Thread by @davidfickling

A quick thread on why Small Modular Reactors might represent a bigger problem for nuclear power than competition from wind and solar:

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

On #energytwitter, there's an exhausting ongoing fight between renewables and nuclear advocates.

Exhausting because these two forms of zero-carbon energy should be working together.

Dispiriting because of the amount of low-quality information that gets slung around.

But one way in which the nuclear industry is deeply interested in learning lessons from renewables is in mass production.

Traditionally nuclear power has been built on hulking 1,000-megawatt power plants. Much of the smart money of late has been looking at ways to shrink these.

Solar module and wind turbine prices have fallen so fast because of the learning curve, a long-standing rule of mass production that states prices will fall at a set rate relative to cumulative output.

Construction and engineering projects (which is basically what nuclear power plants are) don't benefit from very steep learning curves. Indeed, nuclear power may even have a *negative* curve, getting costlier the more it's built:

terrestrialusa.com/wp-content/upl…

The idea of Small Modular Reactors or SMRs is that by shrinking the size of a reactor and building them in a modular, add-on fashion, you could get a positive learning curve again and drive down costs.

Two North American SMR projects took crucial steps toward connection in 2029 or 2030 over the past few weeks:

energy.gov/ne/articles/nr….

ge.com/news/press-rel…

I think SMRs are an ignis fatuus, leading nuclear investment astray toward untested designs, at a time when we should be focused on the hard problems of making conventional atomic power work.

In that sense they're a far bigger risk for nuclear than the rise of renewables.

Just going by the figures put out by SMR developer NuScale, it's clear that even the benefits of mass production would be comfortably exceeded just by switching from private to municipal public finance:

The cost of nuclear power (as with renewables) is almost entirely at the construction stage, so the cost at which you can borrow is really crucial to the viability of the whole project.

I think the thing that's killed nuclear development in western countries in recent years is the fact that we expect plants to be built by private-sector generators, operating in non-monopolistic power markets, mostly without a price on carbon.

Renewables thrive in those conditions, but it's not renewables that have stopped nuclear deployment.

There's actually plenty of nuclear being built right now, but it's mostly being done by vertically integrated state or quasi-state utilities in Asia or Eastern Europe.

Making nuclear power work involves accepting the fact that it struggles to survive in the deregulated power markets we've built in western countries since the 1980s, and finding ways around that.

SMRs suggest an easy way out that, in my opinion, will prove illusory.

Let's refocus our efforts instead on overcoming the regulatory and financial challenges to making a well-understood, 60-year-old technology — conventional nuclear power — fit for the 21st century. (ends)