A warning against fetishizing nuclear power so it’s part of every solution
the enthusiasm overlooks some ugly truths about nuclear power.
Many alternative reactor designs are pitched as if they’re novel. They’re not. A good example is the Natrium reactor
The drawbacks of sodium technology should resonate especially loudly for Californians.
The 1959 explosion of a sodium-cooled test reactor at the government’s secretive Santa Susana Field Laboratory outside Simi Valley remains the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history
Today’s younger environmental activists may be more inclined to accept these promises today because their thinking wasn’t forged in the anti-nuclear protests of the 1960s and 1970s, as was that of their older colleagues.
The danger is that they, and society, may have to learn the harsh lessons of nuclear power’s past all over again.
Nuclear energy backers say it’s vital for the fight against global warming. Don’t be so sure, Los Angeles Times, BY MICHAEL HILTZIKBUSINESS COLUMNIST , JAN. 6, 2022
No one would have believed this possible only a few years ago, but nuclear energy has been creeping up in public estimation, despite its long record of unfulfilled promise and cataclysmic missteps.
The impetus has come from government and big business, among other sources.
Billions of dollars in incentives to keep existing nuclear plants operating and to get new nuclear technologies off the drawing board were enacted as part of the $1.2-trillion infrastructure bill signed late last year by President Biden.
You don’t compromise safety to keep a nuclear plant open so you can meet a carbon target—you need to have minimum, stringent safety standards. – EDWIN LYMAN, UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS……………
Some celebrity entrepreneurs have weighed in, without demonstrating that they have given the issue the thorough consideration it deserves. Elon Musk last month tweeted that “unless susceptible to extreme natural disasters, nuclear power plants should not be shut down.”Musk didn’t, however, define “extreme natural disasters” or mention the myriad other reasons that a plant might need to be shuttered, such as advanced age, upside-down economics or dangers in its own design or operation……………..
the enthusiasm overlooks some ugly truths about nuclear power.
The history of nuclear power in America is one of rushed and slipshod engineering, unwarranted assurances of public safety, political influence and financial chicanery, inept and duplicitous regulators, and mismanagement on a grand scale.
Many of the problems originated in the government’s decision to place the technology in the hands of the utility industry, which was ill-equipped to handle anything so complicated.
This record accounts for the technology’s deplorable public reputation, which has made it almost impossible to build a new nuclear plant in the U.S. for decades. Forgetting the history threatens to stage the same drama over again.
The debate over the nuclear power future is really two separate debates.
First, there are the optimistic expectations raised by alternatives to the design of the 93 reactors currently in operation in the U.S. — reactors in which a radioactive core heats water, producing steam to drive electricity-generating turbines.
Then there’s the question of what to do with the existing reactors, many of which have lasted well beyond their design lives. Only 28 of these have remained “competitive” — that is, economically viable — according to energy expert Amory Lovins.
That existing fleet includes Diablo Canyon, whose owner, PG&E, said the plant was facing an unprofitable future when it made the decision to abandon plans to seek a permit renewal from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Many alternative reactor designs are pitched as if they’re novel. They’re not. A good example is the Natrium reactor, which is cooled not by water but liquid sodium and is being promoted by TerraPower, a firm founded by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates.
Far from an advanced new technology, sodium-cooled reactors date from the very dawn of the nuclear power age. They were considered as an alternative to water-cooled reactors for submarine power plants, for example, by Adm. Hyman Rickover, the founder of America’s nuclear navy.
Rickover, whose rigorous standards for technology and crew training made the nuclear navy a success, ordered a prototype sodium reactor for the submarine Seawolf. Almost instantly, the technology demonstrated its flaws.
While the Seawolf was still at the dock, the reactor sprung a leak. “It took us three months, working 24 hours a day, to locate and correct” the leak, Rickover told a congressional committee in 1957.
Rickover abandoned any thought of using the reactors in his submarines, finding them “expensive to build, complex to operate, susceptible to prolonged shut down as a result of even minor malfunctions, and difficult and time-consuming to repair,” as he advised his Navy superiors and technical experts at the Atomic Energy Commission in late 1956 and early 1957.
The drawbacks of sodium technology should resonate especially loudly for Californians.
The 1959 explosion of a sodium-cooled test reactor at the government’s secretive Santa Susana Field Laboratory outside Simi Valley remains the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, venting an immense amount of radioactivity into the air and creating what former California EPA Director Jared Blumenfeld called “one of the most toxic sites in the United States by any kind of definition.”
The three entities controlling portions of the site — Boeing Co., the U.S. Department of Energy and NASA — reached agreements with the state in 2007 and 2010 binding them to restore the site to “background” standards. Much of the work still hasn’t begun.
“There’s been a kind of cult that’s been trying to keep this technology alive for decades” despite persistent evidence of its inadequate reliability or sustainability, says Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists and the author of a report challenging safety and efficiency claims made for Natrium, among other alternative technologies.
“Pretty effective lobbyists” push the idea that “this is somehow a breakthrough technology that’s going to transform nuclear power,” Lyman said of sodium-cooled reactors.
“History tells us that it’s not a very reliable source of power and has a number of safety and security disadvantages that make one wonder why there’s such enthusiasm for it,” he said. None of the other alternatives, he adds, solve the most pressing problem of nuclear power: what to do with the radioactive waste produced by every plant.
………. TerraPower’s utility partner, PacifiCorp, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway (the conglomerate controlled by Warren Buffett), which is to take over the project once it’s operational, has no experience running a nuclear plant.
In any case, the Natrium reactor won’t become operational until 2028 at the earliest. That’s a deadline imposed by the government’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which is providing some of the funding…….
He cautions against “fetishizing nuclear power so it’s part of every solution.” His view is “you don’t compromise safety to keep a nuclear plant open so you can meet a carbon target — you need to have minimum, stringent safety standards.”
By that measure, there’s hardly any doubt that Diablo Canyon should be shut down, and the sooner the better.
The plant’s history makes that case…………………………………………….
The danger is that claims for the future of nuclear energy — that it will be a cheap and efficient path to a carbon-free future — will be as illusory as those of the past, when nuclear power was also promoted as safe and “too cheap to meter.”
