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SMR is driven by funding, insurance, and regulation. China doesn't have these issues and builds conventional at a great price. China is building 37 reactors, on
by arpinum 1mo ago
SMR is driven by funding, insurance, and regulation. China doesn't have these issues and builds conventional at a great price. China is building 37 reactors, only 4-5 are SMR-type units, and are larger at 600MW. The rest are standard PWR, and the 40+ in planning are dominating by standard PWR.
Regulatory risk is too high, building too infrequent to understand costs, funding for first-of-its-kind is too hard for nuclear in most countries. SMR makes it fundable. New designs give the hope that regulatory burdens can be lowered.
- bryanlarsen 1mo agoChina's nuclear production is only growing in an absolute sense. As a share of production, it's dropping, from a very low level of 4%. China is building other power types far faster than nuclear.
- DanTheManPR 1mo agoThis is an important point: in a lot of ways, SMRs are a strictly worse than 1000MW plant. The potential financial benefits come from all the other factors you mentioned. I would rather have a "worse" nuclear power plant that actually gets built.
- brennanpeterson 1mo agoWhy? It then proves nuclear is uneconomical? Regulatory arbitration like this serves nothing? Don't get me wrong, I would love to see more nuclear, but bad nuclear is not in fact better than none.
- arpinum 1mo agoIt gives evidence the viability of nuclear is a political choice. China is using proven designs and delivering a good price for base load.
- matthewdgreen 1mo agoThe hope of SMR is that it can be cost-effective at the same level that other factory-produced power sources are. If that's not on the table, then large-scale nuclear deployment mostly isn't going to happen.