Why Small Modular Reactors?

What is causing current interest in SMR nuclear reactors and what are their main benefits?

Today there are about 50 small modular reactor (SMR) projects going around the world today. There is an enormous variation in the technologies pursued. In the next story I will pick some of the more promising ones and explain their benefits, but here I want to focus what is driving the interest in SMRs, and how the current nuclear industry failed.

What has caused interest in SMRs?

What spurred this investigation was the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant being built in Finland. This is a third generation nuclear reactor design which was supposed to be the future of Europe. Yet it has instead exposed what a failure the current trend in Nuclear reactor design is.

Olkiluoto is 12 years behind schedule, it was supposed to be operational in 2009, but is instead expected to come online in 2021. Current cost estimates are 8.5 billion euros. The reactor was contracted to be built for a fixed price of €3 billion, meaning the builder in principle had to cover cost overruns. Yet today total costs are estimated at €11 billion.

A similar third generation reactor type Hinkley Point C, got the green light in Britain back in 2016. Its estimated…