'Advanced' nuclear power and small modular reactors

Just two SMRs are said to be operating -- neither meeting the 'modular' definition of serial factory production of reactor components.

Russia's has a floating nuclear power plant (with two 35 MW reactors). The construction cost increased six-fold from 6 billion rubles to 37 billion rubles (A$964 million), equivalent to A$13.8 billion / gigawatt (GW).

According to the OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency, electricity produced by the Russian floating plant costs an estimated US$200 (A$308) / megawatt-hour (MWh), with the high cost due to large staffing requirements, high fuel costs, and resources required to maintain the barge and coastal infrastructure. To put that in perspective, the Minerals Council of Australia states that SMRs won't find a market in Australia unless they can produce power at a cost of A$60-80 / MWh -- about one-quarter of the cost of electricity produced by the Russian plant.

Rapid construction timelines are said to be a feature of SMRs, but the Russian floating plant took 12 years to build. Russia's plan to have seven floating nuclear power plants by 2015 was not realised.

The other operating SMR is China's demonstration 210 MW (2 x 105 MW) high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR). A 2016 report said that the estimated construction cost was about US$5 billion (A$7.7 billion) / GW -- about twice the initial cost estimates -- and that cost increases arose from higher material and component costs, increases in labour costs, and project delays. The World Nuclear Association states that the cost of the demonstration HTGR is US$6 billion (A$9.3 billion) / GW. Those figures are 2-3 times higher than the US$2 billion (A$3.1 billion) / GW estimate in a 2009 paper by Tsinghua University researchers.

Wang Yingsu, secretary general of the nuclear power branch of the China Electric Power Promotion Council, said in 2021 that HTGRs would never be as cheap as conventional light-water reactors.

Construction of the demonstration HTGR began in 2012 and it was completed in 2021 after repeated delays. Thus it was a nine-year construction project, undermining claims that SMRs could be built in as little as 2-3 years.

NucNet  reported in 2020 that China's State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. dropped plans to manufacture 20 HTGRs after levelised cost of electricity estimates rose to levels higher than a conventional pressurised water reactorsuch as China's Hualong One. Likewise, the World Nuclear Association states that plans for 18 additional HTGRs at the same site as the demonstration HTGR have been "dropped".

Thus the two operational SMRs exhibit familiar problems of massive cost blowouts and multi-year delays. SMR reality doesn't come close to matching SMR rhetoric.

SMRs under construction

Three SMRs are under construction - again with the qualification that they don't involve serial factory production of reactor components.

Cost estimates for the CAREM SMR under construction in Argentina have ballooned. By 2021 the cost estimate had increased to US$750 million (A$1.15 billion) for a reactor with 32 MW capacity). That's over one billion Australian dollars for a plant with the capacity of a handful of wind turbines.