Today’s younger environmental activists may be more inclined to accept these promises today because their thinking wasn’t forged in the anti-nuclear protests of the 1960s and 1970s, as was that of their older colleagues. The danger is that they, and society, may have to learn the harsh lessons of nuclear power’s past all over again. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-01-06/column-nuclear-energy-backers-say-its-vital-for-the-fight-against-global-warming-dont-believe-them?fbclid=IwAR015ej03ZDoUA2kcNoc_mAqJS3D2N8T
Safety concerns: NRC was right to deny OKLO’s plan for small nuclear reactors
“The company asserted that its reactor was so small and so safe that it didn’t need to play by the same rules as those used to license larger reactors,” Lyman said. “But the fact remains that even a very small reactor contains enough highly radioactive material to cause significant radiological contamination in the event of an accident or a terrorist attack.”..
NRC denies Oklo Power’s plan to construct 1.5 MW advanced nuclear reactor in Idaho
Utility Dive Jan. 7, 2022 Robert Walton, Reporter
Dive Brief:
- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday announced it denied without prejudice an application by Oklo Power to construct the United States’ first advanced nuclear reactor, in Idaho. The small design, dubbed “Aurora,” would be capable of producing 1.5 MW of electric power.
- The NRC cited “significant information gaps” in the company’s application, including details on potential accidents and its classification of safety systems and components. However, the company can resubmit its application and regulators said they are “prepared to re-engage” the company.
- Oklo is reviewing the decision, but in a statement said it was “eager to continue moving forward” on the Idaho reactor as well as others. Opponents of the project say a failure to provide safety information could put the public at significant risk in the event of an accident or attack.
………………………. according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, NRC was right to reject the application.
“Oklo simply refused to give the NRC the basic information that the agency needs to assess compliance with its regulations and its legal mandate to protect public health, safety, and the environment,” UCS Director of Nuclear Power Safety Edwin Lyman said in an email………
“The company asserted that its reactor was so small and so safe that it didn’t need to play by the same rules as those used to license larger reactors,” Lyman said. “But the fact remains that even a very small reactor contains enough highly radioactive material to cause significant radiological contamination in the event of an accident or a terrorist attack.”………. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nrc-denies-oklo-powers-plan-to-construct-15-mw-advanced-nuclear-reactor-i/616807/
Japan to help build Bill Gates’ high-tech Natrium nuclear reactor in Wyoming
Japan to help build Bill Gates’ high-tech nuclear reactor in Wyoming -Yomiuri https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/japan-help-build-bill-gates-high-tech-nuclear-reactor-wyoming-yomiuri-2022-01-01/Reuters TOKYO. Reporting by Sakura Murakami; Editing by Kim Coghill- The Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd (7011.T) are set to cooperate with the United States and Bill Gates’ venture company to build a high-tech nuclear reactor in Wyoming, the daily Yomiuri reported on Saturday.
The parties will sign an agreement as early as January for JAEA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to provide technical support and data from Japan’s own advanced reactors, the report said citing multiple unidentified sources.
TerraPower, an advanced nuclear power venture founded by Gates, is set to open its Natrium plant in Wyoming in 2028. The U.S. government will provide funding to cover half of the $4 billion project. read more
Terrapower had initially explored the prospect of building an experimental nuclear plant with state-owned China National Nuclear Corp, until it was forced to seek new partners after the administration of Donald Trump restricted nuclear deals with China.
The United States has been competing with China and Russia which also hope to build and export advanced reactors.
Japan, on the other hand, has a bitter history of decommissioning its Monju prototype advanced reactor in 2016, a project which cost $8.5 billion but provided little results and years of controversy.
The Monju facility saw accidents, regulatory breaches, and cover-ups since its conception, and was closed following public distrust of nuclear energy after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Both JAEA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries could not be reached for comment, as their offices were closed for the New Year holidays.
The murky world of financing Small Nuclear Reactors (SMRs)
IKEA it ain’t: don’t go looking for friendly nuclear option, no matter the spin
MICHAEL WEST MEDIA, By Noel Wauchope|December 30, 2021
”……………..[Everyone] should be aware of the financial gymnastics going on in the USA, with NuScale, and in the UK, with Rolls-Royce. That’s just to single out the two most advanced of the many dubious SMR projects still at the starting gate.
The Murdoch media is enthusiastic about SMRs. Missing from the hype are a lot of unanswered questions. For a start — the ”M” stands for ”modular” — meaning that these reactors will be built in pieces, sort of, and transferred to a site, where they will be assembled, like a piece of IKEA furniture. But in fact there are at least 50 designs being promoted, and not all are modular.
The critical question comes down to – the money
The enthusiasm of the SMR lobby for the economic viability of SMRs is not matched by the facts.
For one thing to consider – there’s the price of the electricity to be eventually delivered by these small nuclear reactors. The Minerals Council of Australia estimates that by 2030 and beyond, SMRs could offer power to grids from $64-$77MWh, depending on size and type.
An analysis by WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff, prepared for the 2015-16 South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission, estimated a cost of A$225 / MWh for a reactor based on the NuScale design, about three times higher than the MCA’s target range. CSIRO estimates SMR power costs at A$258-338 / MWh in 2020 and A$129-336 / MWh in 2030.
Then there are the costs of actually getting SMRs in the first place.
In Russia, China, France, and Argentina, the construction is done entirely or largely at taxpayers’ expense, and there is little or no transparency about the costs. But generally in the Western world, electricity production is supposed to be a commercially viable operation. In the context of promoting low -carbon technologies, SMRs are promoted as being cheaper than large ones. It is generally acceptable for the government to kick-start the process, with some funding, but with the understanding that the industry will become successful, profitable.
NuScale financing contortions
In the US, NuScale leads the pack. After its efforts to partner with Romania, UK, Canada and Jordan, NuScale has joined with a Utah-based utility consortium to develop what initially was proposed to be a power plant with 12 small reactors. The project, which is now forecast to cost $5.1 billion, has since been scaled back to six reactors, expected to start coming online in 2029. The Department of Energy (DOE) is to provide an annual supplement of about $130 million a year for a decade. However, that would be dependent upon annual renewals of the funding by Congress during that decade, which is a risk.
