Nuclear Power Comeback Update: Poland Authorizes Small Modular Reactors (Patreon)

[This is a transcript with links to references.]

Nuclear power is on a roll. In its latest success, Poland has authorized the construction of 24 small nuclear reactors at six sites across the country. And a good thing, too, because electricity production in Poland is one of the most carbon intense in the world, with still almost 70 percent of the electricity coming from coal.

Nuclear power is back in fashion in many countries because of its potential to decarbonize even energy-intense industry quickly. The Japanese who shut down their nuclear power plants after the Fukushima accident in 2011 are using them again, and are planning to build new ones. In California environmentalists have stopped complaining about nuclear power and are now fighting to get the plants back online. In Sweden, teenagers demand that Greenpeace drops their resistance to nuclear power. And even the Germans are rethinking their decision to phase out nuclear power.
 
It’s a good idea if you’re worried about climate change because nuclear power has very low carbon dioxide emissions, not such a great idea if you’re worried about your money because nuclear power has the reputation of being expensive and slow.

This is why the small modular reactors are such a game changer. The idea of small modular reactors is that they are built in a factory and shipped to location. Depending on how much power you need, you can connect several of them together. This has the potential to make the construction cheaper and faster.

The reactors in Poland were approved earlier this month by the polish ministry of climate and environment. They will all be built by GE Hitachi, a collaboration between U.S.-based General Electric and Hitachi, a Japanese company. The reactor type is called BWRX-300. The BWR stands for “boiling water reactor”. These small reactors take 2 to 3 years to construct, and can deliver up to 300 Megawatts of power, which is enough power approximately 240 thousand homes.

The small reactors run on enriched uranium and use a passive cooling technique with enhanced safety features. In case of a loss of power, they can operate for up to seven days without the need for intervention.

Poland is not the only country going for this idea. Earlier this year, the government of Ontario in Canada authorized the construction of a small modular reactor of the same type, and in the summer upgraded their plan to four in total.

The elephant in the room is the cost of these small modular reactors. While the company says that the costs will be significantly lower both per energy capacity and electricity produced than for conventional, large, reactors, it remains to be seen whether this works out as desired.

The future is bright. No, not like this.

This concludes our science news for this year. We’ll all take a two-weeks break and resume the second week of January. And the quiz for this week’s science news is also up, so go and check how much you remember. See you on Saturday.