Small modular reactors: an introduction and an obituary

Small modular reactors (SMRs) are generally defined as those with a capacity under 300 megawatts (MW). They can be considered a sub-set of 'advanced' or Generation IV nuclear technology. But the terminology isn't helpful: most interest in SMRs involves scaled-down and redesigned versions of conventional light-water reactors, not Generation IV concepts. Many Generation IV concepts might also be described as failed Generation I technology … and that description fits SMRs as well.

'Modular' means that SMRs are to be assembled from parts or "modules" mass-produced in factories (and the term sometimes also refers to the concept of having multiple SMRs on the same site to better match electricity generation capacity with demand). This brings us to the next important point to be made about SMRs ‒ they don't have any meaningful existence. Some small reactors exist, and there are hopes and dreams of mass factory production of SMRs. But currently there is no such SMR mass manufacturing capacity.

Small reactors: past and present

M.V. Ramana covers the history of SMRs (or, more accurately, small reactors) in this issue of Nuclear Monitor ('The forgotten history of small nuclear reactors'). There's nothing in this history that would inspire any confidence in the likelihood of a significant SMR industry developing now. The Soviet Union built eight reactors with a capacity of less than < 300 MW¹ ‒ four have been permanently shut down and the remaining four will soon be shut down and replaced by a floating nuclear power plant.² The US Army built and operated eight small power reactors beginning in the 1950s, but they proved unreliable and expensive and the program was shut down in 1977.³ Small Magnox reactors in the UK have all been shut down and no more will be built.

Nothing came of a flurry of interest in SMRs in the 1980s and into the '90s. A 1990 article about SMRs by Australian anti-nuclear campaigner John Hallam could have been written this year with scarcely any changes ‒ and perhaps it will be just as fresh 30 years from now.⁴ Little has changed and it would be no surprise if the current flurry of interest ‒ already a decade old, with little to show for itself ‒ is no more fruitful than the one 30 years ago.

The World Nuclear Association provides the following information on operating small reactors:⁵

• China's CNP-300 pressurized water reactors: 300 MW capacity, one reactor in China and four in Pakistan.
• India's pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs), 16 of which meet the SMR definition of <300 MW capacity.
• Russia's four EGP-6 reactors, each with 11 MW capacity ('soon to retire' according to the WNA). A scaled-down version of the infamous RBMK (Chernobyl) reactor design.

None of those reactors are of significance to SMR debates.

• China's CNP-300 reactors are of little or no interest outside of Pakistan.
• The construction rate of India's small PHWRs was underwhelming (about 100 MW of installed capacity per annum ‒ the equivalent of one large reactor per decade) and India has no plans to build any more. Despite a standardized approach to designing, constructing, and operating these reactors, many suffered cost overruns and lengthy delays.⁶
• Russia's EGP-6 reactors came online in the mid-1970s and will likely be taken offline soon.

Likewise, the list of small reactors under construction is underwhelming. There are currently just four SMRs under construction according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) ‒ in Argentina, China and Russia.⁷ The number is a little higher according to the World Nuclear Association's list of small reactors under construction:⁵

• Russia's floating power plant with twin ice-breaker-type reactors (2 x 35 MW). The primary purpose of the plant is to power fossil fuel mining operations in the Arctic.⁹
• Russia's RITM-200 icebreaker ships powered by twin reactors (2 x 50 MW). Two such ships are operating and a third is under construction. The vessels are intended for the Northern Sea Route along the Russian Arctic coast.
• Argentina's 32-MW CAREM PWR reactor (Argentina's national atomic energy agency claimed in 2014 that it was the first SMR in the world to be officially under construction).
• China's high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (2 x 250 MW).
• China's ACPR50S demonstration reactor (1 x 50‒60 MW). According to China's CGN: "The ACPR50S, designed for the marine environment as a floating nuclear power plant, will be used to provide stable, economical and green resources, such as electricity, heat and fresh water, for China's oilfield exploitation in the Bohai Sea and deep-water oil and gas development in the South China Sea."¹⁰

Thus the current real-world enthusiasm for small-reactor construction has little to do with climate-friendly environmentalism (or even the peculiar form of faux environmentalism practised by the nuclear industry and its lobbyists) and lots to do with fossil fuel mining. Another example comes from Canada, where one potential application of SMRs under consideration is providing power and heat for the extraction of hydrocarbons from oil sands.¹¹

There are also multifaceted military links (discussed in three articles in this issue of Nuclear Monitor). Argentina's experience and expertise with small reactors derives from its historical weapons program. China's interest extends beyond fossil fuel mining and includes powering the construction and operation of artificial islands in its attempt to secure claim to a vast area of the South China Sea.¹² Saudi Arabia's interest in SMRs is likely connected to its interest in developing nuclear weapons or a latent weapons capability.

