Safety and economics continue to prevent any chance of developing Small Modular Nuclear Reactors
WHY SMALL MODULAR REACTORS ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM, NOT THE SOLUTION Mark Cooper, Ph.D. Senior Fellow for Economic Analysis Institute for Energy and the Environment Vermont Law School May 2014
“……..EXHIBIT II-7: SMALL MODULAR REACTOR SAFETY CONCERNS
Shifts in General Approach
Preapproval and limited review
Static approach v. evolving standards
Wide Dispersal
Proliferation concerns
Close proximity to population centers
requires increased margins
Reduction of Safety Margins
Shrinking containment
Limitations of staff for safety and security
Consolidation of control reduces redundancy
Evacuation zones
Unique Challenges for Safety Oversight
Inspection
Manufacturing facilities problems and costs
Foreign sources
Access to below ground facilities
Repair/Retrofit/Recall
Integrated systems
Waste Management and Retrieval
Potentially higher levels of radiation
Flooding for below ground facilities
Common design creates potential “epidemic” failure
CONCLUSION
This section has examined the problems that affected the two major efforts to deploy
commercial scale nuclear reactors and has evaluated the prospect for the next technology that the
industry wants to deploy at commercial scale. There are other technologies that the industry has
touted that never reached commercial deployment. Some of these never got off the drawing board;
others failed at the prototype phase. In fact, many of the concepts that have been incorporated into
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the design of SMRs are retreads of ideas that have been put forward over more than half a century,
but failed to advance due to safety and economics problems. The failure of these technologies
should also be recognized as part of the background for assessing the future prospects of nuclear
power and how much weight to put on it in the response to climate change, particularly where these
technologies exhibit characteristics or challenges that are similar to those of SMR technology,
including fast breeder, 81 pebble bed,82 and Thorium83 reactors.84
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