Summary: I just was wondering: (1) how long it has been since I posted a paper on SMRs, and (2) How this technology is coming along. After digging a bit, I found some really good articles on this subject, so I decided to post this update.
The nuclear industry hopes to launch advanced small modular reactors (SMRs) by the early 2030s, aiming to meet the deep-pocketed electric utility sector’s growing need for electricity to fuel rapidly expanding fleets of data centers.
Nuclear energy has relied largely on the same pressurized-water reactor technology for the past 70 years, but those plants have proven incredibly expensive to build in the U.S. in the 21st century.
The first new nuclear plant completed in decades, reactors 3 and 4 at Plant Vogtle in Georgia, infamously cost about $18 billion more than expected and opened seven years behind schedule. Each of those reactors can generate 1,114 megawatts of electricity, enough for more than 800,000 homes.
SMRs promise to have smaller, lighter footprints that could make them cheaper and quicker to build when they are fully commercialized. Also, SMRs major subassemblies are typically small enough to be transported to the reactor site using conventional transport methods vs. final assembly on site. This post has descriptions of the major offerings in the SMR Market.
