From the excellent Deutsche Welle Planet A series Good, balanced (no, really!) report on the prospects and challenges for Small Modular Reactors above.
Deutsche Welle is like Germany’s NPR or BBC – reports in English, and usually very high standards.
Below, there is a cottage industry on the internet in support of Thorium reactors. This explainer is by far the best I have seen.
Fairly even-handed treatment – except for the aside that thorium was disadvantaged by not producing plutonium for weapons. The very first generation of reactors were supposed to be dual use – to make power and bomb fuel – but it was quickly realised those objectives were diametrically opposed. If you want good weapons-grade plutonium 239, you have to take the fuel out of the core before it absorbs more neutrons, and becomes unstable, radiotoxic Pu240. If you want power, you leave it in as long as possible, for high burn-up. Magnox in Britain, RBMK in the USSR, the N reactor in Washington State, intended for both roles, were superceded by much more efficient civil reactors. Those produced plutonium in situ, but much of it was fissioned for power. Any left after defuelling was more a nuisance, without recycling to run it through again. It certainly had no value for the warhead makers, who, after the Cold War production frenzy, had more weapons-grade plutonium than they knew what to do with. The USA and Russia each have thirty tons of it ‘surplus to requirements’, enough for thousands of bombs. The arms control treaties between them got rid of a similar quantity of weapons-grade, 90%+ enriched uranium 235 – the Russians downblended theirs, and sold it to the US, where it made about 10% of the nation’s electricity for ten years. Talks to do the same with the WGPu broke down – the Russians built fast reactors to burn theirs up, the Americans said they would too, but failed miserably to even start one.
I’ve found that the videos Elina Chiratsidou does about reactor designs and the tradeoffs are a worthwhile source, too. Here’s the one she did specific to thorium reactors: “Nuclear Physicist Explains – What are Thorium Reactors?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=148NI9j23Kg
I watched the following yesterday and found it was a good, succinct discussion of the need and the paths to electrification — a presentation from April 15 at Cornell’s Atkinson Center for Sustainability. “Zero-Carbon Electricity: The Key to the Clean Energy Transition”
2024 Climate Change Seminar by Dr. Karl Hausker (Climate Program, World Resources Institute)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg0JSTZ0vhM
Not even 100 views yet, should be seen by more.
The testimony of Dr. Adam Stein gave me pause:
That analogy might not be so motivating these days. In various analyses, Boeing’s problems track back to the adopting of shareholder-focused, market-immersed executives that moved headquarters from Seattle to Chicago to associate with more of their tribe. The resulting decay of quality control (including faked inspections in the South Carolina plant) shows how “rigorous quality control” cultures can be killed off.
As volume manufacturing is critical to SMR cost-effectiveness, how many companies can the market sustain? We’ve seen the vulnerability of a jumbo jet duopoly (Boeing and Airebus). If there’s a “recall” for a part failure (or worse, for a design flaw), how many GW of power will be shut down while it’s addressed? Presumably any SMR sites that are away from derechos or EF4 tornadoes might be spared the cost for extra resiliency.