SMRS & ADVANCED REACTORS | NUCLEAR PROMISE
Right: For many in the nuclear community, the SMR promise appears increasingly as a stepping stone on the way back to constructing large reactors Source: IAEA
difficult-to-finance one-off projects towards modular
factory production is elemental to the SMR promise. Turning the vision into practice may be difficult. Even SMR advocates have shown scepticism towards the idea of modularity as factory production. Many prominent nuclear-sector cheerleaders on social media are equally critical.
Exploiting the window of opportunity Being able to deliver is fundamental, yet the Atlanta 2023 speakers stressed that doing it fast is vital. “We must build reactors now!”, said Fred Dermarkar from the AECL, “to show that we can deliver”, not least to enable the nuclear industry to stay in the game. The creation of IBNI may help, but even there, timelines are becoming stretched, with plans to have the Bank operational by 2026. Views diverge on what the current “window of opportunity” for SMRs in fact consists of. For some, it is the growing public acceptance, spurred by climate change and energy security concerns, and the fading of the memories of the Fukushima disaster. For
others, the opportunity lies in the unprecedented yet ever so fragile political demand and leadership. Many nuclear critics argue that the development of battery technologies, grid management and demand-side solutions will soon close the “window” and render SMRs uncompetitive with renewables. In contrast, and echoing the general sentiment in Atlanta, Julie Kozeracki argued that nuclear does not even need to compete with renewables but instead with “other clean, firm options” such as “solar with really long-duration storage, or natural gas with carbon capture, geothermal, or hydropower”. Instead of safety regulation, the lengthy siting procedures
and impact assessments were at the 2023 conference highlighted as a major obstacle to fast delivery of SMRs. Great hopes were placed on repurposing former coal or decommissioned nuclear sites, which could help cut down the planning, assessment and site preparation time down to 4-5 years from the current 8-9 years. However, Scott Hunnewell, Vice President of the New Nuclear Program
Right: NuScale’s recent troubles illustrate the fragility of the promise of new reactor designs Source: NuScale
20 | January 2024 |
www.neimagazine.com
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