NuScale promises to deliver electricity at $55/MWh. UAMPS and NuScale have not explained the methodology used to develop this figure. Meanwhile PacifiCorp and Idaho Power have concluded that electricity from NuScale reactors would cost $94-$121/MWh.
Now NuScale is to go public by merging with what’s known as a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. The company, Spring Valley Acquisition Corporation, is already publicly traded. The new company named NuScale Power Corporation will list on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol SMR. Their new SMR power plants will be called VOYGR, and NuScale will open centres at universities to promote technical training for them. The Department of Energy (DOE) will support these centres with funding, and NuScale will open centres at universities to promote technical training for them. DOE will support these centres with funding.
A SPAC is a type of shell company (shell companies being those not having actual business operations, just specific objectives, in this case, raising capital) The SPAC raises money from the public through initial public offerings, the sponsor getting 20% of the funds invested. Later private investments through public equity, or PIPES, can be added, often bought at a discount price by big institutions. The whole process is done relatively speedily, and with much less scrutiny than in usual mergers. US Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler wants to tighten regulations on SPACs:
Glitzy corporate presentation decks, hyped press releases and celebrity endorsements can balloon a SPAC’s equity well beyond a reasonable value long before proper disclosures are filed, Gensler said.
SPACs have had a chequered history — they enable the sponsors to avoid financial loss, even if the business fails, as many did, in the 1990s. Sixty-five per cent of deals completed in 2021 at a valuation above $1bn are trading below $10 — the price at which they were floated. All of the companies are trading below their stock market highs with some of them down by as much as 70%. Senator Elizabeth Warren and three other Democrats are investigating the imbalance between the financial results for the sponsors and banks versus the early investors.
Rolls-Royce still looking for money
The process of getting funding for the UK’s SMRs is equally tortuous. The government invested £18 million in November 2019, which delivered significant development of the initial design as part of Phase One of the project. At the beginning of November 2021, Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc raised 455 million pounds ($608 million) to fund the development of SMRs, with almost half of the financing coming from the U.K government Rolls-Royce Small Modular Reactor (SMR) business is a consortium, backed by BNF Resources and Exelon Generation. BNF Resources UK Limited is a subsidiary of BNF Capital Limited. Other members of the consortium are Assystem, Atkins, BAM Nuttall, Laing O’Rourke, National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), Jacobs, The Welding Institute (TWI) and Nuclear AMRC, as well as Rolls-Royce. It’s not at all clear how much each group has put into the venture.
For the plan to have the planned £30 billion fleet of mini-nuclear power stations, the business will have to rely on UK taxpayers to help fund the construction of the first of the new designs. New government funding of £210 million announced on November 9 will take forward phase 2, over the next three years, of the so-called Low-Cost Nuclear project to further develop SMR design and take it through the regulatory processes to assess suitability of potential deployment in the UK. Exelon is contributing under an agreement from a year ago to find international markets. Rolls-Royce expects the first five SMR reactors to cost £2.2bn each, falling to £1.8bn for subsequent units.
Rolls-Royce will be seeking more investment for the project to help fund the building of actual SMRs.
The government is currently passing legislation that will allow investors to back projects like SMRs using a regulated asset base (RAB) model, which allows them to recoup upfront costs from the consumers, over the construction period, long before those consumers actually get any electricity from the project.
Mythical beasts
So — what it all boils down to is an agreement to spend about £400 million over the next three years — to perhaps produce a design for a reactor, which might get approved by the regulators, and might find investors who might be willing to pay what will be at least £2 billion to build each one.
It’s not at all clear who is going to end up paying the most for small nuclear reactors, or indeed, if that fleet of SMRs will ever become a reality. It will probably be the taxpayers. I haven’t mentioned all those ancillary costs — of winning community approval, of security, waste disposal.
In the meantime, it’s worth being wary about the financial aspects, given the obscure manipulations going on in the US and UK, and remembering that not yet does one of these mythical beasts, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors actually exist.
Renewables remain the cheapest “new-build” source of energy generation. They exist. They work. https://www.michaelwest.com.au/ikea-it-aint-small-modular-nuclear-reactors/
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NuScale’s Small Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) to go public with the dodgy Special Purpose Acquisition Company System
US nuclear reactor company NuScale to go public via SPAC, Capital.com, 30 Dec 21,
NuScale Power announced plans to go public in a merger with blank cheque company Spring Valley Acquisition earlier this month, highlighting the growing area of small nuclear power reactors……. So far, NuScale is the first and only company to design a SMR that received approval from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to the company’s presentation to investors…….
Going public
The deal values NuScale at $1.9bn, which implies a four-times multiple over its 2026 estimated EBITDA, CEO of Spring Valley Acquisition Chris Sorrells said in a call with investors.
The merger is expected to close in 2022 and will make NuScale a public company that trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker “SVIIU.”
The company has yet to produce revenue but estimates that once it’s incorporated, the company can begin producing around $16m in revenue next year and boost that to $13.1bn by 2030, according to the presentation.
NuScale was formed in 2007 when Oregon State University (OSU) granted exclusive rights to the core SMR technology patents. OSU maintains an interest in the company due to the technology transfer agreement.
Other companies that have invested in NuScale include Samsung’s construction subsidiary, Japanese engineering company JGC Holdings and Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction……
One of the first customers of NuScale’s technology will be Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, which is expected to deploy a new plant in Idaho by 2029 for its Carbon Free Power Project.
Just last month, Romania’s state-owned electric utility service SN Nuclearelectrica signed an agreement to advance the deployment of NuScale’s technology in the country as early as 2027–2028.
Canada to be the guinea pig for America’s probably unviable small nuclear reactor.
“There’s lots of enthusiasm among nuclear reactor designers, developers and national laboratories, and academic nuclear engineering departments” about SMRs, said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who published a report on SMR reactor designs in early 2021. “
There’s a lot of supply but there’s not much demand, because utilities don’t want to be guinea pigs.”
cost escalation is practically inevitable.
