Reply #8: PBMR's failure was administrative and project creep, not a failure of the system

[txlibdem]

From the article you linked:

"One problem was that the design became too ambitious, says John Walmsley, past president of the South African branch of the Nuclear Institute, a professional society for nuclear engineers. The PBMR hoped to push the reactor's operating temperature as high as possible to enable not just electricity generation, but also 'process heat' applications such as turning coal into liquid fuels, he says. It also aimed to boost the power output to the very limits of the design to make the reactor more economical. "They tried to build a BMW when they maybe should have started with a Morris Minor," he says."

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100223/full/4631008b.html

This indicates either management incompetence or greed, not a failure of Pebble Bed technology. The South African project became too bloated, so excessively ambitious that they couldn't even finish a prototype. From the same link, "Tsinghua University in Beijing now hosts the only operational prototype pebble-bed reactor." With a working prototype the Chinese are in a position to gain the technological upper hand in modular nuclear plant technology. That's not the future I'd like to see.

The main criticism in the linked article comes from Steven Thomas of Greenwich University.

"Professor Thomas is a researcher in energy policy with more than 30 years of experience. His work is international in scope and the main areas of research are on economics and policy towards nuclear power; liberalisation and privatisation of the electricity and gas industries; and trade policy on network energy industries."

http://www.gre.ac.uk/schools/business/about-us/departments/ibe/staff/Professor-Steve-Thomas

His focus is on privatising the utilities and nuclear power is an expensive option. The forces of corporatism do not want any large public works projects, let along any that can be cost competitive with the dirty but profitable industries of today. This one-sided attack on a promising nuclear technology is typical of the reactionary right wing who want no change from the status quo. Focusing on a bloated project that died for lack of funding and greed on the part of the backers as a death knell to a promising technology is pure punditry, pure politics but it has no meaning in the real world. Many solar projects may be canceled in this economic climate. Is solar a dead technology? I think not.

We need solar and wind power, as much as we can get. But any rational assessment of our energy needs has to include at least doubling our nuclear capacity if we are to prevent global climate catastrophe. We need all of the carbon-free technologies we can possibly get.