energy Agency representative, and one by a Dutch ex-government “expert” — a very open, balanced panel – sound familiar?
All ten presentations – including Mycle’s – are available in one volume here. Most are in English. He says they provide “useful documentation on current SMR strategies. NuScale and Rolls Royce were invited but did not show up. Maybe NuScale did not feel like coming… When it became public that the NuScale CFO has sold most of his shares, their value on the stock market plunged even further.
The videos of the hearings, including Q&A are here and here.
Two energy experts discuss the design risks and excessive costs of the NuScale small modular nuclear reactor.
NuScale project distracts from the need to push clean energy sources.
Despite its small size, NuScale has outsize cost and safety problems.
NuScale is one of several companies making long-shot attempts to commercialize what are known as small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs. Its 77-megawatt project is the furthest along in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC, licensing approval process, but in the earliest stages, with a long way to go. But the NRC has identified serious safety concerns, and cost estimates have ballooned in recent years.
EWG has long warned about the folly of investing in nuclear power, including SMRs that are unlikely ever to get off the ground.
And in a new analysis commissioned by EWG, two nuclear experts with decades of experience note significant NuScale cost and safety drawbacks that have been raised by NRC staff.
The experts recently analyzed the November 15, 2022, pre-application readiness assessment report the NRC issued to NuScale, which details many concerns about the project’s safety. The two authors are Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D., president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, which advocates for a safer environment, and M.V. Ramana, Ph.D., a professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia.
Their findings further strengthen the case against more funding for NuScale – yet another nuclear boondoggle that will fleece American taxpayers.
The primary issues they identified were escalation costs and design issues, for which the company has not properly addressed the safety issues involved. These include:
Costs. The projected construction costs of the first proposed NuScale project have grown from $5.3 billion, as estimated in November 2021, to $9.3 billion, in January 2023.
Risks. The NRC and its Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards identified several safety risks in the design for the reactor, in particular with the steam generator.
Energy companies, states and the government should stop throwing good money after bad, wasting it on lofty “all of the above” nuclear plans that will never come to fruition.
Instead they should focus on promoting workable, clean power solutions that already exist, like wind, solar and distributed generation, and associated technologies. Taxpayer dollars should be spent only on technologies that fight the climate crisis and do not have a history of persistent, inevitable ratepayer and taxpayer bailouts. Nuclear power and carbon capture and sequestration both fail that test.
The nuclear money pit
The nuclear industry survives in part thanks to assertions of clean, cheap power, which have never materialized, and an oversize influence in Congress and state legislatures………………………………….
Experts: NuScale’s costs soaring
NuScale’s first SMR plant is intended for the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, or UAMPS. The goal is to provide power to electric utilities in Utah and surrounding states. The target date is 2029, though nuclear plants have typically been plagued by significant delays. Its estimated cost is over $9 billion for just six small reactors that would, in total, be less than half the size of the standard large nuclear unit.
That estimate has increased by $4 billion in less than two years.
But the government keeps throwing taxpayer dollars at NuScale, promising $1.4 billion to the UAMPS project on top of the $400 million it has already squandered.
Other than these expected costs spiraling out of control, Makhijani and Ramana in their analysis find that even though NuScale keeps changing design specifications for its unit, NuScale’s safety analyses have not evaluated the impact of these design changes.
Experts: Changes in design present dangerous power projections
NuScale has increased by 50 percent the power output of its yet-to-be-built SMR reactor design. This means there will be more heat, pressure and radioactivity, which will further stress critical components of the reactor. These factors increase the risk of a catastrophic breakdown and radiation leak.
Unlike any nuclear power plant that’s already online, NuScale would house the reactor core – the nuclear fuel – and steam generator in the same vessel. This would be a departure from the traditional design, in which the steam generator is separated from the fuel, outside the reactor vessel but inside the secondary containment.
The helical design of the steam generator has also never been used in any other commercial nuclear power plant, which makes it hard to evaluate how it would behave in the long run.
Experts: Risky reactor design
The NRC has preliminarily approved NuScale’s design, despite serious questions about the steam generator. And NuScale still hasn’t produced the necessary analysis of all the accidents that could occur. …………………………………………………………….
Experts: NRC ignored risk guidance
The Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, or ACRS, warned in a letter to NRC the “design and performance of the [NuScale] steam generators have not yet been sufficiently validated.”
The 1954 Atomic Energy Act requires ACRS to review and report to the NRC commissioners and staff about safety studies and reactor facility license and license renewable applications, among other issues.
The ACRS noted that NuScale’s plan “introduces different failure modes.”…………………………………………..
Experts: A flawed energy plan
Makhijani and Ramana conclude that the NuScale project, referred to as VOYGR, has too many problems and that there is insufficient information to justify NuScale’s safety claims.
“[T]he 77-MW VOYGR . . . has not received standard design approval, much less full Commission certification. On the contrary, it has received a letter from the NRC staff with 99 ‘significant’ observations and six major challenges,” they write.
Further, they warn:
These problems need real-world analysis, design, and most important, real-world testing to be resolved. Premature wear of the steam generators and their potential failure were not analyzed properly and insufficiently tested even for the (previous) 50 MW design. The hurdles are even higher with the 77-MW version.
The NuScale project is a trainwreck waiting to happen.
