Part 4 of 4 Parts (Please read Parts 1, 2, and 3 first)

But none of this has stopped nuclear vendors from touting their SMR hopefuls:

• Holtec has never built a reactor. Its design has been revised three times in three years, each version larger, and more complex and expensive than the last. At one point, Holtec even claimed its reactor would be as safe as a chocolate factory.
• Natrium is backed by Bill Gates. It uses liquid sodium coolant and a thermal storage gimmick. The design is so complex that the only thing it is likely to generate is more press releases and perhaps a few more government grants. The only fuel available for Natrium’s first core load was supposed to come from Russia. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the Natrium project was immediately delayed by at least two years. This exposed the folly of building a new generation of reactors dependent on a single, geopolitically fraught source of fuel.
• NuScale was the first to get NRC approval for an SMR design, but it has no customers and just canceled its flagship project due to cost overruns. Its original fifty-megawatt design was quickly upsized to seventy-seven megawatts after the economics failed to add up. After revisiting the drawing board, the new version was just approved in May of this year, but there are no unsubsidized potential buyers.
• Westinghouse’s conventional AP1000 reactors in Georgia nearly bankrupted the company. Now it has returned to the market-place with an even smaller AP300. Apparently, it’s philosophy is “if at first you don’t succeed, shrink the reactor and try again”.

The world’s financial and tech giants are lining up behind SMRs, as long as they are subsidized by someone else. Goldman Sachs estimates that SMRs could provide “round-the-clock power” for the data centers of tomorrow. It even suggested that the cost of SMRs could undercut large-scale renewables. Microsoft is actively hiring veterans of the nuclear industry to accelerate its own SMR strategy, apparently convinced that mini-nukes will help keep its cloud and AI ambitions carbon-free.

The U.K. government is betting billions of pounds on Rolls-Royce and a new generation of “mini nukes” to fill the country’s looming energy gap, promising jobs, security, and a low-carbon future.

The dream that led to first nuclear power plants was that mining uranium was a lot cheaper than coal mining. However, while nuclear costs continue to rise, wind, solar, and battery storage are becoming increasingly cheaper and more reliable every year. And the sun and wind provide energy for free. Renewable energy sources are now the lowest-cost source of new electricity in most markets. Nuclear power, by contrast, has never achieved cost reductions through learning or mass production. Every new reactor design is a new experiment, with new risks and new costs.

Every single dollar spent on SMRs is a dollar not spent on proven, less expensive, rapidly deployable renewable energy sources. The delays and overruns that have plagued nuclear power projects mean that SMRs cannot be built in time to meet urgent climate goals. In the meantime, wind, solar, and storage are already delivering reliable, affordable, and clean power to the grid.

The latest SMR campaign is not a revolution but a rerun of earlier nuclear renaissances. It’s an expensive distraction from the real work of reducing the release of carbon dioxide from our energy system. The climate crisis demands solutions that are proven, scalable, and affordable. These are qualities that nuclear power, in any form, has never delivered.

Despite all the headlines and billions in taxpayer subsidies, an SMR will never be built in time to matter, and not at a price that makes sense. But that certainly won’t stop the industry from burning through billions more in public money, chasing a fantasy that distracts and diverts resources from real, proven solutions.

Rolls-Royce