Techno-economic analysis of advanced small modular nuclear reactors

Effects of the U.S. inflation reduction act on SMR economics

“…Without concrete data from real construction experience, any modeling or assessment of SMR economics must rely on estimates, which are inherently uncertain. Some SMR developers have released cost estimates for their designs, and various prior studies have compiled this type of data (Vegel and Quinn, 2017;EIRP, 2021;Stewart and Shirvan, 2022;Asuega et al, 2023;Steigerwald et al, 2023). Furthermore, various meta studies on the cost ranges of SMRs have developed results on expected SMR costs with uncertainty measures (Petti et al, 2018;SMR Start, 2021;EIA, 2022;Stein et al, 2022;Abou Jaoude et al, 2023).…”

Navigating the Path of Least Resistance to Sustainable, Widespread Adoption of Nuclear Power

“…Themanifold scaled-down reactor designs, such as the plethora of small modular reactor concepts (SMR, typically defined as ≤300 MWe or ≤1000 MWth)) [5,20,31] potentially promise, based on manufacturer claims, to reduce capital and operational costs and construction times (both by at least half for the nth unit as claimed by various companies), and have greater flexibility of operation and in potential sites due to lower plant sizes [5]. These reactors suffer from marginally (5-10%) decreased overall operational efficiency and increased waste outputs relative to large reactors [20,32] and, in any case, none of these are yet operational or even past the licensing stage for most designs at the time of writing [5,33], being partially restrained by the more onerous regulatory requirements placed on large reactor designs for which the licensing process was designed [5]. Indeed, some proposed plants have been cancelled before ground has even been broken [34].…”

“…Please note that the technological assessments presented here are cursory and expanded on only when relevant to the discussion; we would encourage readers to see the many excellent in-depth assessments of fuel cycle technologies published recently [16,20]. This will be especially necessary as grid demands increase with the advancing quality of life across the world and the increased electrification of vehicles [21] and shift away from fossil fuel heating to electrical energy, including heat pumps [22].…”

Future nuclear fission reactors – uncertainties, the effect of parameter choice and an application to small modular reactor concepts

“…In contrast, in 2022 USD 4.8 billion (ca. 21 %) of the total spending in research and development expenditures by countries within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was still spent on nuclear development alongside the current discussion in recent literature about the role of new nuclear developments in combating the recent energy crisis and climate change (Asuega et al, 2023; Ingersoll et.al., 2020; IEA, 2023).Since predicting future costs of technologies not yet developed is a complex exercise, we start this paper with a comparison of two different approaches from production theory and show that they have a theoretically equal structure (Steigerwald et al, 2023). This we then apply to estimate a range of potential production costs for 15 so-called small modular reactor (SMR) concepts for which sufficient data are available.…”

“…In contrast, in 2022 USD 4.8 billion (ca. 21 %) of the total spending in research and development expenditures by countries within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was still spent on nuclear development alongside the current discussion in recent literature about the role of new nuclear developments in combating the recent energy crisis and climate change (Asuega et al, 2023; Ingersoll et.al., 2020; IEA, 2023).…”