Part of the problem in building conventional nuclear reactors is that an $11Bn project like the conventional build mentioned in the article is of such a scale that it’s inevitable that something will go wrong that causes the budget to explode. The sales pitch for small reactors is they’re not $11Bn projects, so there’s a possibility they could actually be completed on time and somewhat near budget.<p>The author is also clearly anti-nuclear - that’s not to say they’re not right, but they’re motivated.
<i>Proponents assert that SMRs would cost less to build and thus be more affordable. However, when evaluated on the basis of cost per unit of power capacity, SMRs will actually be more expensive than large reactors.</i><p>That's not what affordable means. People are building smaller reactors because it's more likely that a project will be completed, not because of unit costs.
In much of Western Canada, energy use is highest at night in deepest winter when there is no appreciable wind, meaning that the grid is completely reliant on gas-fired power. If we want to reduce gas-fired capacity, we need another source of on-demand power. Meaning either nuclear or a robust storage solution. There seems to be more enthusiasm for the latter, but there’s no buzz about any viable solutions on the horizon.
SMRs are 'fine' for smaller grids. For example, the province of New Brunswick has a CANDU 6 reactor, which is 1x660MW of capacity:<p>* <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Lepreau_Nuclear_Generating_Station" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Lepreau_Nuclear_Generati...</a><p>CANDUs are pretty flexible in that there's a lot of maintenance (including refuelling) that can be done while it is running, but there's still some stuff that needs to be done when the system is powered down, which means taking down a large source of power for the grid.<p>If there were 2-3x300MW reactors, when there could be rotating maintenance without much impact to the grid.
One thing I was surprised to learn about nuclear costs is that there's a fixed component that is basically the same <i>regardless of technology</i> (SMR vs 'LMR'): the civil works.<p>There's a certain amount of concrete and such that needs to always be built, and if you go with a "cheaper" SMR, then the fixed cost becomes a large portion of the total project budget.<p>So unless there's a specific local need for ≤300MW, it might be better to go with a 600/900(+) MW design if you can tie into a large grid where all of those 'extra' MWs can be soaked up.
Does this prediction include the effect of cost and time overruns? These overruns are mentioned in the article, but then not dealt with at all -- but it is very important whether SMRs are more expensive according to made-up "planned" numbers or actual costs.<p>Flyvbjerg mentions SMRs as an example for modularity in his book, How Big Things Get Done, and predicts that they will be much less prone to overruns because experience can be accumulated along a series of reactors, whereas traditional reactors are one-off, bespoke projects which directly implies that they will be built with a lack of experience. Even if a nuclear power plant gets built that is "like" an existing one, it is never the same.
The cost over time generally tends to weigh heavily on the initial budget. Small reactors don't replace large ones for large needs, even if multiple are built (this hasn't even happened yet!).<p>What small ones can do is afford either government/public/private energy sources in localized areas. Infrastructure was built upon technology stacked on top of previous; dirt to stone, stone to asphalt, and on; etc.<p>The same is inherent with nuclear. It is easy to tie in to the existing grid, but the grids are extremely out of date for the growth of populations in general.<p>A large mix of SMR's could absolutely fuel energy needs in both the short and long term as technology continues to improve. The cost is a metric of current economics/interest. That's the problem right now - perspective states it's unaffordable because we've pivoted it that way.
It seems to me there's a lot more 'mass production' efficiency still to be found for small reactors. The whole article is just comparing historical costs.<p>Large reactors are highly bespoke, and therefore increasingly expensive, and the whole idea of small reactors is that they can be produced identically from an assembly line, and so you get the same kind of learning-curve price reductions as for solar panels or whatever.<p>I don't think that's the case, yet, though, so the argument might be compared to criticisms of solar in the 1980s and anyway this article seems to be a simple attack on nuclear in favor of 'renewables', which have already experience a learning curve.
While "common knowledge" says small can't compete with big when it comes to price/unit due to economies of scale, this article reads as very partial and anti-nuclear so I would trust the things that were said and the facts that were left out.<p>From the outside, this SMR situation looks a bit like monolith vs micro-services where there is a great deal of non-technical reasons why SMRs are a route being taken and it appears it's mostly political and organizational ie. approve and build the damn thing.