Part 1 of 4 Parts

The nuclear industry’s hype machine is currently in overdrive. Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy is promoting a “warp speed” nuclear revival. Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and the United Kingdom government all promote small modular reactors (SMR) as the silver bullet for climate change and energy security. Tech billionaires are hiring nuclear veterans to advise them. Wall Street is talking about “round-the-clock power” for artificial intelligence data centers. The U.K. is investing billions on “mini nukes” to fill its looming energy gap. The nuclear industry’s latest pitch is not a revolution, but a repeat. It is an expensive distraction from practical climate solutions.

SMRs are only a shiny dream, more of a hope than a strategy. SMRs only exist in the optimistic imagination of the nuclear industry and its supporters. Currently, SMRs can only be found on glossy PowerPoint slides. Mycle Schneider dubbed SMRs “power point reactors.” There are currently no engineering plans, no blueprints, no working prototypes.

However, hope springs eternal. The SMR plan is to build advanced atomic fission reactors, typically defined as producing up to three hundred megawatts of electricity per reactor, less than a third the size of a conventional nuclear power reactor.

The “small” part refers to their limited output and physical footprint. “Modular” means that they’re designed to be constructed in factories, shipped to sites, and installed as needed. The claim is that all this supposedly makes them cheaper and faster to deploy than traditional reactors. In theory, you could add modules over time to scale up output as demand for electricity expands.

The word “small” might give the wrong impression of the size of an SMR. Even a single SMR is a massive, highly radioactive industrial machine, capable of supplying electricity to a mid-sized city and containing an inventory of radioactive materials far greater than that of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.

The “small” label is relative only to the huge commercial nuclear power reactors of the last century. In practice, a “small” modular reactor brings all the big problems of a conventional reactor including dangerous radioactive fuel, complex safety systems, and the risk of catastrophic failure or sabotage. The only thing that’s truly small about SMRs is their inability to benefit from the economies of scale. They were supposed to make large reactors affordable—but never actually did.

So, the SMR is actually a lose-lose proposition with all the risks and headaches of traditional nuclear reactors, but with none of the cost or scale advantages that never materialized in the first place.

But that is not stopping nuclear power boosters from championing what will be another failed chapter in the sad legacy of commercial nuclear power reactors. Sensing blood, the battered commercial nuclear industry is back with its most audacious pitch yet. SMR companies are lobbying governments worldwide for taxpayer money. This is because no private investor will touch nukes with a ten-foot uranium rod.

Center on Global Energy Policy

Please read Part 2 next