<
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/11/30/what-drives-this-madness-on-small-modular-nuclear-reactors/>
"A few months ago, a STEM and economics literate global decarbonization
executive for a $4 billion annual revenue logistics business operating in most
of the major trading companies of the world asked me “What drives this madness
on hydrogen?” They were being peppered with irrational proposals for the
molecule and its derivatives. I answered at length with the motivations that
were creating cognitive biases among the self-supporting circle of fossil fuel
firms, their financial firms, the countries with high oil rents and firms whose
only intellectual capital is in technology which burns fossil fuels like
internal combustion engine manufacturers.
This week I had an equivalent question from someone engaged by the
Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists. The individual isn’t an industry insider and didn’t
have a particular iron in the fire, but had been engaged to write a
Bulletin
piece on the perplexing enthusiasm small modular nuclear reactors (SMR) are
seeing from an overlapping circle of advocates and firms.
This was, of course, in the week when NuScale inevitably imploded, a story I’ll
return to as I unpack some of the motivations behind those thinking a bunch of
lab technologies that have been around for decades that depend on uranium from
Russia, that don’t have the physical characteristics for cheap nuclear
generation and don’t have the conditions for success for nuclear generation
will be the saviours of the nuclear industry and a key wedge in fighting
climate change."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
