2023-11-10 18:48:45
This is bad news for the revival of nuclear power. The American company NuScale Power announced on Wednesday, November 8, the abandonment of a project to build a small reactor (SMR) in the United States.
NuScale had planned to develop six 77 megawatt (MW) reactors, with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), a public structure providing electricity to around forty municipalities, spread across six western American states.. Start-up was scheduled for 2029.
The bill is gone
But several communities have decided to stop the fees, due to the soaring bill. “It seems unlikely that the project will have enough participants to continue development,” underlines the company in a press release.
Its CEO, John Hopkins, told analysts that the goal of getting the green light from 80% of UAMPS members by the end of the year “was not attainable”despite the financial support of the American Department of Energy, which has already injected several hundred million euros.
NuScale Power is, however, the most advanced project in terms of SMR and the first to have received certification from the American regulator, the NRC. Resulting from public research, in the early 2000s, it was taken over by Fluor, an American construction and engineering group.
A technological breakthrough in the manufacturing method
The originality of this small pressurized water reactor lies above all in its compactness (23 meters in height and a diameter of 4.5 meters), which brings it closer in terms of design to those installed in boats and nuclear submarines. “NuScale’s technological breakthrough is essentially based on its manufacturing method”, underlines an expert. The objective of its promoters is to be able to assemble as many elements as possible in the factory, in order to be able to transport them by trucks and barges to the final assembly site.
But inflation, the surge in the price of raw materials, the rise in interest rates, as well as a revision of the design of the reactor to increase its power from 50 to 77 MW, led its promoters to review their estimate . In the space of two years, the forecast price per kilowatt hour produced has increased from €54 to €83, bringing the total cost of the six units to 8.7 billion euros.
In the United States, where the climate ambitions of States are far from being as proactive as in Europe, competition is also very strong between energies, in particular with gas, which makes nuclear power less attractive in terms of competitiveness.
Other projects abroad
NuScale is not abandoned, its leaders say despite everything. “Our work with UAMPS over the past ten years has advanced NuScale’s technology to commercial development. Reaching this milestone constitutes an extraordinary success,” says John Hopkins, explaining that the company would continue the development of the six modules planned for another unidentified customer.
NuScale has also signed letters of intent with South Africa, but also in Europe, with Poland and Romania. The company was also selected, among six others, by the British authorities as part of the call for tenders launched for the deployment of SMR across the Channel.
The United States is banking heavily on SMRs
In a statement, the US Department of Energy reiterated its support for the company. The federal government is still banking on the deployment of SMR to replace coal-fired power plants. It finances around ten projects, such as TerraPower (supported by Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft), a sodium-cooled fast neutron reactor. It also supports X-energy, which is developing a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor.
All received new aid as part of the IRA plan, voted on in the summer of 2022. The United States also wants to extend the life of its 93 large reactors as much as possible, 78 of which have already been extended to 60 years, the time for the SMRs to take over.
But the bet is far from won. For nuclear detractors, SMRs will arrive on the market too late, having been overtaken in the meantime by renewable energies. A count from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) identified more than 70 different SMR concepts around the world in 2022.
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