Why people want to put small nuclear reactors everywhere

This is supposed to be the next great hope for

nuclear

energy. It promises to solve all the problems of traditional

nuclear

energy, making it: "...cheaper, faster and easier to build." "...

small

er, safer modular units." "...a turning point for nuclear energy in the future." It's called a Small Modular Reactor, and over the past few decades, more than 80 startups and projects have been working on this futuristic vision. But there is a big problem: so far, only one has been built. "There are reasons why

small

modular

reactors

are not built, although many

people

talk about them." Nuclear power is back in the spotlight as the world races to find clean energy alternatives.

SMRs could be a really useful tool for doing things that large nuclear plants can't yet do, and they have an advantage thanks to renewables because they could provide constant power

everywhere

. But after decades of nuclear decline, Western countries are really struggling to make this technology work. And developing countries, such as China, Russia and India, appear to be moving ahead rapidly. So, are SMRs worth all the hype and how can we make them happen? Nuclear energy is a very divisive topic, with many strong arguments for and against the technology. It is a powerful low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels, and unlike renewables like solar and wind, which fluctuate depending on the weather, nuclear energy has a constant output.

The IEA, an international body that advises governments on the clean energy transition, says nuclear power must more than double by 2050 if we are to have any chance of reaching net zero. The problem with nuclear power is that it's really big and expensive, takes too long to build, and could cause a civilization-ending disaster. "In the '70s and before the '80s, there was great public support." Dr. Kuhika Gupta investigates public support for nuclear energy in the United States and India. "That momentum really crashed in the '80s and '90s with the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island incidents." We made a video about the rise and fall of nuclear energy as a tool to fight climate change, which you can watch here.

Nuclear power really struggled to recover from those major disasters, and when the Fukushima nuclear accident occurred in 2011, the industry's credibility suffered another blow. But things are starting to look up again. "Public support may have begun to return to pre-Fukushima levels. And support is even greater for small, modular or other advanced reactor technologies." This could be because many of these SMRs have very eye-catching advertising. "...the small Westinghouse AP300 modular reactor..." "...our voygr SMR power plants..." While many different SMRs are being developed, there are currently four main types, each of which uses a different coolant to manage the extreme heat of a nuclear fission reaction.

They are: light water, high temperature gas, liquid metal and molten salt. However, the most common type is light water

reactors

. They are very similar to traditional nuclear power plants. which are almost all water cooled, which makes them much easier to design and approve, since current nuclear regulations are mainly based on water cooled reactors, so for light water reactors, the idea is to take a large and traditional nuclear energy. plant, reduce it and mass produce it "It would work much like passenger planes. Dr. Adam Stein is an engineer, researcher and consultant focusing on nuclear energy. power plants in the past, which is made completely from scratch, usually at the power plant site...

If you think about a large jumbo jet, it is built in a factory consistently with the same parts every time and with a rigorous QA. "Dr. Stein says that manufacturing it in a factory means that you can maintain the same skilled labor, the same supply chain and the same standards, and simply send the already manufactured power plant to where it is needed. These small plants would have an output much lower than that of a full-size nuclear reactor Most definitions of SMR put them in the range of up to 300 MW, meaning that the current average full-size nuclear reactor produces more than three times as much. larger SMRs.

But in return they take up very little space. Nuclear energy already uses by far the least amount of land among low-carbon energy sources, and Nuscale SMRs could take that to the next level. SMR developers claim that this power plant, Voygr-12, would occupy 0.13 square kilometers of land, but could produce the equivalent of 18.6 square kilometers of solar panels. So that could get nuclear power up and running in more places much faster, but what about the risk of nuclear accidents? Well, SMRs have an answer for that too and it's called passive safety. In almost all nuclear power plants today, the biggest safety task is keeping the reactor core cool enough in case the plant suddenly shuts down and stops producing power.

If the coolant stops circulating for long enough, the fuel will get too hot and melt. That creates the risk of leaking radioactive material into the surrounding area, if all the material does not remain contained in the core. That's what happened at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in 2011, after an earthquake caused a safety shutdown. The plant automatically switched to its backup generators to keep coolant circulating through the pumps, but an hour later, a massive tsunami caused by the earthquake wiped out the plant's backup systems and three reactors melted down. So, to avoid this type of scenario, many new generation power plants use passive and autonomous safety systems, which do not depend on human operators or external power.

This approach is considered safer than previous models. And many SMR safety designs claim to be completely passively cooled, with no need for external water. To do this, they would use a natural force called convection, which is basically the same thing that happens in a teapot: when liquids and gases are heated, they rise to the surface, and when they cool, they sink to the bottom, creating a loop. To take advantage of convection, these SMRs have a series of chambers that can allow passive circulation of water. The reactor core is placed inside a larger casing, which is submerged in water in an underground containment structure.

In an emergency, the nuclear reaction that generates heat would stop and the reactor would shut down by itself, not letting anything in or out. So to get rid of the remaining heat inside the core, convection comes in. As the water inside the core heats up, it rises to the surface, turns into vapor, and is pushed into the larger layer, which is kept cold from the outside. water in which it is submerged. That vapor hits the largest layer, condenses back into water, and collects at the bottom, ready to flow back into the reactor and continue the cycle.

