The U.S. has just given the green light to its first-ever small modular nuclear design, a promising step forward for a power source that remains controversial among some climate advocates but is experiencing a popular renaissance. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has formally approved a small modular reactor design from NuScale.
The idea behind these reactors is that instead of building a large, custom design at a specific site, NuScale reactor modules are small enough to be built in a large factory, then transported and assembled on site.
- This is intended to bring the cost of manufacture down and also make the process of building additional reactors more like an assembly line with the same basic design repeated over and over.
The Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP)
- The first NuScale Power small modular reactor (SMR) plant to begin operation in the United States near Idaho Falls, Idaho.
- Inflation has made the cost of everything, including steel used to build this project, much more expensive.
- Earlier this month, NuScale announced that the cost per megawatt had gone up more than 50%:
- The new DCRA that was approved by the PMC also establishes an updated target price of $89 per Megawatt hour, which reflects the changing financial landscape for the development of energy projects nationwide.
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- Running these plants twice as long as expected may not be the best idea but it's green energy that doesn't take a decade to build
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