![]() NuScale has plans to build a US plant in Idaho by 2030 the company is involved in the UK, Poland, and Romania as well. This company has developed a 77 MWe SMR they envision clumping four, six, even twelve reactors together into larger power plants. Perhaps the largest SMR brand today, at least outside of China, is U.S. Most of them are demonstration reactors, not linked to the greater grid, but a crucial stepping stone toward it. At least seven different developers plan to deploy SMRs in the US before 2030. “I think, in the next 15, 20 years, there is going to be a real chance for SMRs to be commercially available and widely deployed.” -Giorgio Locatelli, Polytechnic University of Milanīut SMR plans are not in short supply. Let a thousand flowers bloom.Īside from two modified naval reactors on a boat in the Russian Arctic, every other SMR, everywhere else in the world, remains hypothetical. If it’s a success, China reportedly plans to use its design to power untold number of construction projects and desalination plants. Linglong One is the only one of its kind under construction today. Once the manufacturing process scales up-if it ever scales up-SMR-makers hope to be able to fabricate their components in a single factory, ship them out, and have them assembled on-site like flatpack fission furniture. And if nuclear reactors were aircraft, consider the SMR today a 1910s-era biplane. Instead of building an airport, one analogy goes, crafting an SMR is like building an aircraft. SMRs may be smaller than today’s average reactor, but they’re also cheaper, less risky, and more flexible. Hence the name: small modular reactors (SMRs). Instead, they think, a clean-energy transition might be better served with a fleet of smaller, more modular, reactors-like Linglong One. But some nuclear advocates feel that placing too many nuclear eggs in a single megaproject’s basket is a bad idea. Still, a steadfast consensus remains that nuclear power isn’t just desirable for a clean-energy transition- it’s necessary. Even more discouragingly, nuclear’s per-unit cost increased 26 percent between 20-while solar and wind power prices plummeted instead. The 1,630 MWe reactor under construction at Flamanville in France has experienced more than a decade of delays. The twin 1,110 MWe reactors at Georgia’s Plant Vogtle, the only ones under construction in the US, will come online seven years behind schedule. In part because large reactors can be expensive and delay-prone. Why, after all, would an ambitious nuclear reactor designer want to go small? ![]() Next to a large reactor (often in excess of 1,000 MWe), 125 MWe may seem insignificant. When it comes online in 2026, Linglong One will have a capacity of 125 megawatts of electricity (MWe)-equivalent to around 40 onshore wind turbines. “It’s a really exciting time for the nuclear industry,” says Victor Ibarra Jr., a nuclear engineer at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance think tank. ![]() If nuclear reactors were aircraft, consider the SMR today a 1910s-era biplane. But, experts say, the 2020s could help set the foundations for a nuclear blossoming in decades to come. Small reactors won’t save the day quite yet depending on the country, there’s still plenty of regulatory and logistical issues to hammer out. But if one persistent cadre of nuclear optimists are right, then Linglong One could be a model for fission’s future in an age of clean energy. This is Linglong One, whose diminutive size is a drastic shift from the gigawatt-scale megaprojects that dominate nuclear energy today. Slowly, steadily, workers are piecing together a miniature nuclear reactor. Last July, a crane hoisted the upper half of a steel containment shell into place. On the island of Hainan, south China, one possible future is taking shape within a compact labyrinth of concrete and metal. ![]()
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