At the Reuters Events:Â Virtual International SMR & Advanced Reactor Summit 2020.Â
Bret Kugelmass, Managing Director of research institute Energy Impact Center, during his keynote speech for the summit:
“We’re not building nuclear because it’s not cheap enough... we’ve got to get the cost under control, that’s the number one priority,” said Bret Kugelmass, Managing Director of research institute Energy Impact Center, during his keynote speech for the summit. "
"However, even optimistic studies by the developers themselves struggle to come close to that figure."
Mr. Kugelmass is an interesting character, one that most of us will find reasons to both like and dislike. There is ample evidence that he is a very smart and accomplished guy. His central premise is:
"An Energy Innovation Reform Project study of eight selected companies looked at reactor models in development with reactor capacity of between 47.5 MWe and 1,648 MWe and found that average costs remained above the Lucid Catalyst target.
According to the study, the advanced reactors had an average capital cost total of $3,782/kW, average operating cost total of $21/MWh and levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of $60/MWh."Â
I confess that I really don´t understand what Kugelmass meant when he said:
"“Everything I originally thought about waste, safety or public perception, turned out to be an excuse...and every attempt to address those non issues made power plants ever more expensive,” he said."
Waste, safety, public perception are non-issues? Really? I wonder where the resources will come from?
However, there is a clue in this interview or this recent article. There is a great deal of Bret on YouTube if you want to know more.
His solution (at least for today), not surprisingly, is the modular SMR. What he says here does not quite fit with what he said in the interview. There he says that second generation nuclear plants would be just fine for today. He loves those plants. But, never mind that:
Kugelmass said he believed nuclear capacity would need to grow by more than 100 times, or by some 40,000 GW, in the next few decades to become economically viable and meet climate change goals of Net Zero carbon by 2050.
That is going to take a lot of SMRs. I guess time will tell when and if SMRs can establish a track record for safety and cost effectiveness. That would be great. But we are NOT holding our collective breath.