In theory, that cycle can continue until the reactor cools enough to no longer be a threat. But while there is a lot of hype around these innovative designs, the likelihood that SMRs will work depends largely on how you look at them. Are they like any other type of energy source, standing on their own and making profits in the free market? Or are they a strategic asset that governments can use to fill the gaps as they phase out fossil fuels, even if they lose money making them? Analysts say the first way is the US-EU approach, and so far it hasn't worked too well. "It was too expensive." That's Dr.

Friederike Frieß, physicist and nuclear energy researcher. She says that despite an increase in new SMR companies and projects in the US and Europe over the last decade, small nuclear plants have run into the same problems as large ones, with heavy regulations, delays in projects and cost explosions. And because it's smaller, it also makes less money. "SMRs lose the economy of scale in energy production... the lower the output, the less revenue you can get, so you have to have really customized applications. This is a really small market." When you add to that rising inflation and the rising costs of materials essential to making these plants, such as steel, you have a recipe for financial collapse.

That happened last November to Nuscale, one of the first and most promising SMR startups and the only one with US regulatory approval. After decades of planning, the company canceled the first reactor deployment in Idaho. Nuscale says the project, called CFPP, faced unique challenges and ended due to a lack of subscriptions. But many analysts say rising costs played a role. "Nuscale was supposed to be built in the United States, which has a long history of nuclear power plants, has the largest civilian nuclear fleet, and yet it didn't work. There was government support, regulatory authority support, and still it didn't work." "It worked.

It was just too expensive. The price was about per kilowatt-hour, in the end about four times what conventional nuclear power plants normally cost." Nuscale's president says the company is continuing with its other domestic and international clients to bring US SMRs to the market, including a project to replace a decommissioned coal plant in Romania with a Voygr SMR plant. But Nuscale is an example of how difficult it is for private companies and Western startups to get small modular reactors up and running. So what about that second approach, considering SMRs as a strategic national investment, which might not necessarily make a lot of money?

That is the approach taken by countries such as China and Russia, where SMR projects are almost entirely state-run and operated by national companies such as China's CNNC and Russia's Rosatom. "In the past, countries that could successfully build nuclear power and achieve successful industrial investments were those that could control their costs by avoiding unnecessary regulatory burdens, and then also control revenues by allowing them to ensure that they could compete effectively in the downstream sector. , which could sell into a market and be assured a reasonable rate of return for selling energy. That's what David Fishman, an economic and political analyst who specializes in China's energy sector, says they do a great job controlling costs in. upstream and do an excellent job of securing revenue for downstream energy sales.

That's because even if you have a great design for an SMR, experts say quite a few different steps have to come together to make all of this happen. There are the materials needed to build the facility, all of which must be certified nuclear safe. Then there is the labor to build the plant and the labor to operate it. Then there is obtaining the fuel necessary to run the reactor. So instead of all of these steps being carried out by different private companies that need to make a profit, countries like China and Russia bundle all of these steps together and sell them as a package. "It's not just about the technology that you get, but it also comes with the whole supply chain solution, with the low-interest loans that the banks give to the exporting companies, right?

Maybe the Import Bank and China Export is giving a big low-interest loan, something like that. And for the current environment, it seems like it's a lot more competitive and Fishman says that approach has allowed SMR projects in China to continue moving forward, even when faced with challenges. challenges in 2019. China National Nuclear Corporation began work on a 125 MW SMR project on Hainan Island, called Linglong One, scheduled for completion in late 2026, which would make it the first commercial land-based SMR in the world and strategic in nature The investment approach could also make some SMRs that have truly specialized uses also more likely to operate, such as high-temperature gas-cooled or molten salt reactors, which are currently one of the only alternatives. to coal for industrial processes that require a lot of heat. , such as manufacturing food, cement or chemicals.

We made a video on molten salt and thorium reactors, which you can watch here. So that's the end of the story, right? State projects are the solution that will finally make SMRs happen, and soon there will be hundreds of reactors built and shipped around the world... not quite. There are still many questions looming over SMRs that must be answered before the dream of nuclear power is built.in the factory can become a reality. The world's energy needs are increasing rapidly and we are still a long way from reaching net zero emissions. So while SMRs have their uses, some experts say countries that decide to invest more in nuclear power are more likely to need larger plants, not smaller ones. "China will do better than everyone else and will continue to have this kind of impact on the path to decarbonization and offsetting the carbon journey.

And while public opinion on nuclear power is improving, the idea of ​​having thousands of small nuclear plants

everywhere

around the world raises concerns for some about how all that waste will be managed. Some SMR designs have closed fuel cycles that could theoretically last up to 30 years, but science doesn't know yet, and some. Studies have shown that SMRs use more, not less, nuclear fuel in general. Still, many advocates point out that we will probably need nuclear power for much longer than 2050, or when we reach net zero. The world's energy needs will continue to increase, and it seems that the strategy of using nuclear energy together with renewable energy is here to stay.

So, what do you think of these small nuclear reactors? Let us know in the comments and subscribe to our channel. We publish new videos for you every Friday!