Nuclear Reactors for My Modular Home

There is a lot of buzz going on today about a recurring idea in the nuclear industry.  The truth is that what are known as "modular reactors" are not new to the nuclear power scene, but they are being though of as a viable solution to the factors stopping the growth of the industry.  Is it true that we could be looking at the magic bullet for the energy problems?  Personally I don't think so, but let me explain myself.

A modular reactor is exactly what it sounds like.  It is a small reactor that is built as a "module" in a factory and then shipped from the factory to the site where it is installed.  For a general rundown on what they are, this article from MIT covers them pretty well.  Small module reactors (SMR's) are prefabricated exactly like a modular home, and in many ways follows much of the same strategy.  Modular homes are popular because they provide sometimes high quality homes at a low cost.  Why are they low cost?  It is not because of cheap materials or poor craftsmanship (which if you don't believe just visit some of the modern prefabricated housing - they are really beautiful homes), but they achieve a lower cost by streamlining the production.  A crew doesn't have to be sent to location and tasks best done in a factory don't have to be taken into the field.  Doing this, production is standardized and thus is made faster and more cost effective.

What we must remember though is that the power industry is an economy of scale.  In other words, it gets cheaper to produce electricity as we produce more of it.  So how can it actually be more cost effective to build smaller reactors?  Well, the answer to that is that they are not really more cost effective as far as the price per megawatt hour produced.  To build the standard 1000 megawatt plus reactor, it runs roughly $10 billion, maybe even more depending on circumstances.  The SMR's usually produce around 100 megawatts and can cost upwards of $2 billion.  Granted, this cost will drastically reduce when the process is standardized and we move beyond the research phase, but this is still an expensive endeavor.

The problem is that at a cost of over $10 billion, only the very biggest of the energy companies can even think about investing in nuclear power.  Even they, though, don't want to invest in something so risky and where they can't recoup any of the cost for up to ten years.  This is where the SMR's are coming into the picture.  They don't produce the power of the large nuclear power plants, but they also don't require such a gamble.  $2 billion is much more affordable that $10 billion, and the production time on the SMR's is roughly three years currently, which means that they can start making money from the reactor much sooner than a full size power plant.  It seems as though the SMR's offer a solution to the large capitol investment required to build a nuclear power plant.

Many are hoping for an advantage on the regulatory side of the picture as well.  The Nuclear Regulatory Committee (NRC) must currently license and permit every reactor that is proposed today.  This is a long process as the NRC must approve each individual design, each site for the design, and watch over the production of plant, permitting each step along the way.  This is part the regulatory nightmare that the nuclear industry faces.  The module reactors though offer a different way of construction.  All the sudden the design will be standardized and the production of the reactors will be uniform.  The NRC will not have to permit different designs for every site, but now just one design.  The construction process will be centralized which will allow for the production to be standardized under regulation.  This just seems to all be common sense to me, but here is where we run into problems.

Maybe you will see things differently than me, but read this NRC release on the licensing of SMR's.  It seems that the NRC is definitely willing to look into how SMR's should be treated differently than the larger nuclear power plants, but at the same time they seem to give the same "we'll see" kind of statements that a small boy gets from his mother when they talk about modifying the licensing and permitting process for SMR's.  In other words, just like we all know that when your mother told you "we'll see" meant that it wasn't going to happen, I fear that the NRC isn't sincere in making it easier to operate these reactors.  Though they will be smaller, safer, and pose less risk to the general public, they will still be held to the same standards as the large plants.  This will drastically raise the cost of producing the SMR's, and thus take them away as our magic bullet to the energy solution.  Though we are improving the technology, government just doesn't seem to budge to allow progress in this case.  This was mentioned at the end of the MIT article, and I have also heard it from professors here at school.  It seems that those in the nuclear industry are not holding their breath for this one.

Don't get me wrong though.  I really think that the SMR's are a great way for people to gain trust in the industry.  They are safe and feature new technology not yet incorporated into running reactors.  The research and development that has occurred so far in producing the SMR's has vitalized the nuclear power industry recently and give us a little taste of the potential that a little competition offers.  I believe that nuclear power offers much more potential than we even see now, but we still need a reason to develop it.  The fear society has toward it today is killing our progress.