The World Nuclear Association lists nine SMR projects "for near-term deployment – development well advanced"⁵ although most of those projects will probably never see the light of day. The projects include a number of proposed PWRs (VBER-300, NuScale, SMR-160, ACP100, SMART), sodium-cooled fast reactors (PRISM, ARC-100), a molten salt reactor (Terrestrial Energy's MSR) and Russia's lead-cooled BREST fast reactor. The class of SMRs called “integral pressurized water reactors” (iPWRs) is regarded as being closer to deployment than more innovative designs. iPWRs are based on conventional light-water reactor technology but they nevertheless have unique attributes, and challenges arising from the placement of components such as steam generators and control rod drive mechanisms within the reactor pressure vessel containing the nuclear fuel.

There has certainly been a proliferation of paper (or computer) designs. According to the IAEA: "There are about 50 SMR designs and concepts globally. Most of them are in various developmental stages and some are claimed as being near-term deployable."⁷

Why the hype?

Why the hype about SMRs? Much of the interest stems from what SMRs are not ‒ hopelessly over-budget, behind-schedule large reactors under construction in various countries. One SMR enthusiast puts the case this way:¹³

"Over time, the technology could introduce new levels of predictability, reliability, and economies of scale to an industry that's become synonymous with billion-dollar cost overruns and years of delays. It also opens the possibility that nuclear power could serve smaller markets, and even military or industrial applications, where a full-scale reactor wouldn't make economic sense. The most immediate advantage, however, is that they might be cheap enough to get built at all. Raising the massive up-front capital to construct new full-scale reactors has become increasingly difficult in the United States, particularly after ballooning budgets for two plants in Georgia and South Carolina ended up tipping Westinghouse Electric into bankruptcy, nearly taking its parent company with it."

The hype surrounding SMRs also derives from their non-existence. They are just designs on paper (or computer screens) and thus any conceivable problem or objection can easily be solved … with words. The term 'proliferation resistant' or 'proliferation proof' resolves concerns about proliferation. The term 'meltdown proof' does away with any safety concerns. The word 'cheap' neatly solves any concerns that diseconomies of scale will make power from SMRs even more expensive than conventional nuclear power. To date, nothing has been demonstrated other than an industry insider's aphorism that "the paper-moderated, ink-cooled reactor is the safest of all".¹⁴ Yet untested and implausible claims about SMRs are routinely regurgitated as demonstrated truths.

There's nothing new about SMRs or proposed SMR sub-types, and there's nothing new about the rhetoric. Admiral Hyman Rickover, a pioneer of the nuclear industry in the US, told members of Congress in 1957: "Any plant you haven't built yet is always more efficient than the one you have built. This is obvious. They are all efficient when you haven't done anything on them, in the talking stage. Then they are all efficient, they are all cheap. They are all easy to build, and none have any problems."¹⁵

In the real world, things are more complicated. M.V. Ramana and Zia Mian state in their detailed analysis of SMRs:¹⁶

"Proponents of the development and large scale deployment of small modular reactors suggest that this approach to nuclear power technology and fuel cycles can resolve the four key problems facing nuclear power today: costs, safety, waste, and proliferation. Nuclear developers and vendors seek to encode as many if not all of these priorities into the designs of their specific nuclear reactor. The technical reality, however, is that each of these priorities can drive the requirements on the reactor design in different, sometimes opposing, directions. Of the different major SMR designs under development, it seems none meets all four of these challenges simultaneously. In most, if not all designs, it is likely that addressing one of the four problems will involve choices that make one or more of the other problems worse."

