NEWS Can small nuclear reactors help Canada reach its net-zero 2050 goals? Some experts are skeptical

Novem­ber 9, 2020: Cana­da has expressed inter­est in a new, small­er type of nuclear reac­tor that pro­po­nents say will be crit­i­cal to help the coun­try reach its tar­get of net-zero car­bon emis­sions by 2050.

But there is debate among researchers, advo­cates and oth­er experts on whether these new reac­tors are nec­es­sary to reach net-zero — or whether it’s bet­ter accom­plished by focus­ing efforts elsewhere.

Daniel Kam­men, a pro­fes­sor of ener­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, cau­tions that any stance on the role small mod­u­lar reac­tors will play in Canada’s ener­gy future depends on research and data that could still be years away.

We have a data set, cur­rent­ly, of zero,” he told What on Earth.

Screen Shot 2020-11-09 at 12.14.52 PM

You can fore­cast what they might be based on tech­ni­cal assess­ments … but it’s based on no real data. It’s based just on what we hope will come out of dif­fer­ent plans.”

Daniel Kam­men is a pro­fes­sor of ener­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley. (Ele­na Zhukova/​Submitted by Daniel Kammen)

Small mod­u­lar reac­tors, or SMRs for short, are small­er than a con­ven­tion­al nuclear pow­er plant and can be man­u­fac­tured in a fac­to­ry before being trans­port­ed and assem­bled else­where — some­thing pro­po­nents say will low­er costs.

The Inter­na­tion­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency (IAEA), the UN orga­ni­za­tion for nuclear coop­er­a­tion, con­sid­ers an SMR to be “small” if it gen­er­ates under 300 megawatts of elec­tric­i­ty, com­pared to tra­di­tion­al nuclear reac­tors that typ­i­cal­ly gen­er­ate about 800 megawatts, or about enough to pow­er about 600,000 homes at once (assum­ing that 1 megawatt can pow­er about 750 homes).

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment called it the “next wave of inno­va­tion” in nuclear ener­gy tech­nol­o­gy and an “impor­tant tech­nol­o­gy oppor­tu­ni­ty for Canada.”

In Octo­ber, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment announced it was invest­ing $20 mil­lion into Ter­res­tri­al Ener­gy to help the Oakville, Ont., com­pa­ny devel­op its design of a small mod­u­lar reactor.

Last Decem­ber, Ontario Pre­mier Doug Ford, New Brunswick Pre­mier Blaine Hig­gs and Saskatchewan Pre­mier Scott Moe released a joint state­ment com­mit­ting to devel­op­ing SMRs in Cana­da. Alber­ta joined that agree­ment in August. While the Cana­di­an Nuclear Safe­ty Com­mis­sion is cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing pre-licens­ing reviews on sev­er­al designs, fore­casts sug­gest it could be years, per­haps 2030, before SMRs would be oper­at­ing in Canada.

(CBC News)

Accord­ing to the Cana­di­an Nuclear Asso­ci­a­tion’s SMR roadmap, the small reac­tors would help replace ener­gy capac­i­ty lost by clos­ing coal plants, help pow­er off-grid projects like mines and oil­sands sites, and replace diesel fuel in remote communities.

We have not seen a mod­el where we can get to net-zero emis­sions by 2050 with­out nuclear,” Nat­ur­al Resources Min­is­ter Sea­mus O’Re­gan told The House in Sep­tem­ber.

This is a zero-emis­sion ener­gy source.”

Nuclear ener­gy is actu­al­ly con­sid­ered a low-emis­sion — not zero-emis­sion — ener­gy source by the Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy Agency (IEA), Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) and oth­ers.

While the nuclear fis­sion that takes place inside a reac­tor does­n’t emit car­bon, green­house gas emis­sions result from the sur­round­ing process­es and oper­a­tions: min­ing the ura­ni­um, build­ing the reac­tor and its even­tu­al decommission.

Ben­jamin Sova­cool is the direc­tor of the ener­gy group at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sus­sex, and a lead author for the IPCC on how to mit­i­gate cli­mate change between now and 2050. (Uni­ver­si­ty of Sussex/​Submitted by Ben­jamin Sovacool)

When you look at the entire fuel cycle and you broad­en the lens across it, you start to cap­ture a whole host of emis­sions that are often exclud­ed,” said Ben­jamin Sova­cool, direc­tor of the ener­gy group at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sus­sex, and a lead author for the IPCC on how to mit­i­gate cli­mate change between now and 2050.