Canada’s first new nuclear reactor in decades is an American design. Will it prompt a rethink of government support? The Globe and Mail, MATTHEW MCCLEARN, 26 Dec 21, Ontario Power Generation’s selection of GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy to help build a small modular reactor (SMR) at its Darlington station in Clarington, Ont., set in motion events that could shape Canada’s nuclear industry for decades to come.
OPG’s choice, announced in December, is the BWRX-300. It’s a light water reactor, the variety most popular in developed countries, and quite unlike Canada’s existing fleet of CANDU heavy water reactors. Though not exactly small – the BWRX’s 300-megawatt nameplate capacity is roughly equivalent to a large wind farm – it would produce only one-third as much electricity as traditional reactors. It would use different fuel, produce different wastes and possibly have different safety implications.
The Darlington SMR would be the first BWRX-300 ever constructed. By moving first, OPG hopes Ontario will become embedded in a global supply chain for these reactors.
“OPG ourselves, we don’t really get anything out of it – it’s a lot of work,” said Robin Manley, OPG’s vice-president of nuclear development. “Our goal is to have as many contracts signed with Canadian suppliers as we possibly can.” But that might not satisfy some critics, who’ve protested OPG’s selection of a U.S. design by GE Hitachi, which is based in North Carolina.
Ontario Power Generation chose GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy to build a light water reactor .
It does seem to confirm the end of Canada’s tradition of homegrown reactors. The BWRX-300 would be Canada’s first new reactor since Darlington Unit 4 in Ontario, completed in 1993. According to Mycle Schneider Consulting, the average age of the country’s 19 operational reactors is 38 years. Attempts to update the CANDU design proved largely fruitless; OPG and Bruce Power opted to refurbish reactors at Darlington and Bruce stations to operate another few decades, while sizing up SMRs as a possible next act.
Time is running short. This decade is widely regarded as crucial for building emissions-free generation capacity. SMRs will be late to that party even if this BWRX-300 is built on time. Delays and cost overruns, ever-present risks with any reactor, could kill its prospects.
The partnership with OPG represents a major coup for GE Hitachi, a U.S.-Japanese alliance that set up its SMR subsidiary in Canada less than a year ago. There are at least 50 SMR designs worldwide, but most exist only on paper; vendors compete vigorously to sell to experienced nuclear operators such as OPG because they represent an opportunity to build a bona fide reactor that might entice other clients. For the same reason, OPG’s decision is a blow to the losing candidates, Oakville, Ont.-based Terrestrial Energy Inc. and X-energy, an American vendor
“There’s lots of enthusiasm among nuclear reactor designers, developers and national laboratories, and academic nuclear engineering departments” about SMRs, said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who published a report on SMR reactor designs in early 2021. “There’s a lot of supply but there’s not much demand, because utilities don’t want to be guinea pigs.”
Nuclear industry executives and government officials hope the Darlington SMR will be the first of many deployed in Ontario and beyond. SaskPower is also shopping; it has collaborated with OPG since 2017, and said the BWRX-300 is among its candidates. Canada has a small population, so observers doubt the country could support supply chains for multiple reactor designs.
But OPG’s selection of an American SMR has drawn some sharp criticism. Some observers assumed Terrestrial enjoyed a home turf advantage, particularly in light of the federal government’s decision to invest $20-million toward its Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR). The Society of Professional Engineers and Associates, a union representing engineers and others working on CANDU reactors, complained that “priority should have been given to Canadian design.”
“It is a slap in the face for Terrestrial,” said M.V. Ramana, professor at the University of British Columbia’s Liu Institute for Global Issues. “It is not a good sign for Canada’s nuclear industry.”
Prof. Ramana added that OPG’s decision may prompt a rethinking of government support to SMR developers. In addition to Terrestrial’s funding, Moltex Energy received $50.5-million from the federal Strategic Innovation Fund and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency to advance the Stable Salt Reactor-Wasteburner it is working on in New Brunswick. ARC Clean Energy received $20-million from New Brunswick’s government toward its ARC-100 reactor.
“If these companies are not able to persuade OPG, then maybe we should stop funding them,” he said…………………..
Unlike CANDUs, which consume unenriched uranium, light water reactors require fuel enriched to increase Uranium-235 content. Mr. Lyman said that by adopting any non-CANDU design, Canada will become dependent on enriched fuel imported from the U.S., Europe or elsewhere.
The industry would also need to learn how to dispose of unfamiliar wastes. The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), which is in the final stages of selecting an underground storage site for Canada’s radioactive spent fuel, said spent BWRX-300 fuel would generate more heat and radioactivity than CANDU fuel, but could be stored in fewer containers, placed further apart.
“We will learn from our international partners who already have plans to permanently store this type of waste in a deep geological repository,” the NWMO said in a statement.
All this assumes OPG’s reactor gets built. To begin with, the BWRX-300 actually isn’t licensed to be built anywhere. GE Hitachi is participating in the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s Vendor Design Review, through which it receives early feedback from the regulator on its reactor. ………
critics say completing the reactor by 2028 is a tall order. According to Mycle Schneider Consulting, one in eight reactors that have begun construction since 1951 were never connected to the grid. Many survivors, meanwhile, arrived years later than promised.
Mr. Manley said 2028 is “an aspirational goal” rather than a hard deadline. The project schedule will firm up over the next two years.
OPG has yet to publish a cost estimate, but according to a report published by PwC, the SMR project “is expected to spend $2-billion over seven years.” That’s already higher than the US$1-billion price tag GE Hitachi promised for a BWRX-300 in 2019. (In public presentations, GE executives declared that keeping the price below US$1-billion was crucial to its plans to exponentially grow its customer base.)……
Prof. Ramana said cost escalation is practically inevitable……….https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-canadas-first-new-nuclear-reactor-in-decades-is-an-american-design/
ROLLS ROYCE FALLS 3% ON QATARI INVESTMENT IN SMALL NUCLEAR BUSINESS
- Rolls Royce Holding PLC (LON: RR) has fallen 3% on news of the Qatari investment into the small nuclear reactor business
- It may well not be the investment itself that is the catalyst for the price change but Omicron
- The £85 million Qatar investment isn’t really a material number for Rolls Royce, even as it’s a vote of confidence in the programme.
