'Advanced' nuclear power and small modular reactors

The CAREM project is years behind schedule and costs will likely increase further. When construction began in 2014, completion was expected in 2017. But progress has been slow, work was suspended on several occasions and completion is now anticipated in 2024. A three-year construction project has become a 10-year project.

In July 2021, China National Nuclear Corporation(CNNC) New Energy Corporation began construction of the 125 MW pressurised water reactor ACP100 at Hainan. CNNC says it will be the world's first land-based commercial SMR. The ACP100 has been under development since 2010.According to CNNC , construction costs per kilowatt will be twice the cost of large reactors, and the levelised cost of electricity will be 50 percent higher than large reactors.

In June 2021, construction of the 300 MW demonstration lead-cooled BREST fast neutron reactor began in Russia. Plans for a lead-cooled fast reactor in Russia date from the 1990s but construction has been repeatedly delayed. In 2016, construction of BREST was expected to begin in 2017 and completion was expected in 2020 -- but construction hadn't even begun in 2020. Completion is now expected in 2026. In 2012, the estimated cost for the reactor and associated facilities was 42 billion rubles; now, the estimate has more than doubled to 100 billion rubles (A$2.6 billion).

False promises

SMRs would be more inefficient than large reactors in every respect, and hence more costly.

A 2016 European Commission report notes that decommissioning and waste management costs of SMRs "will probably be higher than those of a large reactor (some analyses state that between two and three times higher)."

The 2016 South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission report stated: "SMRs have lower thermal efficiency than large reactors, which generally translates to higher fuel consumption and spent fuel volumes over the life of a reactor."

A Nuclear Technology journal article notes that integral pressurised water SMRs (iPWRs) "are likely to have higher requirements for uranium ore and enrichment services compared to gigawatt-scale reactors. This is because of the lower burnup of fuel in iPWRs, which is difficult to avoid because of smaller core size and all-in-all-out core management."

Prof. M.V. Ramana notes that "a smaller reactor, at least the water-cooled reactors that are most likely to be built earliest, will produce more, not less, nuclear waste per unit of electricity they generate because of lower efficiencies."

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022 concludes that SMRs will produce more voluminous and chemically/physically reactive waste than conventional large reactors due to the use of neutron reflectors and/or of chemically reactive fuels and coolants in SMR designs. The study finds that water, molten salt, and sodium-cooled SMR designs will increase the volume of nuclear waste by factors of 2 to 30.

SMRs are being promoted as important potential contributors to climate change abatement but the primary purpose of the Russian floating plant is to power fossil fuel mining operations in the Arctic. Russia's pursuit of nuclear-powered icebreaker ships (nine such ships are planned by 2035) is closely connected to its agenda of establishing military and economic control of the Northern Sea Route -- a route that owes its existence to climate change. China General Nuclear Power Group plans to use floating nuclear power plants for oilfield exploitation in the Bohai Sea and deep-water oil and gas development in the South China Sea.

Too expensive