Sova­cool said that renew­ables like solar and wind pro­vide a big­ger bang for the buck to low­er emis­sions, and are wide­ly avail­able now, unlike SMRs.

Nuclear pow­er is like fight­ing world hunger with caviar, it’s like using the most expen­sive option when there are far more plen­ti­ful and nutri­tious options avail­able when you account for the costs,” he told What on Earth.

John Gor­man, how­ev­er, is con­vinced nuclear pow­er is the way for­ward — and that SMRs are a cru­cial part of the plan.

He’s the pres­i­dent and CEO of the Cana­di­an Nuclear Asso­ci­a­tion — but before that, he was head of the Cana­di­an Solar Indus­tries Association.

When I moved over from the renew­able side, I had to do a lot of home­work to real­ly look into the tech­nol­o­gy, its track record, the way that it deals with some of the issues that are of most con­cern to peo­ple,” he told Lynch.

I’ve come to the real­iza­tion after all of that that real­ly there is no way to net zero with­out nuclear. And sec­ond­ly, it just is a real­ly safe, remark­able technology.”

Gor­man point­ed to decades of North Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence work­ing with nuclear ener­gy, and affirmed the impor­tance of going through the reg­u­la­to­ry process through­out devel­op­ment to ensure SMRs are as safe and effi­cient as possible.

He said the sev­en-to-10-year esti­mates for SMRs to become a real­i­ty in Cana­da are “a blink of an eye in terms of ener­gy plan­ning,” and that they will become “a real, nec­es­sary tool” for Canada’s net-zero targets.

Kam­men isn’t con­vinced that SMRs have quite yet earned a green light.

You … have to wor­ry about the end of life and the risk issues that are not a fea­ture of wind or solar,” he said.,

A bad batch of solar pan­els is actu­al­ly a learn­ing event, where­as a bad batch of com­po­nents for a nuclear plant can be catastrophic.”

Ker­ry Blaise, staff lawyer at the Cana­di­an Envi­ron­men­tal Law Asso­ci­a­tion, said SMRs and nuclear ener­gy present “a dan­ger­ous dis­trac­tion from real cli­mate action.”

Her stance is echoed by more than 25 envi­ron­ment and cit­i­zens’ groups, includ­ing Green­peace, the Sier­ra Club and Equi­terre, which released a state­ment in Octo­ber.

Blaise said the mod­u­lar nature of SMRs means that fuel for the reac­tors — and, even­tu­al­ly, the radioac­tive waste they pro­duce — will have to be trans­port­ed more fre­quent­ly, espe­cial­ly if they are deployed in remote loca­tions like mines and Indige­nous communities.

She added that “the eco­nom­ics don’t add up” regard­ing argu­ments that nuclear ener­gy should be “part of the mix” along with renew­able energy.

The cost of renew­ables con­tin­ues to go down due to incre­men­tal man­u­fac­tur­ing and instal­la­tion improve­ments, while nuclear, despite hav­ing had half a cen­tu­ry of indus­tri­al expe­ri­ence, con­tin­ues to have costs that are ris­ing,” she said.

Nuclear pow­er has been declin­ing world­wide for decades, and cost has been one chal­lenge, accord­ing to a 2019 report from the IEA, which said “new projects have been plagued by cost over­runs and delays.”

Kam­men said he’s seen a large amount of pri­vate sec­tor invest­ment in SMRs, which could help accel­er­ate devel­op­ment to make it com­pet­i­tive along­side renew­ables like solar and wind.

But it will be some time, he said, before any­one can guess what “mix of tech­nolo­gies” will be best.

These new nuclear plants need to per­form at a cost lev­el that we have not seen. They need to per­form at a reli­a­bil­i­ty lev­el we haven’t seen.… And then final­ly, the most crit­i­cal­ly, these plants have to be demon­strat­ed to be oper­at­ed safe­ly dur­ing their life­time and for the fuel man­age­ment at the end of life cycle,” he said.

That’s a big list of ifs. So I’m root­ing for nuclear, but I think that list of chal­lenges is exceed­ing­ly long.”

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For the orig­i­nal CBC source: click here.

Link: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whatonearth/can-small-nuclear-reactors-help-canada-reach-its-net-zero-2050-goals-some-experts-are-skeptical‑1.5792823

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