Are microreactors the future of nuclear energy? Someday, nuclear reactors the size of shipping containers could power your hometown, but a huge number of regulatory hurdles will have to be cleared before nuclear power starts popping up in your backyard – and public buy-in will be critical.
After decades of relatively little change in nuclear power technology, there is currently a flurry of nuclear energy innovation taking place around the world. Scientists are looking into how to make nuclear power production more efficient, cost-effective, safe, and streamlined in response to an ever-growing need for reliable and carbon-free energy production. Like renewable energies, nuclear power is carbon-free, but unlike solar and wind power, the production potential of nuclear power is steady and constant, making it an attractive option for energy security in the decarbonization era.
Some of the potential new nuclear technologies garnering investor attention are small reactors and microreactors. In recent years nuclear energy development has been trending toward much smaller models in the interest of lowering up-front development costs and making new nuclear projects more easily deployable.
Most of the excitement and investment has been geared toward small modular reactors (SMRs), which many advocates believe could be the backbone of a nuclear renaissance in the United States and other countries that have begun to move away from nuclear power production. These modular models can be mass-produced in a factory setting and installed on-site alone or in clusters to create utility-scale nuclear power plants more quickly and cheaply than traditional large-scale models.
Microreactors, which have so far received less attention and funding support than SMRs, are much smaller. While a full-scale nuclear power plant would produce, on average, upward of 700 megawatts, and an individual SMR would produce about 300 megawatts, a microreactor’s output would be around 10 megawatts.
While microreactors are much smaller, they could be used to power entire towns for a relatively low up-front cost, and they have unique selling points compared to SMRs and traditional nuclear power plants. They’re safer than larger models, and they’re so small that they could be brought in on a truck or barge, hugely easing the installation process. Plus, microreactors do not require any on-site workers for their operation and maintenance, and can be operated remotely and autonomously.
“Microreactors have the ability to provide clean energy and have passive safety features, which decrease the risk of radioactive releases,” Euro News reported earlier this year. “They are also much cheaper than bigger plants as they are factory-built and then installed where they are needed in modules.”
All of these benefits mean that microreactors could be enormously useful in a wide range of contexts. A recent article in The Conversation touts their utility, saying that “this technology could benefit college campuses, remote communities in Alaska primarily powered by oil and diesel, tech companies looking for reliable electricity for AI data centers, companies in need of high-temperature heat for manufacturing and industrial processes, mining operations that need a clean energy source and even military bases in search of a secure source of energy.”
The problem is that while the microreactors themselves would be relatively low-cost, building the facilities to construct these microreactors would be a massive and expensive undertaking. And so far no one has been willing to take that risk. Investors want guaranteed orders before they build such a factory, and potential buyers want to see the technology built, tested, and proven before they place an order. “It’s a catch-22,” says The Conversation’s Aditi Verma.
There’s another considerable downside to widespread deployment of microreactors and small modular reactors – surprisingly large amounts of nuclear waste. A Stanford study found that “most small modular reactor designs will actually increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal, by factors of 2 to 30,” said lead author Lindsay Krall. “These findings stand in sharp contrast to the cost and waste reduction benefits that advocates have claimed for advanced nuclear technologies.”
Community buy-in is essential to get microreactors off the ground, but those communities need to seriously consider the cost of managing all that nuclear waste. The many benefits of microreactors may still be worth it, but nuclear waste is a major cost to taxpayers that should not be overlooked.
By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com
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