Small Modular Reactors (Gary Sandquist)

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My view: For future nuclear electric power, small is the answer

By Gary Sandquist For the Deseret News Published: Friday, Aug. 19 2016

Adobe stock photo On the horizon are U.S.-designed small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) that range from 50 megawatts to 300 megawatts electrical power output. Like renewables (wind and solar), SMRs produce no air pollution or global warming gases, but SMRs are also capable of generating base load electrical power on demand.

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Almost 50 companies are creating designs for SMRs using 21st-century technology and enhanced features. These designs include modularity, efficient factory construction, rapid siting and exceptional safe operation. Very important is that SMRs are less expensive and easier and faster to site and build than conventional 1,200-megawatt nuclear plants. Reliance on renewables as now pursued by Germany has resulted in 37 cents per kilowatt-hour in U.S. dollars compared with France (75 percent nuclear base) at 17 cents per kilowatt-hour and Utah at 11 cents per kilowatt-hour.

U.S. electrical utilities have focused on large nuclear power reactors such as the 1,200megawatt Westinghouse AP1000. Because of their size, complexity and multibilliondollar cost, most utilities now avoid them. However, SMRs are factory built at great cost savings and assembled in modular clusters as needed and rapidly sited as electric generating capacity increases. Each SMR module can be operated independently of others to match operation coordinated with renewables' fluctuating duty cycle. To accommodate varying electrical power demand or refueling or maintenance outages, the SMR modules provide optimum electrical generation.

Most SMR development involves startup companies and is privately funded. This draws on America’s entrepreneurial risk-taking and the capabilities of the nation’s nuclear research and development complex. Based on SMR development in the nuclear industry, the U.S. can move from high-cost reactors to a nuclear sector that can now compete with natural gas on cost, productivity, quality and delivery.

NuScale, a small nuclear startup based in Oregon, is seeking to become a pioneer in SMR development, working on the design of a 50-megawatt reactor with support from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Each NuScale modular reactor is contained in a 76-by-15-foot cylinder that is installed below ground. The core of the NuScale SMR will be cooled by natural circulation, requiring fewer components such as pipes, valves and safety systems than a conventional reactor.

By the end of this year, NuScale anticipates applying to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for certification of its reactor design, which would make it the first SMR company to go through the U.S. regulatory process. DOE is also supporting NuScale and Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems for site characterization activities at Idaho National Laboratory under a three-year cost-shared cooperative agreement finalized in August 2015.

The U.N. International Energy Agency estimates that twofold increase or greater in worldwide nuclear generating capacity will be essential by 2050 to achieve carbon emissions required in the Paris Climate Accord. The accord seeks to restrain global average temperature to 2 degrees Celsius or less by the end of this century. Nuclear power SMRs, combined with renewables, are the only opportunity we have to achieve such reductions in carbon emissions and control global warming.

Gary Sandquist is a professor emeritus of the University of Utah.

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