Smaller nuclear reactors might provide safe, efficient energy

Letter to NY Times.

"Had development of small-scale cookie-cutter nuclear power plants and nuclear batteries not been sidetracked by prejudice drawn from past misadventures and a focus on giant facilities, and had alternative sources of energy not been so massively subsidized, nuclear would have already displaced wind and solar.

Farhad Manjoo is correct that large-scale nuclear plants are problematic, but intermittent, unreliable energy generation is not a cost-effective, feasible replacement. The cost of standby backup is very high, and hopes for batteries as utility energy storage have foundered on the competition for the scarce elements needed for their production.

One promising approach is to replace large-scale nuclear facilities with many smaller but safer, cheaper and more manageable ones. The $10 billion, 10-year planning and implementation cycle for a large nuclear plant in the West can be markedly reduced with small modular reactors (to approximately $1 billion, five years) and microreactors (approximately $100 million, three years). Nuclear power remains the energy source of the future.

Andrew I. Fillat

Henry I. Miller 

 

Mr. Fillat has worked for venture capital firms and information technology companies. Dr. Miller is a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute."