In the six decades since the Shippingport Atomic Power Station near Pittsburgh began operating as the nation’s first commercial nuclear reactor, the industry has built ever larger plants to improve the economies of scale. A typical commercial reactor now produces about 20 times as much electricity as the first Shippingport unit in 1958. So it may seem counterintuitive that the industry sees the future not in building gargantuan plants, but in small modular reactors, or SMRs — factory-built units with fewer parts, designed to be installed underground with passive cooling systems that the industry says are “inherently safe.” “There’s a good case for SMRs in a lot of markets, both in the U.S. and throughout the world,” said John Kotek, vice president of policy development and public affairs for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group. But not everyone is sold on their promise. “SMRs seem to be a fad, as far as I can tell,” said Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, who wrote a widely cited paper questioning the economics of small reactors. “There’s very really little substance to its motivation, other than the private sector can’t afford ordinary sized reactors.” Despite the climate benefits, many environmental advocates fiercely oppose any expansion of nuclear energy’s role, including skeptics who cite safety issues exposed by the accident 40 years ago this month at Three Mile Island Unit 2 in Pennsylvania, which put the brakes on the industry’s growth in the 1980s. In the last 20 years, just one new commercial plant has begun operations in the United States, and only two are currently under construction. Lyman said the industry would need to produce “hundreds or thousands” of units in order to cut costs and reduce the need for government assistance. But NuScale says it will need to produce only 12 reactor units, and build three power plants, to develop the experience needed to bring down costs. “Clearly, we’re not talking about hundreds, and clearly not thousands,” said Mundy. “There’s nothing complicated about its construction, compared to large gigawatt plants.”
The Inquirer 16th March 2019 read more »
