“Cheaper and faster” are concerning adjectives to be using for nuclear reactors… while well-regulated nuclear power is better than a lot of alternatives, trying to drive more and more adoption by lowering the bar seems overly risky.
Anything relying on stable conditions should be carefully implemented, if at all, in the current unstable climate which will only get more unpredictable.
The point of smaller reactors is that they could be much safer and cheaper to deploy. They’re intended to be entirely self contained.
Reminds me of the reactors the army was trying to run in pools for portability in the 50s. I grew up near a plant that made uranium rods and didn’t know about it until recently, kind of explains why they couldn’t build housing there and instead built a shopping center
Interesting. I’m curious to see how waste production by SMR compares with Gen2 & PWR commonly in used today. Efficiency and quantity of waste/kWh is an important factor for public acceptance. This seems to be discussed too little, although some company say their reactor design adress this issue.
If all the nuclear waste from U.S. power plants were put on a football field, it would stack up just 50 feet high. In comparison to the waste produced by every other kind of electricity production, that quantity is close to zero.
From this Forbes op-ed.
