3 ms·

How much (little?) radioactive material would there have to be inside the SMR for an impact of a 737 into the neighborhood to be more devastating than the relea

• consumer451 2y ago
  Well, this doesn't answer your question, but there is also the issue of waste storage. In light water reactors, that's stored on-site for a long time. This research appears to indicate that with SMRs, this is actually a bigger issue. > Small modular reactors (SMRs), proposed as the future of nuclear energy, have purported cost and safety advantages over existing gigawatt-scale light water reactors (LWRs). However, few studies have assessed the implications of SMRs for the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. The low-, intermediate-, and high-level waste stream characterization presented here reveals that SMRs will produce more voluminous and chemically/physically reactive waste than LWRs, which will impact options for the management and disposal of this waste. Although the analysis focuses on only three of dozens of proposed SMR designs, the intrinsically higher neutron leakage associated with SMRs suggests that most designs are inferior to LWRs with respect to the generation, management, and final disposal of key radionuclides in nuclear waste. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2111833119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2111833119