Military pressure behind new push for small nuclear reactors

Donald Trump’s recent visit to the UK saw a so-called “groundbreaking partnership” on nuclear energy. London and Washington announced plans to build 20 small modular nuclear reactors and also develop microreactor technology, despite the fact that no such plants have been built commercially anywhere in the world.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has promised that these plans will usher in a “golden age” of nuclear energy and “also bring down prices.” But the history of nuclear power has been marked by decades of overhype, soaring costs, and endless delays. Around the world, trends are pointing in the wrong direction.

So why is there a renewed excitement about nuclear development? The real reason has less to do with energy security or climate change and more to do with military power.

At first glance, this case may seem obvious. Nuclear proponents say small modular reactors (SMRs) are essential to meet growing power demands from cars and data centers and reduce emissions. Large nuclear power plants are currently prohibitively expensive, so small nuclear reactors are being touted as an exciting new alternative.

But these days, even the most optimistic industry analyzes acknowledge that nuclear power (even SMR) is unlikely to compete with renewables. An analysis published earlier this year in New Civil Engineer concluded that SMR is “the most expensive power source per kilowatt generated when compared to natural gas, traditional nuclear, and renewable energy.”

Independent evaluations by former nuclear proponents, including the Royal Society, have found that 100% renewable systems outperform all energy systems, including nuclear, on cost, flexibility and safety. This helps explain why global statistical analyzes show that renewable energy is associated with carbon emissions reductions, while nuclear power generally is not.

Enthusiasm for SMR can be explained, in part, by the voices of the most vocal organizations, which tend to have formal authority or interests in promoting nuclear power. These organizations include the industry itself and its suppliers, nuclear energy agencies, and the governments in which military nuclear programs are based. The only question for these interests is which types of reactors to develop and how fast. They don’t question whether they should build nuclear reactors in the first place. The need is considered self-evident.

Large reactors, at least, have benefited from economies of scale and decades of technology optimization. Many SMR designs are just “PowerPoint reactors”, existing only in slides and feasibility studies. Claims that these unbuilt designs “cost less” are speculative at best.

The investment market knows this. While financiers see the SMR hype as a way to profit from billions of dollars in government subsidies, their own analysis is less enthusiastic about the technology itself.

So why is there so much focus on nuclear power in general, and small reactors in particular? There’s clearly more to this than meets the eye.

hidden link

A neglected factor is military dependence on the civil nuclear industry. Sustaining the Navy’s nuclear arsenal and weapons programs requires constant availability of general purpose nuclear reactor technology, skilled labor, and specialized materials. Without a civilian nuclear industry, military nuclear capabilities would be very difficult and expensive to maintain.

Nuclear submarines are particularly important here, as they are very likely to require the country’s nuclear reactor industry and its supply chain, even without civil nuclear power generation. Nuclear submarines are barely affordable individually, but they become even more expensive when you factor in the cost of this “submarine industrial base.”

Rolls-Royce is an important link here, as it has already built a submarine nuclear reactor in the UK and will build a newly announced civilian SMR. The company publicly stated in 2017 that its civilian SMR program would “relieve the burden on the Department of Defense in developing and sustaining technology and capabilities.”

Here, as highlighted by Nuclear Intelligence Weekly in 2020, Rolls-Royce’s SMR program has significant “symbiosis with UK military needs”. It is this dependency that allows military spending to be “hidden” (in the words of a former executive at submarine builder BAE Systems) behind civilian projects.

By funding civilian nuclear power projects, taxpayers and consumers would be able to cover military uses of nuclear power through subsidies and higher bills, without additional spending going into the defense budget.

When the UK government funded us to investigate the value of this transfer, we estimated it at around £5 billion a year for the UK alone. These costs are hidden from public view and are covered by revenue from increased electricity rates and the budget of supposedly private government agencies.

This is not a conspiracy, but a kind of political gravity field. Once governments see nuclear weapons as an indicator of their global standing, funding and political support become permanent.

The result is a strange cycle. Nuclear power is justified without energy security or cost arguments, but in reality it is sustained for strategic reasons that have not yet been recognized.

global patterns

Other nuclear powers are more outspoken, but the UK is not unique. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the US-UK nuclear deal was important for “securing the transatlantic nuclear supply chain”. Approximately US$25 billion (£18.7 billion) a year flows into the US from civilian and military nuclear activities.

Russia and China are both very open about their inseparable civil-military ties. French President Emmanuel Macron has declared, “Without civilian nuclear weapons, there will be no military nuclear weapons, and without military nuclear weapons, there will be no civilian nuclear weapons.”

Across these states, military nuclear capabilities are seen as a means to remaining at the world’s “top table.” Ending their private programs would threaten not only jobs and energy, but also great power status.

next frontier

Beyond submarines, the development of “microreactors” is opening up new military applications for nuclear power. Microreactors are even smaller and more experimental than SMRs. You can make money by squeezing military procurement budgets, but it doesn’t make sense from a commercial energy perspective.

But microreactors are seen as essential to US plans for battlefield power, space infrastructure, and new “high-energy” anti-drone and missile weapons. Precisely because they serve military purposes, prepare for them to become increasingly prominent in “civilian” discussions.

Whatever view is taken about these military developments, it makes no sense to claim that they are independent of the civil nuclear sector. The real thrust of the recent US-UK nuclear deal is military power projection, not civilian electricity production. However, this remains missing from most discussions about energy policy.

Being honest about what’s really going on is crucial to a democracy.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.