As the world continues to embrace the next generation of advanced nuclear reactors for a safe, reliable, clean power source, the naysayers continue to argue against reactor designs of the 1950’s. Why?

The former heads of nuclear power regulation in the U.S., Germany, and France, along with the former secretary to the UK’s government radiation protection committee, have issued a joint statement that in part says, “Nuclear is just not part of any feasible strategy that could counter climate change.” First, let’s start with their confusion between carbon reduction goals, climate, change, and extreme weather events. Only “speculative science” has estimated that just maybe increased carbon and other elements in the atmosphere may, in someway, affect extreme weather events. Since when is science based on a series of “maybes”?

They do not acknowledge the undisputable fact that legacy nuclear power is currently the world’s most abundant source of zero-carbon emitting energy. Each nuclear reactor being retired is being replaced in most cases by fossil fuels, including shockingly, the re-opening of coal plants in Germany to meet life threatening energy outages.

The four leaders say in short, nuclear as strategy against climate change is (as numbered) with our rebuttal in bold:

1. Too costly in absolute terms to make a relevant contribution to global power production

We have no idea what this means. The world’s legacy fleet in 31 countries contributes 10% of global power production. About 50 more reactors are under construction, equivalent to approximately 15% of existing capacity. In contrast, renewables are at about 10% as well after decades of prioritization. What’s the definition of a relevant contribution?

2. More expensive than renewable energy in terms of energy production and CO2 mitigation, even taking into account costs of grid management tools like energy storage associated with renewables rollout.

OK, where’s the proof on this one, Sparky? We’d love to see how they price the relative costs in terms of the environment, human toll, and mining impact from extracting the amounts of lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, and rare earth metals to meet the world’s demand for electric batteries for transportation, let alone energy storage for renewables at scale globally to overcome the existential threat of intermittent power. Or do they not care about the cost of life when the power goes out? Plus, do they even know what goes on in the cobalt mines with child and slave labor in the Congo, home to 70% of the world’s mining extraction? We’ve never heard the same claims with uranium extraction. Also. how do they cost the storage of billions of deplete batteries oozing with toxic materials?

3. Too costly and risky for financial market investment, and therefore dependent on very large public subsidies and loan guarantees.

Dependent on public subsidies? Unlike current renewables? Have they heard of net metering which disregards the costs of maintaining distribution lines needed to sustain solar generation? The authors must not be paying attention to the current markets and private sector investment in advanced nuclear power generation. Reality check – Small modular reactors are already being built around the world. They got investments somewhere.

4. Unsustainable due to the unresolved problem of very long-lived radioactive waste.

Of course, one of the authors was installed at the NRC by a certain Congressional Leader specifically to deny permits after construction of Yucca Mountain in Nevada. He eventually resigned. Now he contends we have a storage problem? Here’s the latest report on the subject by International Atomic Energy Agency with contributions from the European Commission, the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency and the World Nuclear Association. You decide whether this is a solvable problem over the next decade.

5. Financially unsustainable as no economic institution is prepared to insure against the full potential cost, environmental and human impacts of accidental radiation release – with the majority of those very significant costs being borne by the public.

See answer to #3 and the recent announcement by the Tennessee Valley Authority or Terrapower or France or India or Russia/China

6. Militarily hazardous since newly promoted reactor designs increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation.

Huh? What is “Militarily Hazardous”? We have absolutely no idea what this means. Since when has a civilian nuclear power plant increased the risk of nuclear weapon proliferation? These guys need to stop taking their talking points from the movie, The Expendables 2 or the Simpsons.

7. Inherently risky due to unavoidable cascading accidents from human error, internal faults, and external impacts; vulnerability to climate-driven sea-level rise, storm, storm surge, inundation and flooding hazard, resulting in international economic impacts.

So, this is the reference to three legacy reactor incidents (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima) were caused by design flaws or a tsunami. Total number of deaths from the 3 events from either direct exposure or sickness was 31 people – Over the course of 60 years and hundreds of operating reactors globally. While that’s not acceptable, new generations of advanced reactor designs have learned from legacy reactors with improved safety, engineering, and the use of accident-tolerant fuels. We would be very appreciative to be able to educate the authors on the current status of advanced nuclear reactor development.

8. Subject to too many unresolved technical and safety problems associated with newer unproven concepts, including ‘Advanced’ and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).

So, how do they know? Have they canvased all the developers? Do they know how many small reactors are operating in Asia? What a lazy, generalized statement devoid of any facts.

9. Too unwieldy and complex to create an efficient industrial regime for reactor construction and operation processes within the intended build-time and scope needed for climate change mitigation.

So, they are assuming they know how advanced nuclear reactors will be built and fueled, or are they just saying it will be complex? We are not sure how “unwieldy” applies to an industrial process. News flash for the team – we are constructing small nuclear reactors for the U.S. Navy at a pretty good clip right now with a tried and tested industrial process. Not that hard to convert those lessons for commercial use.

10. Unlikely to make a relevant contribution to necessary climate change mitigation needed by the 2030’s due to nuclear’s impracticably lengthy development and construction time-lines, and the overwhelming construction costs of the very great volume of reactors that would be needed to make a difference.

Again, what’s a relevant contribution? Have the authors actually seen the studies on the amount of dedicated land and sea mass needed to be purchases to build the amount of other zero carbon renewables (solar and wind) generation at scale to make a difference in climate change mitigation by 2050? And that doesn’t include the transmission and distribution infrastructure.

Bottom line – The authors are neither serious nor informed. We would love to publicly engage on these issues to raise their awareness of the reality of the advanced nuclear reactor industry.