[T]he report’s executive summary certainly gets to the heart of their findings.
“The rhetoric from small modular reactor (SMR) advocates is loud and persistent: This time will be different because the cost overruns and schedule delays that have plagued large reactor construction projects will not be repeated with the new designs,” says the report. “But the few SMRs that have been built (or have been started) paint a different picture – one that looks startlingly similar to the past. Significant construction delays are still the norm and costs have continued to climb.”
Nuclear technologies missed their window. The use cases where they are the best technical solution now are extremely limited, and that means you can get the investment going to improve them.
It’s a curiosity now.
There’s an alternative timeline where Chernobyl doesn’t happen and we decarbonize by leaning on nuclear in the nineties, then transition to renewables about now. But that’s not our timeline. And if it were, it would be in the past now.
From where I stand you couldn’t be further from the reality of the situation.
Nuclear has a number of advantages from low carbon output per kilowatt over lifetime as well as being extremely cheap per kilowatt.
But the real advantage being overlooked is the small foot print and land use compared to other forms power generation. A nuclear reactor is ideal for high density population areas, adding no pollution like fossil fuels and using a fraction of the land that renewables require. And there is room for overlap between renewables and nuclear as well, meaning days where wind or solar would produce more power than usual, its easy to scale back solar production to take advantage of cheaper power, and vice versa for times when renewables aren’t going to generate enough to meet demand nuclear can increase their output relatively quickly and effectively.
The future of nuclear is however one of the most important. We are eventually going to be spending humans to other planets, and having mature, efficient and compact forms of power generation with long lifetimes and minimal start up power from idle states is going to be important, solar gets less effective the further from the sun we get, you can’t stick a wind turbine on a space craft and expect good results, and you’re out of your mind if you want to burn fossil fuels in an oxygen limited environment.
Treating nuclear as more than a curiosity but rather as the genuine lifeline and corner stone of our futures and future generations is significantly more important than fossil fuel profits today and all their propaganda.
Ha, no.