Rolls Royce shares have continued their recent decline even as the news comes through of a Qatari investment in the small nuclear reactor programme. This could be seen as a surprise – investment in such a programme is likely to be a good deal for Rolls Royce after all. On the other hand, £85 million, the size of the investment, isn’t a large number compared to Rolls Royce – it’s not, as they say, a material number.
The likelihood is therefore that it is wider events driving the Rolls Royce share price, Omicron continues to rage around the world, air travel becomes increasingly restricted and so on. It’s worth pointing out that the RR incomes do not depend, particularly, on actually selling engines to people. There are fees involved in that, most certainly, but there’s an element of selling razors in how the business work. Once you’ve sold someone a razor then you’ve a capitve market for razor blades. Once you’ve got an engine in an aircraft then there’s a decades-long maintenance and repair income flow. That Rolls Royce income stream though depends upon hours in the air – exactly the thing being depressed by Omicron.
Rolls Royce shares have continued their recent decline even as the news comes through of a Qatari investment in the small nuclear reactor programme. This could be seen as a surprise – investment in such a programme is likely to be a good deal for Rolls Royce after all. On the other hand, £85 million, the size of the investment, isn’t a large number compared to Rolls Royce – it’s not, as they say, a material number.
The likelihood is therefore that it is wider events driving the Rolls Royce share price, Omicron continues to rage around the world, air travel becomes increasingly restricted and so on. It’s worth pointing out that the RR incomes do not depend, particularly, on actually selling engines to people. There are fees involved in that, most certainly, but there’s an element of selling razors in how the business work. Once you’ve sold someone a razor then you’ve a capitve market for razor blades. Once you’ve got an engine in an aircraft then there’s a decades-long maintenance and repair income flow. That Rolls Royce income stream though depends upon hours in the air – exactly the thing being depressed by Omicron. https://www.asktraders.com/analysis/rolls-royce-falls-3-on-qatari-investment-in-small-nuclear-business/
Bill Gates’ sodium-cooled ‘Natrium’ nuclear reactor design – strikingly like the disastrous reactors at Santa Susana Field Lab.
Most striking of all is the success of official campaigns asserting that even the most serious accidents have caused little or no harm
Spent Fuel, Harpers, by Andrew Cockburn, 20 Dec 21, The risky resurgence of nuclear power ” …………………………. Gates and other backers extoll the promise of TerraPower’s Natrium reactors, which are cooled not by water, as commercial U.S. nuclear reactors are, but by liquid sodium. This material has a high boiling point, some 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit, which in theory enables the reactor to run at extreme temperatures without the extraordinary pressures that, in turn, require huge, expensive structures……………….
Prosperous and 70 percent white, West Hills, California, is one of the communities that have sprouted near the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in the decades since the 1959 meltdown. Unlike the poor, sick, and embittered residents of Shell Bluff, people living in West Hills had until recently only the barest inkling that nuclear power in the neighborhood might have had unwelcome consequences. “Almost no one knew about the Santa Susanna Field Lab, or they thought it was an urban legend,” Melissa Bumstead, who grew up in nearby Thousand Oaks, told me recently. In 2014, Bumstead’s four-year-old daughter, Grace, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia. “This has no environmental link,” her pediatric oncologist told her firmly. Childhood cancers were rare, and this was just cruel luck.
Then, while taking Grace to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Bumstead ran into a woman who recognized her from the local park where their young daughters played. The woman’s child had neuroblastoma, another rare cancer, as did another from nearby Simi Valley, whom they encountered while the children were getting chemo. Back at home, someone on her street noticed the childhood cancer awareness sticker on Bumstead’s car and mentioned that another neighbor had died of cancer as a teenager.
Bumstead began to draw a map detailing the cluster of cancer deaths in small children just in the previous six years, but stopped working on it in 2017. “I had such severe PTSD when I added children onto it, my therapist told me to stop.” But it is still happening, she said, mentioning the unusual number of bald children she had noticed in local elementary schools in recent years, as well as the far-above-average rate of breast cancer cases recorded in the area. A cleanup of the field lab was due to be completed in 2017, but it has yet to begin.
I called Bumstead because I had been struck by the fact thatTerraPower’s Natrium reactor resembles in its basic features the long-ago Sodium Reactor Experiment at Santa Susana. (Natrium is Latin for sodium.) “That’s exactly what we had!” Bumstead exclaimed when I mentioned that liquid sodium is integral to TerraPower’s project. “The meltdown was in the sodium reactor.” As her comment made clear, such liquid sodium technology is by no means innovative.
Nor, in an extensive history of experiments, has it ever proved popular—not least because liquid sodium explodes when it comes into contact with water, and burns when exposed to air. In addition, it is highly corrosive to metal, which is one reason the technology was rapidly abandoned by the U.S. Navy after a tryout in the Seawolf submarine in 1957.
That system “was leaking before it even left the dock on its first voyage,” recalls Foster Blair, a longtime senior engineer with the Navy’s reactor program. The Navy eventually encased the reactor in steel and dropped it into the sea 130 miles off the coast of Maryland, with the assurance that the container would not corrode while the contents were still radioactive. The main novelty of the Natrium reactor is a tank that stores molten salt, which can drive steam generators to produce extra power when demand surges. “Interesting idea,” Blair commented. “But from an engineering standpoint one that has some real potential problems, namely the corrosion of the high-temperature salt in just about any metal container over any period of time.”
TerraPower’s Jeff Navin assured me in response that Natrium “is designed to be a safe, cost-effective commercial reactor.” He added that Natrium’s use of uranium-based metal fuel would increase the reactor’s safety and performance. Blair told me that such a system had been tried and abandoned in the Fifties because the solid fuel swelled and grew after fissioning.
As the sodium saga indicates, the true history of nuclear energy is largely unknown to all but specialists, which is ironic given that it keeps repeating itself. The story of Santa Susana follows the same path as more famous disasters, most strikingly in the studious indifference of those in charge to signs of impending catastrophe.The operators at Santa Susana shrugged off evidence of problems with the cooling system for weeks prior to the meltdown, and even restarted the reactor after initial trouble. Soviet nuclear authorities covered up at least one accident at Chernobyl before the disaster and ignored warnings that the reactor was dangerously unsafe. The Fukushima plant’s designers didn’t account for the known risk of massive tsunamis, a vulnerability augmented by inadequate safety precautions that were overlooked by regulators. Automatic safety features at Santa Susana did not work. This was also the case at Fukushima, where vital backup generators were destroyed by the tidal wave.
