POLICY & FINANCE | BUILDING AN INVESTMENT CASE
An advanced reactor champion
Nuclear has historically been very challenging when it comes to attracting to private investment. The solution is a recruitment campaign for the investment community. Meera Kotak of Charles River Associates tells NEI how
“TRADITIONAL NUCLEAR IS ALL ABOUT the cost overruns and the regulatory regime. It’s a risk problem,” explains Meera Kotak, Associate Principal at Charles River Associates Energy Practice. Considering the need for new nuclear capacity, the emerging roll out of small modular and advanced reactor technologies and the market for private investment those risks remain but given its early stage there are a lot of additional technology risks too. Addressing those risks is vital if nuclear is to attract investment and go on to meet its potential. It’s vital for us too given that nuclear is central if the world is to meet its emissions reduction targets. “We’ve been working with utilities to think about that question of how do they invest in nuclear, what role do they play and how do they de-risk a project? One idea is this approach of having a champion that can make a market. It could be a developer but more likely it’s going to be either a large utility or an off taker that’s a sizeable off taker,” says Kotak.
She cites recent moves by Dow and X-energy to advance
efforts to deploy advanced small modular nuclear reactors at an industrial site under the US DOE’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. In March, Dow and X-energy signed a joint development agreement to develop a four-unit Xe-100 facility at one of Dow’s US Gulf Coast sites. However, while energy-hungry commercial enterprise is clearly a suitable candidate to champion SMRs and advanced reactors, other interests also have a role to play. “You see
governments and utilities playing a bigger role in that de-risking process. That could be around the technology, it could be around having the right off-take agreement in place, it could be about having the licensing process streamlined, things of that nature,” says Kotak. She refers to places like Poland, the Czech Republic and Canada where governments are stepping in to support development of advanced reactor technologies. However, when considering SMRs and advanced reactors one element of the technology risk concerns the multitude of different designs that are currently being mooted. “There are over 80 different technologies being bandied about. Some of them won’t make it past the design stage and some will go all the way through and become major businesses. It’s understanding which ones will make it through which ones won’t,” adds Kotak.
The Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has deployed a Small Modular Reactor dashboard which includes an analysis of 21 SMR designs and the progress towards their deployment and commercialisation. The dashboard looks beyond technology readiness level and assesses progress across six additional conditions including licensing readiness, siting, financing, supply chain, engagement and fuel. CRA offers a similar readiness dashboard, the S mark, which also supports de-risking of SMRs and advanced reactor technologies. “We looked at the full spectrum of risk from technology to supply chain to licensing to TRLs and so forth and we filter down to the top 15 or 20 technologies that
Right: Nuclear power is central to meeting our low-carbon energy needs
26 | July 2023 |
www.neimagazine.com
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