Modular Reactors

[Swwils]

If you read into the whole Westinghouse thing you'll see that the financial packaging was one of the major sources of issue.

The whole thing was interesting. 4 FOAK reactors inside regulated rate base. FOAK risks should never have been pushed to ratepayers because Westinghouse stood to gain so much by getting past FOAK. Those plants should have been merchant financed really.

I guess if your country spaffs up a regular reactor build then financed SMRs are relatively very attractive.

[Mart]

Bit of an update on SMR's. I've manily heard of Rolls Royce, perhaps due to the British link and media etc, and also Nu-Scale, the American idea, which seemed to be driving attention, and was suggested to be cheaper than the RR idea.

Now it seems that costs have risen significantly for Nu-Scale as they've attempted to go from theory to practice. This may actually be a good thing, if we find out sooner that SMR's are not an economically viable solution, as it will allow us to focus more on RE, storage etc..

NuScale ends Utah project, in blow to US nuclear power ambitions

Nov 8 (Reuters) - NuScale Power (SMR.N) said on Wednesday it has agreed with a power group in Utah to terminate the company's small modular reactor project, dealing a blow to U.S. ambitions for a wave of nuclear energy to fight climate change and sending NuScale's shares down 20%.

In 2020, the Department of Energy approved $1.35 billion over 10 years for the plant, known as the Carbon Free Power Project, subject to congressional appropriations. NuScale has received about $600 million from the department since 2014 to support the design, licensing and siting of the project.

NuScale had planned to develop the six-reactor 462 megawatt project with the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) and launch it in 2030, but several towns pulled out of the project as costs rose.

And a Guardian article looking at it from an Australian point of interest:

Small modular nuclear reactor that was hailed by Coalition as future cancelled due to rising costs

The only small modular nuclear power plant approved in the US – cited by the Australian opposition as evidence of a “burgeoning” global nuclear industry – has been cancelled due to rising costs.

NuScale Power announced on Wednesday that it had dropped plans to build a long-promised “carbon free power project” in Idaho. It blamed the decision on a lack of subscribers for the plant’s electricity.

The Coalition’s energy and climate spokesperson, Ted O’Brien, has cited NuScale’s technology as part of the opposition’s contentious argument that Australia should lift a national ban on nuclear energy and that small modular reactors (SMRs) could be an affordable replacement for its ageing coal-fired power plants.

Industry experts say SMRs are not commercially available, that nuclear energy is more expensive than alternatives and in a best-case scenario could not play a role in Australia for more than a decade, and probably not before 2040. The Australian Energy Market Operator found renewable energy could be providing 96% of the country’s electricity by that time.