Funding
This project is funded by generous grants from the University of Michigan’s Carbon Neutrality Acceleration Program at the Graham Sustainability Institute, the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
The Reactor Around the Corner
Summary
Nuclear energy, a source of stable, carbon-free electricity, has long been considered essential for meeting growing global energy demands. Amid the climate emergency, geopolitical instability, and energy insecurity, it has recently regained attention as a key solution to these issues. However, nuclear power remains controversial due to its history of severe accidents, the risks of proliferation and potential use of nuclear material in weapons, challenges in managing long-lived nuclear waste, and high construction costs for nuclear power facilities. Advanced nuclear energy technologies, particularly small modular reactors (SMRs), promise to solve the problems of nuclear power through improved designs. Governments, industries, and publics have shown increasing interest in SMRs and other advanced reactors as central to solving the world’s energy crisis and have been supporting their rapid development.
However, the potential expansion of the global nuclear industry introduces—and in some cases reinforces—problems that technological solutions alone will not be able to fix. To help ensure that advanced nuclear energy serves the public interest rather than predominantly corporate and geopolitical actors, we must have robust governance frameworks in place before the widespread implementation of SMRs. To understand advanced nuclear energy’s potential impacts, we look to historical cases of science and technology in society. We know that every new and emerging technology, no matter how novel, has commonalities with past technologies and that societal responses to new technologies demonstrate recurring patterns. In this report, we analyze the implications of the widespread adoption of SMRs and other advanced nuclear reactors using what we call the analogical case study (ACS) method. This method examines the history of past technologies—similar in form, function, potential impacts, or some combination of the three—to anticipate the implications of emerging technologies.
This report first gives an overview of the global history and regulatory environment of nuclear energy and outlines the current landscape of advanced nuclear energy development. Then we analyze the social, environmental, ethical, equity, economic, and geopolitical implications of SMRs and other advanced reactors through the ACS approach. We anticipate that SMRs, while having the potential to benefit countries and communities, are likely to have significant negative social impacts without robust governance frameworks. From our analysis, we find that the implementation of SMRs is likely to: entrench global disparities, privilege markets over the public good, overlook local and Indigenous knowledge, intensify environmental injustices, and abandon promises of local development and empowerment. Building on these insights, we provide policy recommendations for the governance of SMRs and the uranium supply chain. These policy recommendations are not exhaustive, and not all of them are necessarily unique to SMRs or other advanced nuclear reactors. They serve as a starting point for the responsible governance needed in the face of a potentially expanding nuclear industry to maximize the potential benefits and minimize the likely harms of the widespread adoption of these new nuclear energy technologies.
Join us for a live webinar conversation with the authors—Nora Lewis, Txai Sibley, Nicholas Stubblefield, Michael Redmond, Molly Kleinman, Shobita Parthasarathy, and Denia Djokić—to discuss research findings, as well as policy recommendations for the governance of SMRs and the uranium supply chain.
About the Technology Assessment Project
STPP's Technology Assessment Project (TAP) research anticipates the implications of emerging technologies and uses these insights to develop better technology policies.
We use an analogical case study approach to analyze the social, economic, ethical, equity, and political dimensions of emerging technologies, such as facial recognition, large language models, and small modular nuclear reactors. Our distinctive evaluation approach can be applied to technologies in a range of areas.
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Shobita Parthasarathy
Professor of Public Policy; Director, Science, Technology, and Public Policy program; Professor of Women's and Gender Studies (by courtesy)
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