SMRS & ADVANCED REACTORS | NUCLEAR PROMISE
Taking stock of the SMR promise
Taking stock of the changing discourse on SMRs within the nuclear community over recent years is yielding insights into the prospects for this suite of technologies. SMRs may or may not prove to be a successful standalone technology, but their promise for the nuclear sector and society goes much wider than that
By Markku Lehtonen, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona
THE LATEST IN THE LONG series of nuclear technology promises, that of the Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), keeps gaining potency, as illustrated by the evolution of the discourses between the 2022 and 2023 Reuters SMR and Advanced Reactor conferences. The nuclear community has been highly successful in creating a sense of urgency, in the face of climate and energy security crises, thereby lending the promise considerable legitimacy. By contrast, the road is long before the SMR promise reaches sufficient credibility – a second key success factor for any techno-scientific promise – by persuading investors and other stakeholders of the industry’s ability to deliver. The promise is facing an increasingly risky phase, as shown by the recent cancellation of the NuScale project in Idaho. The greater the expectations, the deeper is the disappointment if the hopeful discourses fail to gradually translate into policy instruments, funding schemes – and ultimately, R&D, prototype and commercial projects. Yet, the credibility and the very success of the SMR promise may matter less for a growing number of industry players and nuclear advocates who see SMRs less as an end and more as a means of getting back to the “real business” of building large reactors.
Is the SMR promise legitimate? The urgency of tackling the climate change and energy security challenges has lent the SMRs the legitimacy, and hence the political support, that is vital for any techno- scientific promise. If 2022’s Atlanta conference was replete with frustration and nostalgic references to the foregone times of political leadership under the Atoms for Peace programme, last year’s motto seemed to be that the nuclear community has now won the political battle – and that “there’s no path to net zero without nuclear”. Fred Dermarkar, the President and CEO of Canada’s nuclear science and technology laboratory AECL, opened his speech with great enthusiasm: “It’s a heart-stopping historic moment!… For how long have we been asking for leadership?…Well, we have it now!” The prominent role of nuclear in the recent joint statement by PM Trudeau and President Biden on energy-sector collaboration served as a sign of political leadership. Alongside the frequent references to IEA and IPPC reports, in 2023 the speakers evoked the recent Ontario grid operator’s report, which suggests that to reach its net-zero emission target by 2050, the province could need up to 17,800 MW of new nuclear capacity, both SMRs and large reactors. Reaching the climate
Above: OPG is to construct a first-of-a-kind GE Hitachi BWRX-300 SMR at its Darlington nuclear site Photo credit: Ontario Power Generation (OPG)
18 | January 2024 |
www.neimagazine.com
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