Until such time as construction projects provide a reality check, anything is possible. In mid-2018, NuScale demonstrated yet again why the company "is one of the most influential and innovative energy disruptors the world has ever seen".¹⁷ The company worked out a way to make its non-existent SMRs almost 20% cheaper ‒ by making them almost 20% bigger!

And until such time as actual SMR construction projects provide a reality check, self-styled energy experts such as James Conca will continue serving up this sort of tosh: "This [NuScale] nuclear reactor is something that we've never seen before – a small modular reactor that is economic, factory built and shippable, flexible enough to desalinate seawater, refine oil, load-follow wind, produce hydrogen, modular to any size, and that provides something we've all been waiting for – a reactor that cannot meltdown."¹⁸

Skepticism

Failed technologies (SMRs and most of their proposed sub-types ‒ fast reactors, molten salt reactors, HTGRs, etc.) … the near-certainty that SMRs will be even more uneconomic than large reactors … what could possibly go wrong? Alongside the hype there is a significant body of skepticism about the potential of SMRs.

A 2014 report produced by Nuclear Energy Insider, drawing on interviews with more than 50 "leading specialists and decision makers", noted a "pervasive sense of pessimism" resulting from abandoned and scaled-back SMR programs.¹⁹ Kerr Jeferies, the report's lead author, opted for a positive spin: "From the outside it will seem that SMR development has hit a brick wall, but to lump the sector's difficulties together with the death of the so-called nuclear renaissance would be missing the point."²⁰ The report argued that "we believe a more accurate picture is that 2014 has been a teething year, and that the SMR story hasn't even really begun."¹⁹ But that simply highlights the problem − the SMR story hasn't begun: no factories churning out identical reactor components, no supply chains, and precious few customers.

Thomas W. Overton, associate editor of POWER magazine, wrote in 2014: "At the graveyard wherein resides the "nuclear renaissance" of the 2000s, a new occupant appears to be moving in: the small modular reactor (SMR). ... Over the past year, the SMR industry has been bumping up against an uncomfortable and not-entirely-unpredictable problem: It appears that no one actually wants to buy one."²¹

The prevailing skepticism was evident in a February 2017 Lloyd's Register report based on "insights and opinions of leaders across the sector" and the views of almost 600 professionals and experts from utilities, distributors, operators and equipment manufacturers.²² The report stated that the potential contribution of SMRs "is unclear at this stage, although its impact will most likely apply to smaller grids and isolated markets." Respondents predicted that SMRs have a "low likelihood of eventual take-up, and will have a minimal impact when they do arrive".²³

The UK's National Infrastructure Commission was somewhere between skeptical and dismissive of SMRs in its 2018 report: "Large scale projects have long construction timelines and often face delays. Smaller reactors are still at an early stage of development and their benefits remain speculative. It is estimated that the end-to-end deployment process will take 12-14 years for the first small modular reactor."²⁴

World Finance reported in October 2018:²⁵

"But while SMRs are purported to be the key to transforming the nuclear sector, history has painted a troubling picture: SMR designs have been in the works for decades, but none have reached commercial success. In fact, Westinghouse worked on an SMR design for about a decade, but the project was abandoned in 2014. At the time, then-CEO Danny Roderick said: "The problem I have with SMRs is not the technology, it's not the deployment – it's that there's no customers." ...

"Although SMRs have been talked about for decades, the progress made so far has been tiny. New technologies in the nuclear sector take a huge amount of time to develop – just look at the struggle to build EPRs in Europe. Plus, opting for a small design cuts out the economies of scale, or the cost advantages that come about due to increasing the size of a project. This is something nuclear projects often rely on."

Former World Nuclear Association executive Steve Kidd wrote about some of the nuclear industry's self-serving "myths" in 2015.²⁶ He wrote: "Examining the agendas at nuclear conferences and the speeches of key leaders shows that many people in the industry are somewhat deluded. They either don't think carefully about the key issues or else simply choose to ignore many years of evidence that fails to support their beliefs."

On SMR myths, Kidd wrote:²⁶

"Assuming they are technically viable, the smaller capital expenditure needed to build a largely factory-built smaller unit and the shorter construction period are certainly attractive features. ... Lower cost, however, doesn't necessarily mean better economics. ... The jury is still out on SMRs, but unless the regulatory system in potential markets can be adapted to make their construction and operation much cheaper than for large LWRs, they are unlikely to become more than a niche product. Even if the costs of construction can be cut with series production, the potential O&M [operating and maintenance] costs are a concern. A substantial part of these are fixed, irrespective of the size of reactor."

