Strange timing to suggest a LEGO nuclear future for Australia

In their enthusiasm for China's thorium nuclear project, writers neglected to mention the sobering points that Stephen Chen made in his South China Morning Post article. I think that a few of these points deserve repeating:

• researchers working on the project said they were under unprecedented 'war-like' pressure to succeed and some of the technical challenges they faced were difficult, if not impossible to solve
• opposition from sections of the Chinese public 
• technical difficulties - the molten salt produces highly corrosive chemicals that could damage the reactor; the power plant would also have to operate at extremely high temperatures, raising concerns about safety
• researchers have limited knowledge of how to use thorium
• engineering difficulties…The thorium reactors would need years, if not decades, to overcome the corrosion issue. These projects are beautiful to scientists, but nightmarish to engineers.

Who else is trying to design and develop small nuclear reactors?

In the UK there has been a determined push for Thorium fuelled reactors, and for the Power Reactor Innovative Small Module (PRISM). Secret talks are going on between GE-Hitachi and the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency, about using PRISMS to deal with plutonium wastes

However the UK government and science authorities still conclude that deep burial, not reprocessing, is the best eventual solution for nuclear wastes.

Other small nuclear reactor plans in India and South Africa have foundered.

Then there are Bill Gates and Sir Richard Branson. They have the advantage of plenty of money with which to try out a commercial experiment. Gates has signed loan guarantees to Toshiba of $8 billion to work with Terra Power,on Gates' thorium-fuelled Travelling Wave Reactor

The zeal of Gates and Branson could be misplaced. Australia's SMR enthusiasts discount the known problems of SMRs. Some brief reminders from the September 2013 report, from USA's Institute for Energy and Environmental Research:

• Economics:" $90 billion manufacturing order book could be required for mass production of SMRs ...the industry's forecast of relatively inexpensive individual SMRs is predicated on major orders and assembly line production."
• "SMRs will lose the economies of scale of large reactors."
• "SMRs could reduce some safety risks but also create new ones".
• "It breaks, you bought it: no thought is evident on how to handle SMR recalls".
• Not a Proliferation Solution. "The use of enriched uranium or plutonium in thorium fuel has proliferation implications".
• Not a waste Solution "The fission of thorium creates long-lived fission products like technetium-99 (half-life over 200,000 years)."
• Ongoing Technical Problems.

All this has been overlooked by the promoters of SMRs to Australia. Perhaps they're banking on Australia to be the saviour that brings that desperately needed $90 billion manufacturing order.

Keith Orchison is upbeat about "the advent of small modular reactors."

These units, the argument goes, are very well suited to Australian conditions. Strategically located, SMRs of 25 to 300 megawatts can enhance supply security and improve the overall resilience of the grid....The case for SMRs also rests on their use being a much lower investment risk because of their lower capital costs, the relative speed with which they can be installed and the fact that their capacity can be readily increased, Lego-like, on an established site...SMRs could be in operation by around 2022...

So - the SMRs could (?eventually) line up along the East Coast, connected to the grid. Or they could go to remote inland sites. Then there is that other agenda - a foot in the door for the bigger nuclear power industry. Ben Heard's pro nuclear site Decarbonise SA sets out the steps from a SMR start to uranium enrichment and the full nuclear cycle. More secretively, Dr John White works on the long range plan ranging from thorium fuelled reactors, to Australia as importer of radioactive wastes

There are ructions in the global nuclear industry. Westinghouse is getting out of uneconomic Small Modular Reactors, and getting in to a lucrative new area - decommissioning nuclear reactors. Big Nuclear has its own problems - uneconomic in USA, super-expensive in UK, Japan in a sort of nuclear paralysis, Finland with its long-delayed, over-budget Olkiluoto nuclear reactor. There's a bewildering array of nuclear technology companies, from USA, Japan, Russia, France, China, South Korea - all jostling for markets. They have spent up big in development, promotion and lobbying, over many years. They, and Australia's uranium industry, are not going to give up now, and hand over the market to the Small Modular Reactor, the undeveloped, untested, new kid on the block.

Still, Big Nuclear might like it, if a scientifically illiterate government such as Australia's, might be persuaded to let that expensive new kid in. It could be a foot in the door for the whole nuclear fuel cycle, and another foot in the door for the USA nuclear weapons system. Even Westinghouse might be pleased, if Australia did buy into SMRs - it might facilitate their plans for empire in that quaintly termed industry "nuclear decommissioning" (so much nicer a phrase than "radioactive trash dumping").