From Neutron Bytes:
Competition heats up for SMR Manufacturing
The UK seeks to become the world’s center for export of factory built small modular nuclear reactors, but first customers have the place orders for them. The US needs to catch up if it wants to be competitive.
How many orders for new SMRs does a nuclear reactor vendor need to go the financial markets to get funding to build a factory to make lots of them?
The answer, according to David Orr, head of nuclear business development for Rolls-Royce in the UK, which has been making small reactors for the UK’s Royal Navy submarine fleet for decades, is a minimum of about four dozen units and six dozen would be better.
This estimate means that turning out the first 50 or so SMRs for any firm in the business is going to be a high wire act. Costs will come down per unit from the first-of-a-kind to the 10th unit and so on.
Former US Energy Secretary Steven Chu thinks the 10th unit of the same design is the tipping point where real cost savings start to appear. It will be getting to having orders for five times that number that will convince investors to open their checkbooks to fund a factory.
I would love to see one of these installed out here - basically, they are sealed units that run unattended for about 30 years. They are buried in a pit and the old unit is dug up and returned to the factory for servicing and refueling.
The cost is very competitive with coal and gas electricity and will be cheaper once the manufacturing process is ramped up.
Zero CO2 emissions, inherent safety. What's not to love?
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