No one knows exactly how much radiation was released by Santa Susana—it exceeded the scale of the monitors. Nor was there any precise accounting of the radioactivity released at Chernobyl. Fukushima emitted far less, yet the prime minister of Japan prepared plans to evacuate fifty million people, which would have meant, as he later recounted, the end of Japan as a functioning state. Another common thread is the attempt by overseers, both corporate and governmental, to conceal information from the public for as long as possible. Santa Susana holds the prize in this regard: its coverup was sustained for twenty years, until students at UCLA found the truth in Atomic Energy Commission documents.
Most striking of all is the success of official campaigns asserting that even the most serious accidents have caused little or no harm……………………
“The right not to know” about the effects of nuclear power is currently embraced far beyond Fukushima. In the face of escalating alarm about climate change, the siren song of “clean and affordable and reliable” power finds an audience eager to overlook a business model that is dependent on state support and often greased with corruption; failed experiments now hailed as “innovative”; a pattern of artful disinformation; and a trail of poison from accidents and leaks (not to mention the 95,000 tons of radioactive waste currently stored at reactor sites with nowhere to go) that will affect generations yet unborn. Arguments by proponents of renewables that wind, solar, and geothermal power can fill the gap on their own have found little traction with policymakers. Ignoring history, we may be condemned to repeat it. Bill Gates has bet a billion dollars on that. https://harpers.org/archive/2022/01/spent-fuel-the-risky-resurgence-of-nuclear-power/
Small nuclear reactors for military use would be too dangerous – excellent targets for the enemy
In normal operation, they release potentially hazardous quantities of fission products that would be widely distributed by any penetration of the reactor vessel. More worryingly, the resiliency of tri-structural isotropic particles to kinetic impact is questionable: The silicon carbide coating around the fuel material is brittle and may fracture if impacted by munitions.
Further, graphite moderator material, which is used extensively in most mobile power plant cores, is vulnerable to oxidation when exposed to air or water at high temperatures, creating the possibility of a catastrophic graphite fire distributing radioactive ash. Even in the case of intact (non-leaking) fuel fragments being distributed by a strike, the radiological consequences for readiness and effectiveness are dire.
Given these vulnerabilities, sophisticated adversaries seeking to hinder U.S. forces are likely to realize the utility of the reactor as an area-denial target…….. , a reactor strike offers months of exclusion at the cost of only a few well-placed high-explosive warheads, a capability well within reach of even regional adversaries
Even an unsuccessful or minimally damaging attack on a reactor could offer an adversary significant benefits…………..placing these reactors in combat zones introduces nuclear reactors as valid military targets,
MOBILE NUCLEAR POWER REACTORS WON’T SOLVE THE ARMY’S ENERGY PROBLEMS, War on the Rocks, 14 Dec 21, JAKE HECLA ”………… As China and Russia develop microreactors for propulsion, the U.S. Army is pursuing the ultimate in self-sufficient energy solutions: the capability to field mobile nuclear power plants. In this vision of a nuclearized future, the Army will replace diesel generator banks with microreactors the size of shipping containers for electricity production by the mid-2020s.
……. the question is whether or not reactors can truly be made suitable for military use. Are they an energy panacea, or will they prove to be high-value targets capable of crippling entire bases with a single strike?
nuclear power program is confidently sprinting into uncharted territory in pursuit of a solution to its growing energy needs and has promised to put power on the grid within three years. However, the Army has not fielded a reactor since the 1960s and has made claims of safety and accident tolerance that contradict a half-century of nuclear industry experience.
The Army appears set to credulously accept industry claims of complete safety that are founded in wishful thinking and characterized by willful circumvention of basic design safety principles………..
Buyer beware: NuScale tries a new way to get funding for its small nuclear reactor plan
An Oregon company is going public to raise money for nuclear power ambitions, OPD, 15 Dec 21,
……………NuScale, headquartered in the Portland suburb of Tigard, will go public by merging with what’s known as a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. The company, Spring Valley Acquisition Corporation, is already publicly traded. Such mergers have recently gained popularity on Wall Street by allowing private companies the option to go public without the costs or risks associated with the more conventional initial public offering, or IPO.
Other Oregon businesses like the vacation rental company Vacasa and battery manufacturer ESS Tech have also gone public by merging with so-called “blank check” companies. In each of those cases, some investors pulled out when news of the mergers dropped, leaving each company with less money than they’d initially hoped……………
Dr Jim Green dissects the hype surrounding Small ”Modular” Nuclear Reactors
Nuclear power’s economic failure, Ecologist, Dr Jim Green, 13th December 2021 Small modular reactors
Small modular reactors (SMRs) are heavily promoted but construction projects are few and far between and have exhibited disastrous cost overruns and multi-year delays.
It should be noted that none of the projects discussed below meet the ‘modular’ definition of serial factory production of reactor components, which could potentially drive down costs.
Using that definition, no SMRs have ever been built and no country, company or utility is building the infrastructure for SMR construction.
In 2004, when the CAREM SMR in Argentina was in the planning stage, Argentina’s Bariloche Atomic Center estimated a cost of US$1 billion / GW for an integrated 300 MW plant (while acknowledging that to achieve such a cost would be a “very difficult task”).
Now, the cost estimate for the CAREM reactor is a mind-boggling US$23.4 billion / GW (US$750 million / 32 MW). That’s a truckload of money for a reactor with the capacity of two large wind turbines. The project is seven years behind schedule and costs will likely increase further.
Russia’s floating plant
Russia’s floating nuclear power plant (with two 35 MW reactors) is said to be the only operating SMR anywhere in the world (although it doesn’t fit the ‘modular’ definition of serial factory production).
The construction cost increased six-fold from 6 billion rubles to 37 billion rubles (US$502 million).
According to the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency, electricity produced by the Russian floating plant costs an estimated US$200 / MWh, with the high cost due to large staffing requirements, high fuel costs, and resources required to maintain the barge and coastal infrastructure.
