On November 20, President Obama announced funding to develop small modular reactors. The US went from small reactors to large ones to get economies of scale. Power reactor generating capacity goes up faster than material costs — one of the sources of economies of scale. Despite that, large reactors are very expensive and the so-called nuclear renaissance is sputtering. So now the new nuclear nirvana is going back to small reactors. It is unlikely to work. Government should not still be subsidizing nuclear 55 years after the first “commercial” nuclear power plant came on line in 1957. Like the first time, government is rushing in without due consideration of many of the problems.

For more information on SMRs and their potential problems, see the IEER-PSR factsheet.

— Arjun