Lobbyists debate responses to the nuclear power crisis

It looks increasingly unlikely that new reactors will match shut-downs. Another 20 years of stagnation is possible, but only if China continues to do the heavy lifting. And if China's nuclear program slows, worldwide nuclear decline is certain.

Perhaps the best characterisation of the global nuclear industry is that a new era is approaching - the Era of Nuclear Decommissioning (END). Nuclear power's END will entail:

• a slow decline in the number of operating reactors (unless growth in China can match the decline elsewhere);
• an increasingly unreliable and accident-pronereactor fleet as ageing sets in;
• countless battles over lifespan extensions for ageing reactors;
• many battles over the nature and timing of decommissioning operations;
• many battles over taxpayer bailouts for companies and utilities that haven't set aside adequate funding for decommissioning;
• more battles over proposals to impose nuclear waste repositories on unwilling or divided communities; and
• battles over taxpayer bailouts for companies and utilities that haven't set aside adequate funding for nuclear waste disposal.

Nuclear power is likely to enjoy a small, short-lived upswing in the next couple of years as reactors ordered in the few years before the Fukushima disaster come online. Beyond that, the Era of Nuclear Decommissioning sets in, characterised by escalating battles ‒ and escalating sticker-shock ‒ over lifespan extensions, decommissioning and nuclear waste management.

In those circumstances, it will become even more difficult than it currently is for the industry to pursue new reactor projects. A positive feedback loop could take hold and then the industry will be well and truly in crisis.

Lobbyists debate solutions to the crisis

Josh Freed and Todd Allen from pro-nuclear lobby group Third Way, and Ted Nordhaus and Jessica Lovering from the Breakthrough Institute, write this obituary for large conventional reactors: "If there is one central lesson to be learned from the delays and cost overruns that have plagued recent builds in the US and Europe, it is that the era of building large fleets of light-water reactors is over in much of the developed world. From a climate and clean energy perspective, it is essential that we keep existing reactors online as long as possible. But slow demand growth in developed world markets makes ten billion dollar, sixty-year investments in future electricity demand a poor bet for utilities, investors, and ratepayers."

The four Third Way / Breakthrough Institute authors conclude that "a radical break from the present light-water regime ... will be necessary to revive the nuclear industry". Exactly what that means, the authors said, would be the subject of a follow-up article.

So readers were left hanging ‒ will nuclear power be saved by failed fast-reactor technology, or failed high-temperature gas-cooled reactors including failed pebble-bed reactors, or by thorium pipe-dreams or fusion pipe-dreams or molten salt reactor pipe-dreams or small modular reactorpipe-dreams? Perhaps we've been too quick to write-off cold fusion?

The answers came in a follow-up article on February 28. The four Third Way / Breakthrough Institute authors argue that nuclear power must become substantially cheaper and this will not be possible "so long as nuclear reactors must be constructed on site one gigawatt at a time. ... At 10 MW or 100 MW, by contrast, there is ample opportunity for learning by doing and economies of multiples for several reactor classes and designs, even in the absence of rapid demand growth or geopolitical imperatives."

Other than their promotion of small reactors and their rejection of large ones, the four authors are non-specific about their preferred reactor types. Any number of small-reactor concepts have been proposed.

Small modular reactors (SMRs) have been the subject of much discussion and even more hype. There's quite a bit of R&D ‒ in the US, the UK, South Korea, China and elsewhere. But only a few SMRs are under construction: one in Argentina, a twin-reactor floating nuclear power plant in Russia, and three SMRs in China (including two high-temperature gas-cooled reactors). The broad picture for SMRs is much the same as that for fast neutron reactors: lots of hot air, some R&D, but few concrete plans and even fewer concrete pours.