The NRC made a recommendation that there are no environmental impacts that would preclude it from issuing a license for Holtec's proposed SNF interim storage facility. Holtec would begin with 500 canisters holding over 9,500 tons of spent nuclear fuel at the proposed New Mexico site near Carlsbad.

On a level playing field, nuclear power would go bust. Those owners get financial supports or subsidies that safe renewables like solar power, geothermal and wind power don’t get. Two particularly large government handouts keep the reactor business afloat, and without them it would crash overnight.

1. In a free market, the U.S. Price Anderson Act would be repealed. The act provides limited liability insurance to reactor operators in the event of a loss-of-coolant, or other radiation catastrophe. The nuclear industry would have to get insurance on the open market like all other industrial operations. This would break their bank, since major insurers would only sell such a policy at astronomical rates, if at all.

2. The U.S. Nuclear Waste Policy Act also would be repealed. NWPA is the government’s pledge to take custody of and assume liability for the industry’s radioactive waste. Without NWPA, the industry would have to pay to contain, isolate and manage its waste for the 1-million-year danger period. The long-term cost would zero the industry’s portfolio in a quick “correction.”

Even if the industry retained the above two subsidies, economists say the reactor business is finished. Jeremy Rifkin — renowned economic and social theorist, author, adviser to the European Union and heads-of-state, and author of 20 books — was asked his view of nuclear power at a Wermuth Asset Management global investors’ conference:

“Frankly, I think … it’s over. Let me explain why from a business perspective. Nuclear power was pretty well dead-in-the-water in the 1980s, after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. It had a comeback. The comeback was the industry saying: ‘We are part of the solution for climate change because we don’t emit CO2. It’s polluting, but there’s no CO2.’

“Here’s the issue: Nuclear power right now is 6 percent of energy of the world. There are only 400 nuclear power plants. //

nuclear would have to be 20 percent of the energy mix to have the minimum, minimum impact on climate change — not 6 percent of the mix.

“That means we’d have to replace the existing 400 nuclear plants and build 1,600 additional plants. Three nuclear plants have to be built every 30 days for 40 years to get to 20 percent, and by that time climate change will have run its course for us. So I think, from a business point of view, I just don’t see that investment. I’d be surprised if we replace 100 of the 400 existing nuclear plants which would take us down to 1 or 2 percent of the energy [mix].

“Number 2: We still don’t know how to recycle the nuclear waste and we’re 70 years in. //

Number 3: We run into uranium deficits according to the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] between 2025 and 2035 with just the existing 400 plants. So that means the price goes up. //

Finally, and this is the big one that people don’t realize: We don’t have the water. Over 40 percent of all the fresh water consumed in France each year goes to cooling the nuclear reactors. It’s almost 50 percent now. When it comes back [when reactor cooling water is returned to the lakes and rivers] it’s heated and it’s dehydrating our ecosystems, and threatening our agriculture. //

“So it’s no accident Siemens [Corp.] is out [of reactor business], Germany is out, Italy is out, Japan is now out … I’d be surprised if nuclear has much of a life left. I don’t think it’s a good business deal.”

The nuclear industry cannot assume that the words and phrases it commonly understands as scientific or engineering terms have positive connotations for the public, writes Neil Alexander, principal consultant at Bucephalus Consulting."We have all heard that a picture paints a thousand words. This should not be surprising because our mind was always designed to handle images, the face of our mother, the outline of a lion in the savannah, the route from our cave to the berry bush. Images have always been essential to our survival and are bound to be powerful.Less appreciated is the power of words to create mental pictures and how that affects perceptions of nuclear power. The power of words should not be a surprise either as language was developed so that we could describe things to each other in the absence of an image and then further developed to describe things, such as emotions or complex principles, by creating virtual images." //

Used fuel is described by many outside the industry, and too many within it, as waste. Look waste up in the dictionary and you will find one meaning is 'an unusable or unwanted substance'. Presently, used fuel is unwanted and so it can denotatively be called waste. But the image created by the word waste is not one of carefully engineered racks of shiny fuel assemblies; it is of the waste we see in our everyday lives: trash. That isn't a good image.

Meanwhile, allowing it to be described as waste implicitly allows a place where it is stored to be described as a dump because a dump is 'a place where people are allowed to leave their waste'. However, the use of the word, regardless of its legitimacy, creates a very unfortunate image. //

I wouldn’t want a nuclear waste dump near me. I wouldn’t want one anywhere on earth.

I wouldn't mind a used fuel repository though. //

Clever anti-nuclear authors will insert the words 'long-lived' whenever they legitimately can. This simple phrase, differentiates nuclear materials from anything else mankind handles and makes it seem uniquely dangerous. Those same authors don’t feel obliged to use the word 'everlasting' when referring to other toxic materials.

They could supply energy to far-flung bases, power laser weapons and charge electric vehicles //

War zones are dangerous places. Where better, then, for a nuclear reactor? On March 9th America’s government awarded a trio of firms $39.7m to design “microreactors” that can supply a few megawatts of power to remote military bases, and be moved quickly by road, rail, sea and air.

