Dale Vince ( Ecotricity ) on Smaller Reactors

Dale Vince, the owner of Stroud-based green energy group Ecotricity, has roundly condemned the technology for “defying the economic laws of gravity”. Speaking on his weekly Zerocarbonista podcast, Mr Vince said: “When you come to small nukes, the government and the nuclear industry have consistently said that we will get lower bills, but they don’t put a number on it. They are ecomonists without numbers! Energy minister Ed Miliband: keen to move ahead on SMR plans. Big nuclear is the most expensive electricity we have ever made, it’s off the charts compared to renewable energy and one of the fundamental laws of physics is that the economies of scale come by making something bigger, not by making something smaller – it always costs money to miniaturise. So here they are, saying we can miniatarise nuclear reactors that famously went decades late and billions over budget… and they’ll be cheap. I don’t believe that for a second and what we are of course doing is proliferating the risk.” He added: “It’s always worth imagining what it would be like if the Romans had nuclear power. If they did, Bath would be a toxic no-go zone. It’s only 2,000 years ago and sounds like a long time, but not in the context of toxic nuclear waste.” Whether Berkeley and neighbouring site Oldbury-on-Severn progress with Rolls Royce’s SMR bid, the technology’s pathway to viable commercial models for energy production remains challenging: as of today, only China and Russia have operational SMRs, with China’s HTR-PM pebble-bed reactor connected to the grid and Russia’s floating Akademik Lomonosov plant utilizing two 35MW SMRs.