According to the Department of Energy (DOE), Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are nuclear reactors that will (allegedly) produce less than 300 MWs of electricity. Proponents of the technology claim that they will be more cost-effective than traditional large nuclear reactors, and easier to deploy on a large scale as they will (allegedly) be mass produced in factories and shipped to the site for assembly. While the idea for SMRs has been around since the 1950s, this technology is still nowhere near commercial viability, and every indication shows that it will likely never be a reality on a large scale.
No public utility in the U.S. has built any SMRs
Because SMRs are so risky and will not be commercially viable anytime soon, Wall Street will likely be extremely hesitant to finance these projects. In fact, most of the funding for SMR development to this point has been provided courtesy of taxpayers, as the DOE has spent more than $1.2 billion on SMRs to date and intends to commit at least $5.5 billion more in taxpayer subsidies to this pipedream. Additionally, utility companies will not assume the financial risk for these projects either.
Therefore, the only way utilities in Indiana can finance SMRs is if they force their customers to provide the financing to pay for them by adding them to Indiana’s Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) law, which they did in 2022, and then broadened in 2023. This allows Indiana utilities to charge their customers for SMRs while they are under construction, before they are producing any electricity, and even if they NEVER produce any electricity. CWIP essentially forces customers to give utilities interest-free loans. If SMRs are not a good investment for a utility, why are they a good investment for customers?
SMRs have all the issues associated with traditional nukes.
Namely, high construction costs with lots of cost overruns, long construction time with lots of delays, and an outrageously high cost for the power produced.
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The DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory and the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) recently abandoned the only planned SMRs that have been seriously considered in the U.S. Dubbed the Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP), the initial plans in 2015 were for twelve 60 megawatt SMRs, to be funded by a consortium of municipal electric utilities and by U.S. taxpayers via the DOE.
By 2020, they had scaled the project back to six 77 megawatt reactors, 3 of the 30 cities had backed out of the project, and 8 cities had dropped shares in the project.
The cost for this project was estimated at $2.7 billion when the project was proposed in 2015 and it was projected to be online by 2026.
By 2023, the cost estimate had more than tripled to $9.3 billion and the projected operational date was pushed back to 2030.
Power from these SMRs was projected to cost $58 per megawatt hour in 2021, and had ballooned by over 53% to a projected $89/MWh in 2023.
In November 2023, UAMPS backed out of the project completely, stating that UAMPS was unlikely to achieve sufficient subscription to remain viable - in other words, not enough of the municipal electric utilities would agree to purchase electricity from the project because the cost had escalated well beyond what they were willing to pay for electricity.
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Vogtle reactor Units 3 & 4 in Georgia are the only reactors recently under construction in the U.S. They were originally projected to cost $9.8 billion, and ended up costing more than triple that at $35 billion for 2,300 megawatts. Construction on Vogtle began in 2013 and it was supposed to be generating electricity by 2016. Unit 3 just went into commercial operation in July 2023, and Unit 4 is expected to go into commercial operation in the second quarter of 2024. In the end, they projected construction would take 3 years, and it ended up taking 10-11 years.
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In 2017, Santee Cooper abandoned the construction of two reactors at the Summer nuclear power plant in South Carolina. They sunk $9 billion+ into this hole in the ground. Because of CWIP, the customers of multiple utility companies are on the hook to pay for this boondoggle, which will never generate any electricity.
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High cost of electricity – electricity from existing nuclear power plants is far more expensive than electricity from new solar and wind farms -
High cost of decommissioning – it takes around $1 billion dollars per reactor, and one hundred years to fully decommission a nuclear power plant. Utility customers are the ones who pay those costs.
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Nuclear waste – it is lethally radioactive for 250,000 years, and we still haven't figured out what to do with it or where to put it.
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Regular and routine releases of radioactivity into surrounding environment – lots of studies have been done on the effects that the radioactivity in the environment has had on the people who live near nuclear power plants and nuclear facilities.
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Ineffective at Addressing Climate Change - "New nuclear power costs about 5 times more than onshore wind power per kWh. Nuclear takes 5 to 17 years longer between planning and operation and produces on average 23 times the emissions per unit electricity generated. In addition, it creates risk and cost associated with weapons proliferation, meltdown, mining lung cancer, and waste risks. Clean, renewables avoid all such risks." Source: https://eu.boell.org/en/2021/04/26/7-reasons-why-nuclear-energy-not-answer-solve-climate-change
