[bayesian_horse]

At least with the current technology there are too many downsides to nuclear power. The nuclear waste issue still hasn't been solved, and nuclear accidents do happen, apparently despite all the security measures.

Small reactors, maybe even mobile, can only make this worse.

[cperciva]

Nuclear accidents happen, yes... at power plants with designs which were outlawed on safety grounds 40 years ago.

If you want to prevent nuclear accidents, you should be supporting attempts to build new reactors, because that's the fastest route to getting the old ones decommissioned.

[eyrarric]

It is only because on the insistence of Admiral Hyman G. Rickover than Pressurized water reactors (PWRs) constitute a majority of all western nuclear power plants. He rejected "crazy thermodynamic cycles that everyone else wants to build". So we got stuck with PWR inherent flaws. Check "The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made a Difference" (http://bit.ly/2FiJQ1u)

[Caveman_Coder]

I loved that book! Excellent recommendation. If you want a good intro to non-PWR nuclear power technologies, I'd highly recommend "SuperFuel: Thorium, the Green Energy Source for the Future" by Richard Martin.

[gambiting]

Exactly. It's an almost catch-22 situation: old reactors are unsafe, so people protest building new ones, which would make the old ones obsolete and make the whole technology safer.

[Zigurd]

Not really a catch-22: The chicken was supposedly declared safe before it laid those radioactive eggs. And if the designs and siting were subsequently found to be unsafe, why are those reactors re-certified as safe? The nuclear power industry has only itself to blame for costs and safety.

[gambiting]

Because the identified issues have been rectified - but the fixes add to the complexity and you are always relying on a fix to make it safe - while newer designs(pebble bed reactors) are inherently safe.

[Zigurd]

Re "Because the identified issues have been rectified" you mean like the containment buildings at Fuk that did not contain? And what, exactly, can one rectify about unsafe siting?

[bayesian_horse]

Protests don't really prohibit designing and prototyping safer reactors. And many of these designs seem to have a similar problem about nuclear waste.

Again: Solve nuclear waste problem first, before creating ever more nuclear waste.

[detritus]

I'll readily admit I'm no nuclear physicist, but even I'm not so ignorant as to smear negative broadbrush appraisals reactionarily simply because I read 'teh nukular' in an article.

In fact, small format nuclear offers a decent chance at bridging the (frankly archaic in my opinion) second and third generation reactors with fourth generation and beyond.

Small format allows for quicker iteration and greater distribution of development due to lower costs (witness start-ups across North America, Europe and China making progress that might make ITER or the EDF blush in a few years).

Small format encourages systems that actually use waste of previous generations reactors, thereby alleviating the single-biggest worry about 'nukular' beyond proliferation.. which in itself is physically and technically stymied by advanced techs.

[bayesian_horse]

As I said, new technologies might change that assessment, but these technologies are not even on the horizon yet.

The problem with nuclear waste, however, very much exists already.

And there is no mention that these SMR create less nuclear waste or that they can't be turned into weapons grade material. Certainly even the fissile material in an SMR would be enough for a dirty bomb out of hell. Let alone the material you can steal from a dozen reactors in a sparsely populated area, none of which will have significant security.

[eumenides1]

Again you are trying to broad brush the argument as the parent comment has already stated.

How do we get better nuclear technology? we iterate on it. SMR are an iteration to solve flaws in the previous versions. A quick wiki search indicates that they are designed to create less waste because of their higher burn-up rates. So yes, technology is on the horizon. Consider changing your assessment.

Nuclear waste? Some SMRs are also breeder reactors which convert fissionable materials into usable fuels. Consider changing your assessment.

The security issue is another board brush attempt to continue to scare people away from nuclear power. SMR inputs and output are not desired for weapons production because they are consider low-enrichment. And once fuel has been irradiated, it requires special handling for safety. So you'll probably die before you'll make your dirty bomb. Consider changing your assessment.

If you really wanted to attack SMRs, you really should say that, SMRs are "small" so they don't generate a lot of energy and have to be placed in many locations. This can multiply problems that exist. But that doesn't mean they won't have significant security, that is an (incorrect) assumption on your part. Consider changing your assessment.

Look, I don't expect to change your assessment, but I wanted to thank you for bringing me to read about SMRs. I learned a lot and had fun. I think SMRs are interesting and try to solve real problems with previous generations of nuclear energy. The addition of SMRs just add to what I believe will the best future for humanity, having a diverse and varied options of generating energy.

[bayesian_horse]

Of course distributed SMRs have lesser physical security than bigger facilities. If they had the same level of physical security, costs would increase by a lot and the advantage of being small and distributed in inaccessible areas would diminish.

I don't care about iteration and the promise of eventually getting to something safer, if the intermediate result is accumulating more nuclear waste and poses serious security risks.

[rubber_duck]

The ammount of effort required to steal fissile material from multiple reactors, without anyone figuring it out long enough to detonate and being caught, just to make a dirty bomb ? With what estimated impact ?

[bayesian_horse]

Good luck trying to track down the thieves if they raid a couple of reactor sites and just disappear. Doubly so if it's somewhere in the wilderness. I don't even think they need to raid more than one SMR to create a pretty nasty dirty bomb...

Estimated impact varies on how much material is in an SMR and how easy it is to take out.

And a raid isn't even technically necessary if an SMR gets into the wrong hands in the first place.

[def_true_false]

AFAIK nuclear has a better track record than fossil fuels or even hydro, as far as accidents go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents

[bayesian_horse]

The potential damage done by nuclear accidents that haven't happened yet, is, however, bigger than anything remotely thinkable with fossil fuels. Even before enemy action is considered.

[hutzlibu]

So you do prefer a big reactor blowing up, instead of a small one?

No I know, you fear, that this increases the number of reactors dramatically and therefore the likely hood and number of accidents.. but don't you think nuclear is a better alternative to coal etc. while we are switching to regenerative energy's?

Because we still need at least backup power plants for a while, due to the non constant nature of wind and sun.

[bayesian_horse]

Yes, I actually prefer to keep the nuclear stuff in a limited number of places. That makes supervision a lot easier, and stealing nuclear material a lot harder. Much more, I prefer not adding to the nuclear waste we already don't know how to deal with.

Fossil energy is preferable to nuclear, and the volatility of wind or solar energy is much less of a problem than people think. Especially with newer technologies to even out the supply.

[hutzlibu]

"we already don't know how to deal with"

Yes we do. We store it, until we can use it. And even if we can never use it, which is very unlikely, in the core of the earth is already much, much more radioactive material, so adding a tiny bit to that, is not a big problem "as people think".

And as far as I know, there is a great deal of work to be done to upgrade the power grid, for 100% wind/solar. And much more needed storage capacity, than we currently have. And storing electricity is expensive, no matter how we do it. And unless there is really abundance of solar energy from the deserts for example, this is a real problem, since we still live in a money based economy, last time I checked.

And even if we have abundance of solar desert power ... that makes you also very dependent on it, and vulnerable to a attack on those lines for example, which is why I see small nuclear reactors even in that scenario helpful, for emergency backup.

[bayesian_horse]

And yet, solar and wind energy is on the rise, nuclear isn't.

The radioactive earth core isn't in my backyard, luckily. With nuclear waste, however, it is often stored close to the reactors, with obvious problems, of which limited space isn't the only one.

Somehow a large number of scientists do believe that nuclear waste storage is a really tough problem, and I haven't yet heard from a reliable source that it isn't. Storage facilities have been leaking and collapsing all the time.