The cost of electricity produced by the Russian plant exceeds costs from large reactors (US$131-204) even though SMRs are being promoted as the solution to the exorbitant costs of large nuclear plants.
Climate solution?
SMRs are being promoted as important potential contributors to climate change abatement but the primary purpose of the Russian plant is to power fossil fuel mining operations in the Arctic.
A 2016 report said that the estimated construction cost of China’s demonstration 210 MW high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) is about US$5 billion / GW, about twice the initial cost estimates, and that cost increases have arisen from higher material and component costs, increases in labour costs, and project delays.
The World Nuclear Association states that the cost is US$6 billion / GW.
Those figures are 2-3 times higher than the US$2 billion / GW estimate in a 2009 paper by Tsinghua University researchers.
China reportedly plans to upscale the HTGR design to 655 MW but the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology at Tsinghua University expects the cost of a 655 MW HTGR will be 15-20 percent higher than the cost of a conventional 600 MW pressurised water reactor.
HTGR plans dropped
NucNet reported in 2020 that China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Corp dropped plans to manufacture 20 HTGR units after levelised cost of electricity estimates rose to levels higher than a conventional pressurised water reactor such as China’s indigenous Hualong One.
Likewise, the World Nuclear Association states that plans for 18 additional HTGRs at the same site as the demonstration plant have been “dropped”.
In addition to the CAREM reactor in Argentina and the HTGR in China, the World Nuclear Association lists just two other SMR construction projects.
In July 2021, China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) New Energy Corporation began construction of the 125 MW pressurised water reactor ACP100.
According to CNNC, construction costs per kilowatt will be twice the cost of large reactors, and the levelised cost of electricity will be 50 percent higher than large reactors.
Fast reactor
In June 2021, construction of the 300 MW demonstration lead-cooled BREST fast reactor began in Russia.
In 2012, the estimated cost for the reactor and associated facilities was 42 billion rubles; now, the estimate is 100 billion rubles (US$1.36 billion).
Much more could be said about the proliferation of SMRs in the ‘planning’ stage, and the accompanying hype.
For example a recent review asserts that more than 30 demonstrations of different ‘advanced’ reactor designs are in progress across the globe.
In fact, few have progressed beyond the planning stage, and few will. Private-sector funding has been scant and taxpayer funding has generally been well short of that required for SMR construction projects to proceed.
Subsidies
Large taxpayer subsidies might get some projects, such as the NuScale project in the US or the Rolls-Royce mid-sized reactor project in the UK, to the construction stage.
Or they may join the growing list of abandoned SMR projects:
* The French government abandoned the planned 100-200 MW ASTRID demonstration fast reactor in 2019.
* Babcock & Wilcox abandoned its Generation mPower SMR project in the US despite receiving government funding of US$111 million.
* Transatomic Power gave up on its molten salt reactor R&D in 2018.
* MidAmerican Energy gave up on its plans for SMRs in Iowa in 2013 after failing to secure legislation that would require rate-payers to partially fund construction costs.
* TerraPower abandoned its plan for a prototype fast neutron reactor in China due to restrictions placed on nuclear trade with China by the Trump administration.
* The UK government abandoned consideration of ‘integral fast reactors’ for plutonium disposition in 2019 and the US government did the same in 2015.
Hype
So we have a history of failed small reactor projects.
And a handful of recent construction projects, most subject to major cost overruns and multi-year delays.
And the possibility of a small number of SMR construction projects over the next decade.
Clearly the hype surrounding SMRs lacks justification.
Moreover, there are disturbing, multifaceted connections between SMR projects and nuclear weapons proliferation, and between SMRs and fossil fuel mining.
Hype cycle
Dr Mark Cooper connects the current SMR hype to the hype surrounding the ‘nuclear renaissance’ in the late 2000s:
“The vendors and academic institutions that were among the most avid enthusiasts in propagating the early, extremely optimistic cost estimates of the “nuclear renaissance” are the same entities now producing extremely optimistic cost estimates for the next nuclear technology. We are now in the midst of the SMR hype cycle.
* Vendors produce low-cost estimates.
* Advocates offer theoretical explanations as to why the new nuclear technology will be cost competitive.
* Government authorities then bless the estimates by funding studies from friendly academics.” ………………. https://theecologist.org/2021/dec/13/nuclear-powers-economic-failure
Analysis: Small Modular Reactors Are Decades Away. That Suits the Fossil Lobby Just Fine.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that the fossil fuel lobby in all three countries is keen to support nuclear power as “one of the answers to climate change.” Unlike renewables that can be deployed quickly, new nuclear power is decades away, providing breathing space for a dying industry to go on exploiting fossil fuels while nuclear power plants are built.
Analysis: Small Modular Reactors Are Decades Away. That Suits the Fossil Lobby Just Fine. https://www.theenergymix.com/2021/12/01/analysis-small-modular-reactors-are-decades-away-that-suits-the-fossil-lobby-just-fine/December 1, 2021
Primary Author: Paul Brown @pbrown4348 Media outlets and the energy journalists employed by them seem to have lost their critical faculties when it comes to writing about small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), according to critics who think the industry has no hope of delivering on its promises to build a new generation of power stations.
In the build-up to the climate talks at COP 26 in Glasgow, through the negotiations and afterwards, small modular reactors were repeatedly discussed enthusiastically in newspaper articles, government announcements, and by the nuclear industry.
In every article or press release these reactors, which in the UK have yet to leave the drawing board, were touted as a vital part of Britain’s efforts to reach zero emissions by 2050. The same treatment has been given to similar plans in Canada, France, and the United States.
Oil Price reported Rolls Royce, the British engineering giant, was “breathing life back into the nuclear industry” by promising the first reactor in operation by the early 2030s and 10 by 2035.
After months of hype, having been given £210 million of British government money and raised £250 million from private investors, Rolls Royce has finally applied to the UK licencing authority to have its design approved so construction can begin.