The idea of small reactors is as old as nuclear power itself. In July 1951, five months before a reactor in Idaho became the first in the world to produce usable electricity through fission, America began building uss Nautilus, a nuclear-powered submarine. In the 1960s and 1970s small reactors powered bases in Alaska and Greenland, a radar facility in Wyoming, a research station in Antarctica and—from a cargo ship—the Panama Canal Zone. America still uses nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft-carriers. But land-based mini-reactors proved unreliable and expensive and have fallen out of favour

Small-scale nuclear reactors are starting to be developed around the world. Proponents say they are a safer and cheaper form of nuclear power. But will they keep up with renewables? //

In 2000, the Department of Energy funded a project at Oregon State University, among others, to study a multi-application small light water reactor. In 2007, the university granted Nuscale exclusive rights to the design of SMR, as well as the continued use of their test facility. In 2011, Fluor Corporation, a multinational engineering firm, invested in the company. In 2018, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the first phase of review for the design. Nuscale now has more than 529 patents granted or pending and close to 400 employees.

Many of the SMR designs in development simply shrink the systems of large-scale nuclear plants, using less fuel. Nuscale’s reactor will be just 76 feet (23 metres) high. More than 125 Nuscale reactors could be put in a traditional reactor’s containment building, though the company plans to deploy them in groups of 12. //

Nuscale’s system is also integral, meaning the fuel, steam and generator will all be in one vessel. “This reduces the risk of accidents because there are less pipes to break,” says Reyes. The technology also uses the core’s heat to drive the coolant flow, eliminating the need for coolant pumps and moving parts that could fail. Each reactor will be self-contained, with multiple reactors sharing a cooling pool.

If a traditional nuclear reactor’s cooling water is lost, the fission reaction will shut down, but the raised temperatures may lead to a core meltdown. Even after a reactor is turned off, heat from the radioactive decay of fission can melt cores, as occurred in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, when a tsunami damaged the generators pumping water through the shut-down reactors. That’s why Nuscale engineers have also built relief valves on the reactor vessel, which open when power is lost and release steam into the vessel, where it condenses, recirculates and provides cooling. Without the need for pumps, Reyes says, “Even under worst case scenarios, where we lose all off-site power, the reactor will safely automatically shut down and remain cool for an unlimited time.” He adds, “this is the first time that’s been done” for commercial nuclear power. //

Nuclear proponents have argued net-zero emissions will be impossible to achieve fast enough without relying on nuclear energy. But there’s no consensus in energy policy that this is true: Renewable energy has expanded faster than expected, and as energy storage technology continues to improve, its potential is only growing.

“What really needs to happen at this point is for there to be competition among low-carbon energy sources, to see who can deliver the most benefit for carbon reduction at the least cost,” says Peter Bradford, a former member of the NRC. “I don’t have a problem with the government underwriting research in a different energy technology, as long as the research is proportional to the promise it has shown.”

Experts are discussing the framework for safe lifting of dumped reactors from four submarines and uranium fuel from one icebreaker reactor in the Kara Sea, in addition to one sunken nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea. //

The Soviet Union used the waters east of Novaya Zemlya to dump accidental reactors, spent nuclear fuel and solid radioactive waste from both the navy and the fleet of nuclear-powered civilian icebreakers.

About 17,000 objects were dumped in the period from the late 1960s to the late 1980s.

Most of the objects are metal containers with low- and medium level radioactive waste. The challenge today, though, are the reactors with high-level waste and spent uranium fuel, objects that will pose a serious threat to the marine environment for tens of thousands of years if nothing is done to secure them. //

The reactors from the submarines K-11, K-19 and K-140, plus the entire submarine K-27 and spent uranium fuel from one of the old reactors of the Lenin-icebreaker have to be lifted and secured.

As with other nuclear fusion technology, the difficulty is in building a machine that can reliably initiate the reaction and harness the energy it produces.

Though much attention has been focused on the exciting realm of nuclear reactor technology innovation, major efforts to improve nuclear fuels—and boost power generation safety and economics—are underway

OPEN100 will accelerate

deployment of the world's most vital

solution to climate change: Nuclear Energy.

Today, we offer reference plant schematics and a platform to compile ongoing design work. With the help of our partners and the National Labs, these drawings will evolve into a fully detailed, ready-to-build blueprint.

There’s widespread debate over whether nuclear power should be a player in the path toward addressing climate change. Industry analysts say nuclear is key //

Bret Kugelmass, managing director of the Washington, D.C.-based Energy Impact Center (EIC), and a robotics engineer at Stanford University, on Feb. 25 introduced his group’s plan for nuclear power, with an eye toward solving what he told POWER on Tuesday is the major issue impacting the sector: “economics, economics, economics.” Kugelmass founded the EIC as a group that seeks what it calls “accelerated pathways” to decarbonize the global economy by 2040, and he thinks nuclear power is a solution.