William Von Hoene, senior vice president at Exelon, said last year that no more large nuclear plants will be built in the US due to their high costs and he also expressed skepticism about SMRs and Generation IV designs.²⁷ "Right now, the costs on the SMRs, in part because of the size and in part because of the security that's associated with any nuclear plant, are prohibitive," he said. "It's possible that that would evolve over time, and we're involved in looking at that technology. Right now they're prohibitively expensive."

The SMR 'hype cycle'

Dr Mark Cooper, senior research fellow for economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School, describes the SMR 'hype cycle' which shares many features with the hype that drove the 'nuclear renaissance' ‒ the short-lived upsurge of interest in large reactors a decade ago.

Cooper writes:²⁸

"At the start of the "nuclear renaissance" nuclear advocates argued that streamlining the regulatory process would allow advanced nuclear reactors with more passive safety design and standardized production processes in the third generation of commercial technology to be built quickly and deliver electricity at much lower cost. In less than a decade, the nuclear industry was force to admit that scaling up already huge gigawatt scale reactors in the "nuclear renaissance" had failed to make them cost competitive.

"The industry changed direction, hypothesizing that learning and standardization applied to the production of larger numbers of smaller units, rather than very small numbers of very large units, would do the trick. Under all circumstance, the key, constant demand they make is for a relaxation of licensing and safety requirements.

"The vendors and academic institutions that were among the most avid enthusiasts in propagating the early, extremely optimistic cost estimates of the "nuclear renaissance" are the same entities now producing extremely optimistic cost estimates for the next nuclear technology. We are now in the midst of the SMR hype cycle.

• Vendors produce low-cost estimates.
• Advocates offer theoretical explanations as to why the new nuclear technology will be cost competitive.
• Government authorities then bless the estimates by funding studies from friendly academics."

Cooper argues that the nuclear industry is becoming even more deluded:²⁸

"Has the nuclear industry been cured of its myopia? Not at all. In fact, there is a sense that the disease is getting worse, not better, since the characteristics that are said to make small modular technologies attractive are precisely the characteristics that make other alternatives more attractive. In the past, the refusal to look at alternatives could be explained by the fact that the advocates were looking at different characteristics – claiming that huge baseload facilities are indispensable. They dismissed the alternatives because they are too small or too variable. Today, they emphasize small size and speed to market, characteristics on which the alternatives are vastly superior. At the same time they ignore the innovation that has sharply increased renewable load factors and the dramatic advances in information and control technologies that have improved the ability to forecast and integrate renewables."

An obituary

There's nothing in the history of small reactors that would inspire any confidence in the likelihood of a significant SMR industry developing now. The history of SMRs has largely been a history of failure. The history of a number of proposed SMR sub-types also fails to inspire any confidence:

• The history of fast neutron reactors has largely been a history of failure.²⁹
• Nothing in the history of high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs) suggests that they are likely to progress beyond the experimental stage.³⁰ China is building two 250-MW HTGR reactors, but plans for 18 additional HTGR reactors at the same site as the demonstration plant have been "dropped" according to the World Nuclear Association.³¹
• The history of molten salt reactors is uninspiring, and a great deal of R&D needs to be done. The French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety said in a 2015 report that there "is no likelihood of even an experimental or prototype MSR … being built during the first half of this century" let alone a factory-based production chain churning out MSRs by the dozen.³² In 2013, Transatomic Power was promising that its 'Waste-Annihilating Molten-Salt Reactor' would deliver safer nuclear power at half the price of power from conventional, large reactors.³³ By the end of 2018, the company had given up on its 'waste-annihilating' claims, run out of money, and gone bust.³⁴

The small list of small reactors under construction is uninspiring. Roughly half the reactors are designed to facilitate access to fossil fuel resources in the Arctic, the South China Sea and elsewhere. Argentina claims that it was the first country to begin construction of an SMR with its CAREM reactor ‒ but it is ridiculously expensive and has been in gestation since the 1980s. China's high-temperature gas-cooled reactors might or might not be economic: no credible, independent information is available, and in any case there is no reason to believe that costs in China can be replicated elsewhere.

