Thanks for the interesting article. I confess that I dont know much about SMRs – what type of fuel do they use ? Is it similar to LWRs or would major investment in fuel fabrication facilities be required ?

Thanks

Richard

Thank you very much for your comments. It is wonderful to dialogue with people who are informed about energy issues.

Karen,

I completely agree with you. Your concerns about off-site refueling figured heavily in my masters thesis and are an important theme in an article I am writing about SMRs’ potential in developing countries. I have had an ongoing conversation with several prominent potential SMR manufacturers. I can tell you that:

NuScale originally planned to use off-site refueling, but abandoned this prospect after rethinking the economics and logistics. However, some companies still favor off-site refueling. They have justified it to me as a matter of operators’ personal choice. In their view, some utilities may have no problem opening the reactor core to engage in on-site refueling, while others might view their circumstances as better suited for permanently-sealed reactor designs requiring off-site refueling.

In my opinion, off-site refueling’s detrimental risks which you mentioned, make it an issue too substantial to be dictated by preference. Furthermore, the belief espoused by potential SMR manufacturers that accidents would not merit off-site evacuations, would be an additional strike against off-site refueling if proved correct.

If you haven’t already seen it, you might find this link interesting http://appropriations.senate.gov/ht-energy.cfm?method=hearings.view&id=debb45d6-adb1-41f0-a608-cc7a4965f934

It has all of the written testimony of parties involved in the July 2011 US Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on SMRs. A link to a video of the hearing is there as well.

Pietro,

Passive cooling systems were explained in paragraph thirteen. I apologize for not going into greater depth. However, I was trying to write concisely. Regarding your other points, I would like to recommend that you read the following NEA study (paste the link into google or else it won’t work) http://home.nea.fr/ndd/reports/2011/current-status-small-reactors.pdf

Sections 8.5-8.7 on pages 124-127 discuss the potential specifications of various SMR designs with alternate coolants

George,

I was thinking in terms of overall volume of waste. For example, compared to a gigawatt scale reactor, a full-capacity 640MWe mpower plant or a 540 MWe NuScale plant would produce less. However, if SMR capacity outweighed gigawatt-scale capacity in a given geographic area, this would not be the case.
You might find interest in page fifteen of the study I cited in my response to Pietro. It projects that due to their smaller reactor core, SMRs would generally not be as neutron-efficient as large reactors.