The Energy Impact Center’s OPEN100 plan, what the EIC calls “the world’s first open-source blueprint for nuclear power plant deployment,” is about showing that nuclear can provide both clean, and cost-effective, energy, with more streamlined construction. Kugelmass said the global trend of building larger and more complex reactors has contributed to the “uncompetitive” nature of nuclear power.

THE
ENERGY
IMPACT
CENTER
LET'S TALK ABOUT
CLIMATE CHANGE

Without nuclear, even if we achieved net-zero new emissions globally, we’d continue to add extra heat at the same rate we are adding it today.

By Bret Kugelmass //

At the Energy Impact Center (EIC) we are committed to finding accelerated pathways to decarbonize the global economy by 2040. It is not enough to clean the electricity sector; future energy production must produce industrial heat, clean fuels, and power the direct air capture of legacy emissions as well.
Nuclear energy is the only technology capable of generating the quantities of low-carbon electricity needed to meet the world’s growing energy demand while accounting for its own lifecycle carbon emissions.
But we need far more nuclear power than currently exists to achieve our climate goals — one hundred times more. Achieving this vision will require the construction of nuclear plants that are more affordable and competitive. Despite being the single largest source of low-carbon electricity generation in the United States, over time the trend toward building ever larger and more complex reactors has made nuclear energy uncompetitive.

The biggest barrier to the widespread use of nuclear is the cost of building reactors, which most experts would agree is a major problem for the industry. //

Nuclear power’s role in combating climate change is a contentious topic, but a Silicon Valley entrepreneur thinks he can sway the debate by releasing open-source designs for a small-scale reactor that could be built in two years for just $300 million.

The argument for making nuclear power part of our response to climate change is compelling: the fuel is abundant, it releases no greenhouse gas emissions during operations, and it’s capable of producing huge amounts of energy.

But safety concerns, cost, and the question of what to do with the radioactive waste produced mean it’s failed to capture the zeitgeist.

Bret Kugelmass wants to change that. After selling his drone company Airphrame in 2017 he decided to take on climate change, founding a non-profit research organization called the Energy Impact Center (EIC). And pretty quickly, he came to the conclusion that nuclear power is the way forward.

To advance his vision, last week EIC launched the OPEN100 project, which Kugelmass says will provide open-source blueprints for the design, construction, and financing of a 100-megawatt nuclear reactor. He claims the reactor can be built for $300 million in less than two years, significantly decreasing the per-kilowatt cost of nuclear power.

Anyone want to build their own power plant? //

A nonprofit startup is offering an open-source nuclear plant plan.
One "modular reactor" plant was approved in 2018, but others still face regulatory hurdles.
The Energy Impact Center founder believes nuclear is the near future in cleaner energy.

The American Energy Innovation Act declares that taxpayers are responsible for developing an “integrated investment strategy” for nuclear technologies. //

rather than improving private-sector access to federal assets, reducing regulatory barriers, and addressing the political risks that nuclear energy faces, it quite literally proposes that the government do the work of private companies for them—to improve their product, acquire financing, and find potential customers.

Such a program is far outside the responsibility of the federal government—and of the federal taxpayer. But it could also erect new barriers for companies that don’t go through the Energy Department program.

In the end, it makes the nuclear industry politically dependent, and consequently politically vulnerable. But what’s worse is, we’ve tried this all before, and the track record isn’t good. //

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 set out on the same grand mission. In that not-so-distant past, Congress authorized, among many other favors for the nuclear industry, $1.25 billion for a public-private partnership, the Next Generation Nuclear Power Plant. Congress spent $528 million through 2010, only to abandon it in 2011 during the pre-licensing process. //

This is industrial policy, plain and simple.

On the whole, Congress did good work with the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act in 2018 and the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act in 2019.

What the American Energy Innovation Act proposes is a bridge too far. //

If Congress were really interested in helping the nuclear industry—both existing nuclear power plants and the advanced reactors of tomorrow—it should address the regulatory burdens and uncertainties created by government itself

French energy giant eyes demonstrator that could be massively scaled up at facilities including Hinkley Point and Sizewell

Concise information on key facts relating to nuclear energy.

VTT Technical Research Centre in Finland has today announced the launch of a project to develop a small modular reactor for district heating. Most of the country's district heating is currently produced by burning coal, natural gas, wood fuels and peat, but it aims to phase out its use of coal in energy production by 2029..

VTT noted that decarbonising the district heat production system is "one of the most significant climate challenges faced by many cities". The objective of the project is to create a new Finnish industrial sector around the technology that would be capable of manufacturing most of the components needed for the plant, the company said. Designing the district heating reactor will require expertise from a wide range of Finnish organisations, it added. //

Over the past five years, VTT has been involved in projects examining the opportunities and deployment of SMRs. At the European level, it is coordinating the ELSMOR (European Licensing of Small Modular Reactors) project, launched last year. It is also leading one of the work packages of the European Research and Innovation project McSAFE, launched in September 2017. That project is developing the next generation calculation tools for the modelling of SMR physics.