Noel Wauchope, 2 July 2012 10:33:56 AM

You have failed to provide a shred of evidence for your any statements, again.

How do you propose these "terrorists" get their hands on radioative material? Approach a reactor core, dip a bucket in? This is nonsense talk.

What is your basis for stating that IFRs "cost astronomically more to build and to run"?

Certainly the capital cost for next generation reactors are higher than conventional reactors (for now at least), but the operational costs are lower because the fuel is free (i.e. the "waste" from older reactors). This paper in Energy Economics is a comprehensive projection of nuclear costs, including fast reactors: http://www.mit.edu/~jparsons/publications/FuelRecyclingReprint.pdf . It does not support your contention. And neither do the cost projections in Plentiful Energy.

Try again.

michael_in_adelaide, Sunday, 1 July 2012 1:05:08 PM

Try being a little less misleading. I already explicitly acknowledged in this comments thread that all energy infrastructure is currently built with oil. I also acknowledged that the longer we wait to roll out nuclear technologies at the scale required to decarbonise our energy systems, the more it will cost due to escalating energy costs.

The fact is, the more energy costs escalate, the greater the urgency will be to secure energy supplies that aren't based on fossil fuels. The cost of transitioning will be higher, but the cost of inaction will be higher again due to energy poverty and the effects of climate change - particularly if we burn every last remaining fossil fuel reserve we have access to.

We already have many nuclear technologies which are ready to roll out NOW, so it doesn't matter if the IFR takes a few decades to take off.

And what does Dounreay have to do with the article we wrote?

I'm not the only one who worries both about terrorists getting the plutonium fuel in transit to the new small reactors, and about the eventual radioactive wastes. From yesterdays' news in South Carolina: "The mini-reactors – also dubbed small modular reactors or SMRs – have been hailed as the nuclear technology of the future.
waste is the problem…… waste could be shipped into the state from other areas…. South Carolina once again could become the nuclear dumping ground for the nation. Before South Carolina embraces this untested technology, we need answers to questions about possible accidents and their consequences, the potential for a terrorist strike or theft of nuclear material – but mostly about the waste." http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/07/01/4085457/mini-nuclear-reactors.html#storylink=cpy Noel Wauchope

Noel Wauchope

Just because there are journalists and even some radiation protection professionals who spread irrational fear about radiation, radioactive materials and nuclear "waste" does not mean they are correct. There is a very large body of evidence and experience with radioactive materials that has been accumulating for more than 110 years that disputes the notion that it is something that should be the subject of fear instead of simply the subject of understanding.

For anyone who might be worried about the already remote possibility that a terroristmight somehow obtain a significant quantity of radioactive materials, I published some advice from and expert on how to deal with a dirty bomb. That article may be getting a little old, but the information remains accurate; the science has not changed.

http://atomicinsights.com/2007/07/dirty-bomb-advice-from-larry-grimm.html

Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights

Noel,

SMR is not IFR (in the same way that IFR is not LFTR; as in they are DIFFERENT THINGS). There will not be plutonium fuel "in transit" to SMRs, they will run on the same low enriched uranium as reactors do currently.

You seem to make an art form of blending unrelated nuclear information into scary sound-bytes. It's perhaps an effective sort of activism, but it has a more specific name: "misinformation".

This site is called On Line Opinion and yes, you are entitled to yours. But you are not entitled to you own facts, no matter how doggedly you choose to remain ignorant about these things.

CLARIFICATION to comment above; where I have stated "SMR is not IFR"

The proposed PRISM fast reactor for the UK could be fairly described as a Small Modular Reactor. However the PRISM alone is not an IFR as it lacks the facility to continually reprocess the waste.

The designs referred to by Noel Wauchope that are discussed in her linked editorial are not integral fast reactors. They would not operate with recycled spent nuclear fuel or separated plutonium, but standard LWR fuel.

Where the editorial Noel has quoted states "And if the technology is licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the mini-reactors use spent nuclear rods from power plants as a source for fuel, then waste could be shipped into the state from other areas" this is purely ignorance on the part of the journalist. Even in an IFR one does not simply reload a used fuel rod; it requires reprocessing to cleanse the fuel and produce new, usable fuel pins. Whether Noel deliberately cherry picked the key phrase from this sentence, or was just saving words, I'm not sure, but the error in the logic is clear when the full sentence is read. If you arrived at one of these proposed SMRs with a load of spent fuel rods, you would be turned away in confusion...

Noel, I'm understanding of people's worry, very much used to share it. But it's borne predominantly of ignorance, and it would be great if, instead of touting these matters as fact, you instead raised them for discussion or posed them as a question so that the ignorance might actually be alleviated, not perpetuated.