Advanced nuclear power technologies based on designs that are not light-water reactors are not an improvement on LWR machines and may be worse, according to a detailed analysis in a new 140-page report from the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Edwin Lyman, a PhD nuclear physicist and head of the UCS nuclear power program at UCS, said in a press release, “If nuclear power is to play a larger role to address climate change, it is essential for new reactor designs to be safer, more secure, and pose comparable or—better yet—lower risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism than the existing reactor fleet.” He added that “none of the non-light-water reactors on the drawing board that we reviewed meet all of those requirements.”
Lyman singled out Bill Gates’s financed and promoted 345 MW Natrium reactor. Gates has been widely touting the sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor while promoting his book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” including an interview on 60 Minutes last month. Gates claimed his Terra Power reactor design will be safer than LWR technology and produce less nuclear waste.
Not so, says Lyman. Rather sodium fast reactors could well be less uranium efficient, and not reduce the amount of waste needing long-term storage. He said they could also have safety issues not seen in conventional nuclear reactor technology, primarily because the sodium coolant is dangerous when exposed to air.
“When it comes to safety and security, sodium-cooled fast reactors and molten salt-fueled reactors are significantly worse than conventional light-water reactors,” said Lyman. High-temperature gas-cooled reactors, which have a slight operational history in the U.S., might be safer, “but that remains unproven, and problems have come up during recent safety tests.”
Last year, the Department of Energy gave Terra Power and X-Energy $80 million each for first-of-a-kind commercial units by 2027. That is unlike to happen, according to the UCS report. It could take the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 20 years to perform the necessary safety analyses to license commercial reactors.
In May 2019, Nathan Myhrvold, Gates’s technology guru, told a large NRC public meeting that the U.S. needed a more industry-centric approach to regulation to get the advanced nuclear reactor technologies developed and licensed. He cited the Federal Aviation Administration as a model of effective regulation. His NRC presentation came just two days after a Boeing 737 Max airliner crashed in Ethiopia, killing all aboard and a year after a similar crash in the Java Sea.
Investigations established that Boeing’s culture about getting planes on the runway and the FAA’s approach to letting the industry regulate itself were responsible. The result kept the Boeing planes from flying for two years, with massive losses to the company.
What to do? UCS says DOE should put its advanced reactor demonstration program on hold until the NRC determines whether it needs “full-scale prototype tests” before signing off on the designs. UCS also calls on Congress to create an independent commission to examine the technical and commercial potential of the non-light-water designs.
The UCS report prompted a scathing and uncharacteristic response from self-described “eco-modernist” Ted Nordhaus, the head of The Breakthrough Institute. He’s the son former DOE General Counsel Bob Nordhaus, who served from 1993 to 1997 and died in 2016 at age 79.
Nordhaus tweeted, in response to the UCS report, “A prominent US environmental NGO has released a new report attacking advanced nuclear. I’m not going to link to it because it is mostly being ignored, deservedly, and adds nothing to the outdated talking points that anti-nuclear environmentalists have made for decades.”
–Kennedy Maize
(kenmaize@gmail.com)