| NEW GENERATION John Hopkins, Chair and CEO of NuScale Power, said SMRs
were “an ideal flexible clean energy solution to repurpose retiring coal fueled power plants and most importantly, retain and retrain the skilled power plant workforce already in place in these Polish communities.” Similar arguments have been put forward in the USA for housing SMRs at sites where coal fired stations are closing or have already closed. In addition to a skilled workforce such sites also are
likely to have other key resources – grid connections, water supply and civil infrastructure – that could potentially reduce the capital cost of installing SMRs. Similarly, another US SMR developer, TerraPower.
is discussing plans to build its first-of-a-kind Natrium demonstration project at the site of a retiring coal plant in Wyoming. The design includes a molten salt energy storage system and it is being developed with GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) and engineering and construction partner Bechtel. A second route to securing sites would see SMRs take
the place of small gas or diesel installations. This is of particular interest in remote or otherwise inaccessible sites where installing conventional power and transporting fuel supplies is complex and expensive. In practice, such sites help make the economics of early SMR units look favourable compared with current solutions. Russia’s Akademik Lomonosov floating nuclear power
plant, for example, is said to be planned for this purpose. Its two 35MWe KLT40S SMR units can power a city of about 100,000 people and provide heat alongside that can be used for local heat customers or for seawater desalination (producing up to 240 000 cubic metres of drinking water per day). NuScale has also seen such remote sites as a potentially fruitful. It has joined forces with Polish copper and silver miner KGHM and with PBE Molecule to provide power to the mining company’s production plants. This co-operation would see the development and construction initially of four SMRs and potentially up to a dozen (with installed capacity of around 1GW).
What’s the in-service date? These collaborations envisage 2030 as the target in-operation date. “The changes in the climate are forcing us to take decisive actions. We are already feeling the impact, including in a financial sense, connected among others with the increases in energy prices. The construction of small nuclear reactors by 2030 is a solid declaration and an element our energy transformation. We are pioneers in Poland, as we expect that the first of our nuclear power plants will come online in 2029,” said Marcin Chludziński, President of the Management Board of KGHM Polska Miedź SA. The UK is looking at a similar timeframe. Tom Greatrex is chief executive of UK nuclear lobby group the Nuclear Industry Association. In a side meeting on new nuclear at the Conservative Party’s annual conference he said there were still a number of decisions that had to be made by the Rolls-Royce consortium and SMRs were “Not able to be deployed in the next few years”. He added, “We may have the first in a decade but they are not available to be deployed tomorrow”. In the USA, NuScale said it is “actively engaged with our manufacturing partners and will be ready to deliver the first NuScale power modules to a client in 2027”. It
IAEA assistance With the first SMRs in operation and countries like the UK and Poland aiming at deployment by the end of the decade, what support is the IAEA giving to the new industry? This year it launched an SMR Platform intended to offer a one-stop shop to access the IAEA’s full array of support and expertise on SMRs, from technology development and deployment (including non-electricity applications) to nuclear safety, security and safeguards. At an event in September to launch the platform, Mikhail Chudakov, IAEA Deputy
Director General and Head of the Department of Nuclear Energy, said “High standards of nuclear safety, security and non-proliferation must be ensured for SMR deployment”. The SMR Regulators Forum is working on bespoke solutions to help national authorities regulate this new class of nuclear power reactors. But Chudakov added, “It is generally recognised that if SMRs are going to be successful, they will need to be economically competitive with respect to other clean energy alternatives. Achieving that will require accelerating their technological development and readiness level.” The new Platform aims to help.
development, the development of industrial codes and standards, and suitable deployment strategies,” said Marco Ricotti, a professor of nuclear engineering at Italy’s Politecnico di Milano, who chairs the IAEA’s Technical Working Group for Small and Medium-sized or Modular Reactors. ■
said that it expects the first NuScale 12-module reference plant to be fully operational in Idaho by 2030, with the first of 12 modules online by 2029 as part of Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP), In an interesting side note, Chludziński also said SMRs
will “substantially reduce the costs of operating our business,” raising the possibility that it could sell its excess to become a power supplier. “We plan to generate power commercially in order to assist in the green transformation of Poland and bring down costs for the average household,” added Chludziński.
Models in which industry builds its own power generation
and trades the excess have been commonly employed but they have been based on gas or renewables. It is an indication of how the potential industrialisation of nuclear, using SMRs, could revolutionise the sector.
Below: A mock-up of a NuScale Small Modular Reactor (SMR) nuclear power plant Photo credit: NuScale Power, LLC
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