solarpunk memes

Is SMR a joke to everyone?

Yes, because it hasn't really been demonstrated to be particularly viable. You don't need tons of small reactors, that's way too much logistical and regulatory overhead for little capacity. And you need way more auxiliary infrastructure and personnel that way, driving up costs that exceed what you save by modularizing them.

In October 2023, an academic paper published in Energy collated the basic economic data of 19 more developed SMR designs, and modeled their costs in a consistent manner. A Monte Carlo simulation showed that none were profitable or economically competitive.

In 2024, Australian scientific research body CSIRO estimated that electricity produced in Australia by a SMR constructed from 2023 would cost roughly 2.5 times that produced by a traditional large nuclear plant, falling to about 1.6 times by 2030.

I love the idea and the potential of SMRs, but the comment you’re replying to said there weren’t sufficient advances to make it economically competitive. That’s true.

Any time I see a new graph of the cost per kwh for the several largest power generation types, the SMR range makes me sad. I’m sure a bunch of the smarter timelines are getting 80% of their power from cheap, mass produced, passively safe, self-contained SMRs installed individually in remote areas or in large banks near population centers. But for our dumb asses it seems so far off economically. (Granted that’s because fossil fuel power plants don’t cover the costs of their externalities, but that’s also how our stupid world works)