Part 1 of 2 Parts
There has been a lot of interest lately in small modular reactors (SMRs). This is a new generation of reactors that generate a maximum of three hundred megawatts. They will be manufactured in factories and shipped to site of use for assembly. It is hoped that they will be simpler, safer and cheaper than current power reactors. The U.S. government has been handing out grants to companies working on SMRs. The United Kingdom is also working on grants to help stimulate the development of SMRs.
Small modular reactors have actually been around since the 1950s. They have been used to power submarines and aircraft carriers since the USS Nautilus was launched in 1955. The first civilian power reactor in Shppingport in the U.S. became operational in 1957. It only generated sixty megawatts of electricity. It was a SMR by today’s definition. Over the intervening decades, civilian power reactors became bigger and bigger, capable of generating more than a gigawatt of electricity. During that time, hundreds of small nuclear reactors were built to power navy ships.
A recent report on the prospects of SMRs for the U.K. was issued by Rolls-Royce and partners in the SMR Consortium (SMRC). It was suggested that an SMR program could create up to forty thousand skilled jobs. It could contribute as much as one hundred and thirty two billion to the U.K. economy. And, it might yield a five hundred and thirty billion dollar export business to the global marketplace.
Lord Hutton, the chairman of the U.K. Nuclear Industries Association said in his forward to the report, “help the UK become a vibrant, world-leading nuclear nation. It is fundamental for the UK to meet its 2050 decarbonization targets and will deliver secure, reliable and affordable electricity for generations to come.”
The SMRC report foresees a doubling of the current U.K. nuclear capacity of nine and a half gigawatts by 2030. Following that, there could be another doubling to forty gigawatts by 2050. This means that SMRs would be generating about thirty gigawatts of electricity for the U.K. by 2050. Given that SMRs by definition can only generate a maximum of three hundred megawatts, there will have to be at least one hundred SMRs in the U.K. by 2050 to generate this much electricity.
This is a very optimistic scenario which is not surprising considering that the nuclear industry would stand to make enormous profits if the growth of SMRs in the U.K. follows its projections. However, there are some problems with the brilliant future projected for U.K. SMRs. The size of nuclear power stations has risen steadily because nuclear power is cheaper, the bigger the reactor. It is much cheaper to build one twelve hundred megawatt power reactor than four three hundred megawatt power reactors. And the cost of big nuclear reactors has steadily risen.
If mass production of SMRs would make them cost competitive against other power sources such as renewables, why has that not already happened? Setting aside questions of materials, technologies, financing and licensing which all add to the cost, the projections for cost of electricity from SMRs are still not encouraging.
Please read Part 2
