AI Power Demands Are Rewriting Nuclear Safety with Peter Jones
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Breaking Green, a podcast by Global Justice Ecology Project. In the face of new studies showing increased dangers of exposure to radiation, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is proposing the repeal of a 50-year-old safety regulation known as as low as reasonably achievable, or Alara. This is being done to fast-track small modular reactors, a proposed new nuclear technology. SMR reactors. Are seen as a possible answer to the energy bottleneck for the expansion of data centers that feed artificial intelligence. SMRs would be smaller, but spread out in more communities.
Why is the NRC proposing to repeal the 50‑year‑old ALARA safety rule?
They would be less efficient and use a more dangerous nuclear fuel. All of this is being greenwashed under the banner of a so-called nuclear renaissance by big tech corporations and some supporters who claim that it is an answer to climate. Climate change. On this episode of Breaking Green, we will speak with Peter Jones. Peter Jones is trained as a physicist and as a lawyer, and he is director of nuclear waste policy at the Samuel Lawrence Foundation. Peter Jones, welcome to Breaking Green.
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure being here.
Uh we really are excited to have you on. You are uh trained as a physicist and and you're also uh you have a JD. Uh you're you're you're trained as an attorney. You have a legal and physics background, you work for the Samuel Lawrence Foundation, which is very involved in nuclear issues. And currently there's a big push uh for a nuclear renaissance, and your president, uh Bar. Bart Ziegler has written some op-eds that that use that phrase, uh the a nuclear renaissance. He talks about the dangers and and the problems with having uh unresolved issues with nuclear waste. So could you tell us uh why you're concerned uh with this push for uh small uh modular nukes?
So the Samuel Lawrence Foundation has a long and stored history after Bart saw the fallout from you know Fukushima, the Daiichi power plant, those disasters and he started wondering, you know, how safe is the power plant in my backyard? And so the more he looked into it, the more concerns he had, the plant at San Onofre was Had a particularly checkered past in terms of engineering and hundreds of uh seals being broken. And eventually it was decommissioned with the help of Bart's expert testimony and the people that he was able to bring in experts to say this really is not safe for the community. And so, you know, it was shut down by the consent of the operator. It wasn't even economical for them to operate.
And then the concern of the foundation, in addition. to arts and education was that, well, now that the plant shut down, why is the nuclear waste still here? And it turns out that, you know, despite there being a congressional mandate to take care of the waste after the plant shuts down,
How do small modular reactors (SMRs) relate to AI data‑center energy demand?
There is no final solution. There's no someone who th there's no resting place for this toxic, you know, highly corrosive radiative material. So We've been doing everything we can to work with people to try to get it off the beach. It's sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and I five, and neither of those are good places to store uh radiated materials, especially in between the two.
What agency are you dealing with when it comes to this nuclear uh waste?
So there's a host of state and federal agencies that have to weigh in the permits. Mostly it is the NRC Nuclear Regulatory Commission, correct? That's correct. And the DOE, the uh Department of Energy, there's different state permits uh that have to be given by like the Coastal Commission and You know, the the C E C but it it's mostly the Nick Story regular commission.
Why is there a need for so much public um organization around this? Are are they just wanting to leave the waste there? What's what's what's happening?
Well, I'm sure both the NRC and Holtec and So Southern Edison, California would love the waste not to be there. It's just that there is no long term federal repository. They focused on originally in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act focused on three sites. Then just one with the amendments six years after it was passed.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:42
2
Why is the NRC proposing to repeal the 50‑year‑old ALARA safety rule?
0:42–3:05
3
How do small modular reactors (SMRs) relate to AI data‑center energy demand?
3:05–8:50
4
What lessons does the San Onofre decommissioning teach about nuclear waste?
8:50–22:23
5
Why is there no federal nuclear waste repository and how does that affect SMRs?
22:23–37:39