Part 1 of 2 Parts
Nuclear fission reactors generate reliable supplies of electricity while emitting little carbon dioxide when operating. A conventional nuclear power reactors in the one-gigawatt range also produces spent nuclear fuel that must be isolated from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years. The cost of such a reactor can be tens of billions of dollars.
In order to deal with these challenges, the nuclear industry is developing small modular reactors (SMRs) that generate less than three hundred megawatts of electricity and can be assembled in a factory. Nuclear industry analysts say that these advanced modular designs will be cheaper and produce fewer radioactive byproducts than conventional large-scale reactors.
However, a report published on May 30th in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has reached the opposite conclusion.
Lindsay Krall is a former MacArthur Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She headed up the team that produced the new report. She said, “Our results show that most small modular reactor designs will actually increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal, by factors of 2 to 30 for the reactors in our case study. These findings stand in sharp contrast to the cost and waste reduction benefits that advocates have claimed for advanced nuclear technologies.”
There are four hundred and forty operating nuclear power reactors in the world. They provide about ten percent of the world’s electricity. In the U.S. alone, ninety-three nuclear power reactors generate almost one fifth of the nation’s electricity.
Nuclear power plants emit little carbon dioxide which is a major contributor to global warming. Nuclear advocates claim that as the worldwide demand for clean energy increases, more nuclear power plants will need to be constructed to minimize the effects of power generation on climate change.
Nuclear energy is not a risk-free energy source. In the U.S., commercial nuclear power plants have produced over eighty-eight metric tons of spent nuclear fuel. They have also produced substantial volumes of intermediate and low-level radioactive waste. Spent nuclear fuel constitutes most of the most highly radioactive waste. It will have to be isolated in deep-mined geologic repositories for hundreds of thousands of years. Currently, the U.S. has no program to develop a geological repository even after spending decades and billions of dollars on the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada. Spent nuclear fuel is currently stored in cooling pools or dry storage casks at nuclear reactor sites. It is accumulating at a rate of about two thousand metric tons per year.
Some energy analysts claim that SMRs will significantly reduce the mass of spent nuclear fuel being generated when compared to larger, conventional nuclear reactors. Apparently that conclusion is overly optimistic.
Krall is now a scientist at the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company. She said, “Simple metrics, such as estimates of the mass of spent fuel, offer little insight into the resources that will be required to store, package, and dispose of the spent fuel and other radioactive waste. In fact, remarkably few studies have analyzed the management and disposal of nuclear waste streams from small modular reactors.”
Please read Part 2 next