Summary: Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) have been around as a concept for more than five years. I wrote the post in early 2019, where I explored this concept with the reactor manufacturer (RM) NuScale, that pioneered this type of reactor.
Soon after NuScale started offering their SMR, other major RMs came on board and offered their own SMRs including GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (now GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy or GVH).
The idea behind SMRs is that the currently operating reactors are all custom designs where major components are largely fabricated on-site, making them extremely expensive to the point that these are no longer cost-effective. A SMR is small enough to where all of its major components can be manufactured in a centralized plant, each to a standard design, and transported to the reactor site using (more or less) standard rail, barge and highway methods. Also, SMRs can be used to implement a gigawatt-scale facilities via multiple SMR-units. This approach also has the advantage that the developer can add units over time as demand increases.
Now, a major Utility (TVA) has contracted with GVH for one of their BWRX-300 SMR designs.