Rolls-Royce SMR has been established to deliver a low-cost, deployable, scalable, and investable program of new nuclear power plants,” said CEO Tom Samson. “Our transformative approach to delivering nuclear power, based on predictable factory-built components, is unique, and the nuclear technology is proven. Investors see a tremendous opportunity to decarbonize the U.K. through stable baseload nuclear power, in addition to fulfilling a vital export need as countries identify nuclear as an opportunity to decarbonize.”
Meanwhile, campaigners and climate policy specialists at the Glasgow talks were looking for fast, deep cuts in carbon emissions before 2030, to enable the planet to have a chance of staying below 1.5°C. They cast Rolls-Royce’s plans, which have been re-announced repeatedly over several months, as another prime example of “greenwash” or “kicking the can down the road.”
Nor did campaigners at Glasgow miss the fact that Britain, Canada, and the United States, the three countries with most enthusiasm for small modular reactors, have something else in common: Their wish to go on extracting oil and gas that scientists say needs to be kept in the ground if the 1.5°C limit is not to be breached.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that the fossil fuel lobby in all three countries is keen to support nuclear power as “one of the answers to climate change.” Unlike renewables that can be deployed quickly, new nuclear power is decades away, providing breathing space for a dying industry to go on exploiting fossil fuels while nuclear power plants are built.
Jonathon Porritt, chair of the U.K.’s Sustainable Development Commission between 2000 and 2009 and founder member of Forum for the Future, is scathing about the plans of the U.K. government and Rolls Royce.
He says taking the SMR through the Generic Design Assessment process takes at least four years, more likely five, and even if it passes it will take years to build, given the need to find sites and seek planning permission amid likely public opposition.
To be generous, Porritt said, it would be 2035 before the first was commissioned, let alone the five to 16 reactors Rolls Royce wants to build.
“It is therefore of zero benefit in terms of meeting the (British) government’s own target of a 78% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how many times ministers bang this particular drum, or how many times deplorably gullible journalists in the BBC, Financial Times, Times, and the Daily Telegraph suck it all up. Moonshine is still moonshine.”
“It’s all such a pathetic waste of time—and of taxpayers’ money,” he added. “Whatever the time scale, SMRs will never compete with renewables plus storage.”
Porritt went on to discuss tidal stream energy using undersea turbines rather like wind turbines, which two British companies are developing with some success, and the even greater potential of using the tidal range—the height difference between low and high tide—to generate electricity to generate electricity through traditional turbines. Since Britain has the second-highest tides in the world after Canada and is surrounded by the sea, it has huge potential—but is ignored by the U.K. government.
“If our government was genuinely serious about energy security (instead of finding ways of propping up Rolls-Royce to support our nuclear weapons program), tidal power would be top of its list,” Porritt concluded.
Not all publications, however, agree with the mainstream British press about nuclear power. Under the headline “Nuclear Power Won’t Save the World—It Won’t Even Help”, published in the Green Energy Times, climate writer and retired computer engineer George Harvey said the cost estimates and timetables for nuclear power were never realistic.
“All told, we might say that putting money into nuclear power goes beyond being a monumental waste,” he wrote. “It detracts from the overarching issue of dealing with climate change by making that money unavailable for dealing with the problem using less expensive, more reliable energy that can be built far more quickly.”
New Name- Same Scam. NuScale small nuclear reactors become ‘VOYGR”, universities co-opted.
NuScale SMR plants become VOYGR 03 December 2021,
NuScale Power’s small modular reactor (SMR) power plants are to be named VOYGR, the company has announced. The company is working towards commercialising the technology and aims to be ready to deliver the first VOYGR plant to public power consortium Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems’ Carbon Free Power Project by the end of the decade………
UAMPS earlier this year said it expects to submit a combined licence application for the Carbon Free Power Project – currently envisaged as a six-module plant – to the NRC in 2024. The plant is to be located on a site at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Idaho National Laboratory…….
Training centre
NuScale has now opened a third university-based centre to provide training and outreach opportunities through simulated, real-world nuclear power plant operation scenarios. The NuScale Energy Exploration (E2) Center, opened in collaboration with the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, is at the Center for Advanced Small Modular and Micro Reactors located in College Station, Texas, and uses state-of-the-art computer modelling within a simulation of the control room of a 12-unit NuScale power plant control.
Previous E2 Centers were opened at Oregon State University, in November 2020, and at the University of Idaho, in August 2021. The centres are supported by a 2019 DOE grant to broaden the understanding of advanced nuclear technology in a control room setting. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/NuScale-SMR-plants-become-VOYGR
France joins the Small Nuclear Reactor frenzy, bringing out its odd version ”NAAREA”
French engineering group Assystem has signed a cooperation agreement with
newly-created French micro-reactor developer Naarea to build its
ultra-compact eXtra Small Modular Reactor (XSMR). Dassault Systèmes is to
supply Naarea with a cloud-based platform on which to virtually design the
1 to 40 MW molten salt reactor. Naarea expects the first units of XSMR to
be produced by 2030.
The company says its ultra-compact molten salt reactor uses “the untapped potential of used radioactive materials, and thorium, unused mining waste.” Naarea noted, “The current stocks of these two wastes will supply the energy needs of humanity for thousands of years, and reconcile humanity with its future.”
World Nuclear News 3rd Dec 2021
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Assystem-to-cooperate-with-Naarea-on-micro-reactor
Canada to get its version of the mythical beast – the Small Nuclear Reactor – GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) BWRX-300
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) will build a GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) BWRX-300 small modular reactor (SMR) at its Darlington Nuclear Station in Clarington, Ontario, marking a major triumph for the nuclear vendor in a stiff competition for the much-watched utility-scale project.
OPG announced the selection of the GE Hitachi BWRX-300 SMR over competitors X-energy and Terrestrial Energy in a live stream on Dec. 2. The utility said it will now work with GE Hitachi on the SMR engineering, design, planning, preparing the licensing and permitting materials, and performing site preparation activities. The companies are targeting a “mutual goal of constructing Canada’s first commercial, grid-scale SMR, projected to be completed as early as 2028.” Site preparation, which will include
“installation of the necessary construction services,” is slated to begin in the spring of 2022, pending appropriate approvals. OPG additionally said it will apply to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
(CNSC) for a License to Construct the SMR by the end of 2022.
Power Mag 2nd Dec 2021
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of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
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