While the nuclear industry and the Trump administration continue to hype the promise of small nuclear reactors as the key to revitalizing the moribund U.S. nuclear industry, an important federal regulator has waved a yellow flag. Nuclear Regulatory Commission member Jeff Baran, the only Democrat on the commission (the NRC has three Republican members and one Democratic vacancy), has attacked a commission proposal to weaken emergency planning rules to accommodate still-unproven SMR deployment.
The NRC put out a proposal, seeking comment, on weakening the emergency planning zone around the hypothetically new reactors, arguing that because they are considerably smaller than current large-scale light-water reactors, they are inherently safer and can do less damage in a severe accident.
As Utility Dive reported, in his comments to the NRC proposal, Baran said it is “a radical departure from more than 40 years of radiological emergency planning.” The NRC proposal would allow the emergency planning zone to end at the boundary of the reactor site. Current rules, adopted in the wake of the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown that destroyed a 900-MW pressurized water reactor, call for a 10-mile emergency planning zone.
Baran got support from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security. Michael Casey, head of FEMA’s Technological Hazards Division, told the NRC, “FEMA believes that the NRC staff conclusion that the proposed methodology for offsite emergency preparedness maintains the same level of protection as a ten-mile EPZ is unsupported.”
At the nuclear watchdog group Union of Concerned Scientists, director of nuclear power safety, physicist Ed Lyman said, “This proposal is based on a fallacy.” Citing the impact of the 2011 massive meltdown of reactors in Japan, which extended damage far beyond a 10-mile zone, he said, “The evidence demonstrates the 10-mile EPZ for existing reactors is not adequate and it certainly doesn’t support reducing the zone.”
One of the major criticisms of the NRC approach is that to make economic sense, the small reactors will have to have multiple installations on their site, suggesting they will ultimately be as large as current installations. While failure of one small reactor will not be as significant as failure of a large plant, critics are worried about escalating failures, as occurred in Japan.
Nonetheless, the industry and the Trump administration are betting on the small, modular machines as the salvation on an industry that has been essentially stagnant since the mid-1970s.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Energy launched an “Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program,” with some $230 million in funds to build two advanced reactors in five-to-seven years, The expectation is that these will be SMRs. At the same time, DOE said it had picked two projects using GE Hitachi’s BWRX-300 SMR as a “reference design” (300 MW is the tipping point between SMRs and conventional reactors).
SMRs have been a big story for at least the last eight years, highlighted by the hype and failure of the 180-MW mPower Babcock & Wilcox SMR, despite much company investment and DOE support, after failing to find a market. At the same time, Westinghouse failed in its effort to market a 225-MW scaled-down version of its AP-1000 reactor.
Steve Thomas, emeritus professor of energy policy at University of Greenwich, London, has a skeptical take on SMRs. He wrote in 2019, “When things are going badly for nuclear power, the nuclear industry offers the promise of new technologies. The latest example is the Small Modular Reactor, with significantly lower power outputs compared to established reactor designs. As always with nuclear technologies, the public will be footing the bill for this latest folly.”
— Kennedy Maize