Former NRC chairman talks nuclear with Al Jazeera

Macfarlane, who served as NRC chairman from 2012 to 2014, is currently a professor and director of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia.

High costs: Using the new Vogtle units in Georgia as an example, Macfarlane said that high capital costs, compounded by long construction schedules, are hurting nuclear’s ability to compete with other energy sources.

“Now there are claims made about the small modular reactors that they’ll be cheaper,” Macfarlane added. “But because nobody’s ever built one, and nobody’s established the supply chains to build them and to operate them, we really have no idea what those will cost.”

Paper designs: Of other advanced reactor designs, Macfarlane said that many of them currently exist only on paper and have not gone through all the necessary steps of building and testing full-scale operating reactor designs. “And those steps take years,” she said. “And when you get to the full-scale model, that’s really expensive. Where’s that money coming from?”

The future: While admitting to not having a “good crystal ball,” Macfarlane said that nuclear will likely remain an important part of electricity production in a number of countries for many decades, and that if policymakers were serious about decarbonization, nuclear power would be part of the energy mix. “But it means a lot of money,” she said. “So, somebody has to pay for this.”