LOS ANGELES.–President Joe Biden, 81, has quietly pushed since the Oct. 21-Nov. 13, 2021 Glasgow COP26 climate summit for nuclear power as the answer to the world’s carbon-crisis with its climate change and global warming. Biden and his 65-year-old Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm have pushed behind the scenes, rarely in front of cameras, to move away for solar and wind energy, largely due to its inefficiency, to Small Modular Nuclear Reactor [SMR] technology, already being used by the hated Russians in a floating SMR energy plant called the Akadedemik Lomonosov off the coast of Siberia, not too far from Alaska. While expensive to build compared with coal and natural gas-powered power plants, 34-year-old Green New Deal Advocate Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pushes for the new carbon-free technology now becoming with climate scientists the answer to greenhouse gasses.
Over $500 billion in the three trillion dollar Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS Act and Infrastructure bill will be spent on so-called new de-carbonized energy technology, secretly disguised to push for SMR nuclear technology. No one in the emerging SMR nuclear power industry can quantify the extent of radiation leakage from the smaller, modular nuclear reactors. Nuclear scientists hope the SMRs can be built with less space and less expense than more traditional nuclear power plants that Germany and other European Union [EU] countries decided to faze out, except France that’s continued to operate 30% of its electrical grid with full-size nuclear power plants. “There is a definitely as huge race on,” said Josh Freed, who leads the Climate and Energy Program at the Third Way think tank. Freed thinks the U.S. has been playing catch-up with new nuclear technology.
EU has maxed out a 12% with its solar and wind energy plants, needing to ramp up its nuclear power plants, whether full-sized or modular reactors. “China and Russia have more agreements to build all sorts of reactors overseas than the U.S. does. That’s what the U.S. needs to catch up on,” Freed said. At COP28 in Dubai in Dec. 2023, the U.S. made a pledge to triple the world’s nuclear power production, investing millions into SMR technology. U.S. SMR nuclear power industry hopes to change opposition around the globe to nuclear power plants, highlighted by meltdowns in 1986 at Ukraine’s Chernobyl and Japan’s Daitsu-Fukushima disaster in 2011. No one really knows if SMR nuclear technology produced en masse would be safer than the older, larger nuclear reactors. Research on radiation leakage shows higher levels of radiation from the newer SMR technology.
U.S. Export-Import Bank, International Development Finance Corporation, offering up to $3 billion in loans have gone to GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, a U.S.-Japanese partnership based in North Carolina. U.S. companies find receptive markets in Southeast Asia and Central Europe, where countries have weaned off Russian natural gas since the Feb. 24, 2022 Ukraine War. Russia continues to build conventional nuclear power plants in China, India, Bangladesh, Turkey, Slovakia, Egypt and Iran. Alexey Lichashev, head of Russia’s Rosatom, said that dozens of countries have shown interest in Rosatom’s floating SMR energy plants. Russia’s state commitment in Rosatom shows it can get over regulatory hurdles, required for safety and financing SMR plants. Portland, Oregon-based NuScale announced in 2023 that it was closing its SMR demonstration project in Wyoming due to cost overruns.
From Glasgow COP26 in 2021 to Dubai COP28, the same zealotry exists for SMRs but the manufacturing costs have presented hurdles to companies like NuScale. “It certainly dampens the excitement abroad,” said John Parsons a senior lecturer at MIT and a financial economist focused on nuclear energy. “It makes a big difference in the marketing if the U.S. is out there making it happen. Then people who are interested in nuclear have an easier case in their country,” Parsons said. When Parsons talks about marketing, it’s easier to sell new technology if it’s economically feasible than old technology, larger nuclear power plants used for years with problems with meltdowns and nuclear waste storage issues. Whether its SMRs or older-style nuclear reactors, the same problem of nuclear waste continues to bedevil advocates of decarbonized power plants.
Former Climate Czar John Kerry, 80, was a big zealot in Glasgow and Dubai for SMRs. Kerry knew nothing about the feasibility of the new technology, both in terms of safety and costs. Preliminary analysis of radiation leakage shows the old, large nuclear plants leaking less radiation than SMRs, making promises but failing, at this point, to deliver promises on the new technology. Returning to nuclear power in Germany and other countries previously opposed to nuclear power remains controversial. Vice President of renewable energy at Rystad Energy Mohammed Hamdaoui says the verdict is still out on the feasibility of SMRs. “I don’t see it being a big player in the energy mix until the scone part of the next decade,” Haaamdaoui said. “It’s going to take time,” if ever. All the hype about SMRs have not panned out, leaving Russia and China positioned to sell conventional nuclear power plants.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
