Jonathan Renouf

…And why they are a bonkers idea for Jersey!

https://studio.youtube.com/video/SvoMCjk4IbU/edit

There have been a few articles and comments recently suggesting that rather than go for a wind farm, Jersey should look to small modular nuclear reactors (SMR’s) as the future of our energy supply. The idea capitalises on recent publicity around the race to develop a new generation of small nuclear reactors that could be a cheaper alternative to the huge nuclear power stations that dominate the nuclear energy sector at the moment.

For Jersey, this is a non starter, certainly for the foreseeable future, for the following reasons.

First, SMR’s don’t exist yet – certainly not in a form that you can actually buy (the only operational ones are in China and Russia). The UK, which is attempting to establish a strong position in the field, doesn’t expect an SMR to be running for another 10 years at least. And remember, the history of the nuclear industry has been beset with delays.

Second, one thing of which we can be absolutely sure is that the electricity from the first SMR’s will be hugely expensive. Even the industry acknowledges that the costs per unit of electricity will be way more than for renewables. New build nuclear has always been expensive, the industry has a decades long reputation for colossal cost overruns and the first iterations of any technology are always expensive anyway. For years, SMR’s will depend on huge subsidies. Pursuing SMR’s as an option can still make sense for a large jurisdiction, where diversification and the need for reliable base load electricity can trump cost, but in a small jurisdiction it makes zero sense to subsidise hugely expensive electricity when “cheap” is readily available. And in fact, new-build offshore wind is now cheaper than new-build fossil fuel power stations and way cheaper than nuclear.

Third, the regulatory burden of starting up a nuclear power generating sector in Jersey would be off the scale. We would need a regulatory regime to;

• deal with the import of nuclear fuel
• oversee the operation of a nuclear plant – the equivalent of a Nuclear Installations Inspectorate
• provide for the removal of waste

Speaking of which, we’d need to find (and pay) someone to take our nuclear waste for long term storage or processing. (Contrary to what you might think, SMR’s produce more nuclear waste per unit of electricity than large nuclear power stations.) Some people have suggested that we might just persuade the UK to take us under their nuclear umbrella. But that would still require Jersey to establish the legal framework for another jurisdiction to take over regulation of the nuclear sector. It’s also based on the assumption that the NII has the capacity and the desire to take on the regulation of a nuclear power plant outside the UK.

On top of that we’d need insurance arrangements to cover third party risks. We’d need a round the clock security operation to protect the site. We’d need to incorporate non proliferation legal frameworks into our laws. And so on. There is a reason why nuclear power has never been adopted by a small jurisdiction.

All this regulatory activity would be for one, small nuclear power plant (although its footprint would still be large by Jersey standards). Paying for an SMR might make sense for a large jurisdiction which already has a nuclear industry and can spread the start up and subsidy costs across millions of consumers, but I simply cannot see it making sense in a small jurisdiction like Jersey.

Fourth, even with a functioning SMR, we’d still need cables to France to provide backup. We couldn’t risk having a single point of failure for our electricity supply, and since nuclear shutdowns on safety grounds are relatively common, a backup would be essential. (This is particularly so with a new technology which is vulnerable to systemic flaws in a standardised design.) We’d also need an export contract because an SMR that met Jersey’s peak electricity demand would be producing more than the island needs for 95% plus of the time – even allowing for potential novel domestic markets for electricity such as data centres (because to be efficient nuclear reactors need to run flat out all the time).

And finally, we’d need to convince people in Jersey to accept a nuke in the island. There may come a day when the idea of a nuclear power plant at – say – La Collette provokes nothing more than a shrug, but I would suggest we are a very, very long way from that point right now.

It is interesting to see who has been promoting the idea of an SMR for Jersey. All the proponents I have seen are people with a track record of opposing a wind farm (and in some cases they are also climate change deniers). Promoting an SMR for Jersey has the feel of a political distraction – “don’t look over there, look over here”. There is clearly an organised campaign to promote SMR’s as a supposed alternative – every time offshore wind is raised in a political setting, an opponent interjects with “we should look at other alternatives”. But SMR’s are not an alternative. The truth is that offshore wind makes far more sense for Jersey because we have a superb wind regime, shallow seas (which reduce installation costs) and proximity to markets. We also have commercial operators who want to invest their money in a large wind farm.

Whether or not a viable wind farm proposal that works for Jersey eventually materialises we cannot yet say. But it is a far better, more realistic option than the fantasy of a nuclear power plant in St Helier. Perhaps one day in the far future, SMR’s will be a mature, cheap and safe enough technology to deploy quickly and simply. I hope so, because that would be a benefit to us all. But in which case, with a wind farm already operational, Jersey could become a clean energy hub, perhaps with tidal in the mix too. In the meantime, offshore wind is a mature, well understood economic opportunity for the island. SMR’s most definitely are not.

This article is from an organisation that is generally against fossil fuel expansion, but the figures are well sourced.