With the Trump-era onslaught and so many problematic circumstances to deal with in the power-production and -distribution system, the nuclear-power issue perhaps seems not necessarily top of many people’s and organizations’ concerns. Both at the national and the local level, however, there are reasons to be very disturbed about what is going on in the higher levels of corporations, universities, and governments. Locally the contract between Nano Nuclear and the U of I to build a Micro Modular Reactor (MMR) in the heart of CU requires attention and community engagement.
Corporations have been rushing to build MMRs, primarily to power data farms dedicated to both artificial intelligence and crypto mining. There are many competing design concepts, some of which incorporate molten salts or liquid sodium as an intermediate heat-exchange system. The former is merely highly corrosive; the latter is corrosive and explosive on contact with air or water. The Gates Foundation seems to favor both. However there is no established small-reactor design that has had regulatory scrutiny.
The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnification Act of 1957 limits corporate liability in case of an accident. It shields the operator from expense and shifts costs to the taxpayer. It was a fundamental support for the rollout of the first generation of reactors, but is little commented on. This legislation’s original 1965 expiration date was extended until the end of this year—worrisome in that it could possibly accelerate the building of new reactors before that deadline. Congress then extended this dangerous backhand subsidy last year, for a further 40 years. But it should not go unopposed.
There has also been a rush to extend the life of existing reactors. A case in point is the unit in Clinton, which has a deal with Meta to supply power for its AI project. Though not as old as some of the reactors that are being repurposed for such—in themselves problematic—projects, it has some of the same problems as older-generation plants. The Clinton plant was not able to compete successfully with natural-gas-sourced plants and required action by the state of Illinois to keep it operational. The Palisades plant in Michigan may be the first completely decommissioned nuclear plant to be resuscitated, at a combined state and federal cost of about $1.8 billion.
Returning to the University of Illinois’s deal with Nano Nuclear, it has perhaps excited many in the university. After all, UIUC’s Abbott power plant is currently burning a combination of coal dust and gas, an unnecessary carbon footprint with the worst fossil fuel.
But for the people aware of the construction of a nuclear plant in the center of Champaign-Urbana, it has also caused much trepidation. Last year the late Bruce Hannon, faculty advisor to the Students for Environmental Concerns, wrote a piece in Smile Politely (“The U of I’s Micro-Modular Reactor Should Be in Another Location,” reprinted in the March 2022 Public i) opposing building the plant on the UIUC campus. “I believe this proposed project is a bad idea, especially the location at which the reactor would be placed,” he wrote there. He cited among other things its proximity to the railroad tracks and the possibility of a derailment accident affecting the plant. An explicitly experimental plant (MMR) would be integrated into the electrical grid as well as dump waste heat into the campus district heating system. Again Hannon emphasized that an experimental reactor should not be built on the campus, in the center of C-U. Proponents of the MMR models suggest that one of the attributes of these new reactors is that they are modular and portable, which suggests that the least that could be done is that the unit could be developed in a more isolated location. He suggested colocating at the Clinton plant site or the old Chanute airbase by Rantoul.
Hannon cited two important articles critical of MMRs: “‘Advanced’ Isn’t Always Better,” by Ed Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists; and “Small Nuclear Reactor Advocates Refuse to Learn the Lessons of the Past,” by Michael Barnard. While history doesn’t repeat but merely rhymes, SNRs (Small Nuclear Reactors) and MMRs are rhyming hard.
Trump’s anti-regulation crusade makes it a fraught time for those who see nuclear power as a necessary part of a green sustainable future. Corporate capture of regulatory institutions has always been a problem, but the complete surrender to oligarchs of this time should give pause to all.
We See in the Business Press the Administration’s Plans
In May, President Donald Trump signed executive orders calling for ten large-scale nuclear reactors to be under construction by 2030, and 400 gigawatts of total nuclear power to be online by 2050—over four times the country’s current atomic energy capacity. In addition to its national-security benefits, revitalizing the industry is also seen as key to defense. “We need to get back to building, because if we don’t build nuclear power plants, it’s China and Russia that are doing that,” an article in Bloomberg News cited Jonathan Webb, an executive of Palantir, explaining the company’s investment in AI for nuclear power plant operation—exhibiting an extremely distorted view of national security. Others might see this mass expansion of plants as providing more targets for mutually assured destruction or diversion of material for dirty bombs, or worse.
The arguments against nuclear power are manifold. The storage of nuclear waste, the possibility of dirty bombs, the catastrophic possibility of meltdown through operator error, and the embrittlement through neutron flux of reactor pressure vessels are all considerations. A rather apocalyptic possibility is related to the New Madrid fault: a medium-strength earthquake would not have the tsunami that Fukushima had accompanying it, but still provides the threat of a massive problem. (A map of Midwestern nuclear plants shows relative proximity to the boot heel of Missouri that is ground zero of the fault line.)
However, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute has for decades been arguing that the opportunity costs of nuclear power should be sufficient to suggest that other choices are more authentically sustainable and implementable. That is, the length of time that nuclear plants require to ramp up and the incredibly high costs of construction mean that society would be better served by implementing decentralized renewables, a smart grid, and energy storage systems at the much quicker pace these alternatives would facilitate. Highly recommended is a book-length study by a Canadian academic that comprehensively goes over the arguments against the nuclear solution: Nuclear is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change, by M. V. Ramana. Notably, Ramana suggests that MMRs are flawed even by the standards of the capitalist developers themselves: “When the power output of the reactor decreases, it generates less revenue for the owner, but the cost of constructing and operating the reactor is not proportionately less. All else being equal, a (large) reactor that produces, say, five times as much power as a small modular reactor does not need five times as much steel or five times as many workers.”
In these times a call to action is the necessary way to end an article that treats nuclear issues. There has been little publicity on the UI reactor project, though the initial letter of intent was filed in June, 2021. There is no designated person for public engagement, so contacting Caleb Brooks, principal investigator for the University of Illinois, and new UI Chancellor Charles Lee Isbell, Jr. with your opinions could be an option.
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