The nascent SMR industry has suffered one set-back after another. Babcock & Wilcox abandoned its mPower SMR project in the US despite receiving government funding of US$111 million. Transatomic Power gave up on its molten salt reactor R&D last year. Westinghouse sharply reduced its investment in SMRs after failing to secure US government funding. MidAmerican Energy gave up on its plans for SMRs in Iowa after failing to secure legislation that would force rate-payers to part-pay construction costs. Rolls-Royce sharply reduced its SMR investment in the UK.

It seems highly unlikely that SMRs will be economically competitive (see the article in this issue of Nuclear Monitor, 'SMR cost estimates, and costs of SMRs under construction'). Private-sector investment in SMRs has been orders of magnitude lower than the level of investment that would be required to kick-start an SMR industry. Governments in the US, the UK and Canada are subsidizing SMR projects … but again the level of investment is orders of magnitude short of that required. A recent US Department of Energy report states that to make a "meaningful" impact, about $10 billion of government subsidies would be needed to deploy 6 gigawatts of SMR capacity by 2035.³⁵ And the pro-nuclear authors of a 2018 article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science argue that for SMRs to make a significant contribution to US energy supply, "several hundred billion dollars of direct and indirect subsidies would be needed to support their development and deployment over the next several decades".³⁶

State-run SMR programs ‒ such as those in Argentina, China, Russia, and South Korea ‒ might have a better chance of steady, significant funding, but to date the investments in SMRs have been minuscule compared to investments in other energy programs. And again, wherever you look there's nothing to justify the high hopes (and hype) of SMR enthusiasts. South Korea, for example, won't build any of its domestically-designed SMART SMRs in South Korea ("this is not practical or economic" according to the World Nuclear Association"³⁷). South Korea's plan to export SMART technology to Saudi Arabia is problematic and may in any case be in trouble.³⁸

Westinghouse's experience illustrates what a miserable decade the nuclear industry has had. The company's efforts to develop small, medium and large reactors have all been unsuccessful:

• Westinghouse abandoned its SMR R&D in the US in 2014 when it failed to secure government funding. Its interest was revived when UK government funding became a possibility ‒ but that funding is very modest.
• Westinghouse bet on a 600-MW medium-sized design, the AP600, which was granted Design Certification by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1999. But no orders were received and Westinghouse "recognized" that its cost estimate for the AP600 was "not competitive in the U.S. market".³⁹
• Westinghouse decided to focus on large AP1000 reactors. Then the company decided to focus on survival and restructuring after its March 2017 bankruptcy filing, due largely to catastrophic cost overruns and delays with its AP1000 projects in South Carolina (abandoned after the expenditure of at least US$9 billion) and Georgia (where the latest cost estimates are about 10 times higher than Westinghouse's 2006 estimate of the cost of AP1000 reactors).⁴⁰

Westinghouse has learned the lesson from its unhappy experiences: that planning to build reactors (of any size) is a waste of money and actually building reactors can lead to bankruptcy. Resuscitated, restructured and sold by Toshiba to Canadian company Brookfield Business Partners, Westinghouse will no longer take the lead role in large-reactor construction projects such as those that bankrupted it. And its involvement in SMRs is low-level and largely limited to sniffing around for government R&D funding.

Smart money left the building without suffering Westinghouse's humiliations. Warren Buffet's MidAmerican Energy considered building SMRs in Iowa for four years. The company was promoting SMRs as late as February 2013⁴¹ but the project was put on ice in June 2013. In 2010, the state legislature allowed MidAmerican to charge ratepayers an estimated US$15 million for a feasibility study (some of which was later returned to ratepayers).⁴² The company's efforts to convince the state legislature to allow it to tap ratepayers for much greater sums had not been successful by the time the project was abandoned.^43-45 MidAmerican has invested over US$10 billion in renewables (especially wind power) in Iowa and is now working towards its vision "to generate renewable energy equal to 100 percent of its customers' usage on an annual basis."⁴⁶ From 2008 to 2017, power generation from coal in Iowa declined from 76% to 45% while wind's share increased to 38%.⁴⁶

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