ECI Testimony on Small Modular Nuclear Reactors

The following testimony was written and delivered by Shannon Anderson, ECI Director of Advocacy.

There’s nothing like having a baby in 2024 to make you recommitted to sustainability, falling in love with someone who could live to see 2100, makes even a dedicated climate advocate like me even more certain that I need to be in places like this.

Upon review of this bill, mainly pages 5-6, we ask you to reject it. We have such a limited time before us to transition to renewable energy and achieve the corresponding emissions reductions to make a difference to our young people.

Not only does this bill devote and risk precious and disproportionate consumer dollars to, in our view, the wrong transition, but it does so at the expense of renewable energy, energy storage and efficiency which neither got this kind of regulatory nor state investment supports. 

The dollars invested in SMRs and even just conceptualizing SMRs will not be available for use in building out a wind, solar and battery storage resource base. These carbon-free and lower-cost technologies are available today and can push the transition from fossil fuels forward significantly in the coming 10 years—years when SMRs will still be looking for licensing approval and construction funding.

If we indeed do have a sudden demand surge, SMRs can’t meet it. 8-10 years? Wow. If we do have an enormous demand surge, which haven’t been modeled in several past IRPs, are we accurately measuring it? Concerns have been raised even today about our calculations on efficiency on data. There isn’t time to get into our many concerns about every aspect of this technology, such as the lack of accurate decommissioning cost projections, but I did want to mention the on-site waste storage should give everyone serious reservations when we are still struggling through legacy ground pollution in many parts of Indiana. Industries love to promise something is safe until it’s not. And Hoosiers pay with their lives and health. 

Renewables are getting pretty short shrift when in many ways they are the reliable resources during extreme weather events and coupled with storage and tools like virtual power plants, are flexible, dispatchable and stable prices for decades. 

If we clear a single path toward this dangerous investment, I fear a massive boondoggle that will haunt all of us for decades to come and we will have done little to reduce emissions in the time we have.