POWER January 2021 - 13

GLOBAL MONITOR
" including
baseload
electricity,
load3.
This is a rendering of a NuScale multimodule
small modular reactor (SMR) power
plant site. Courtesy: NuScale Power
a member of parliament for the governing
People's Party for Freedom and
Democracy (VVD), said the country's climate
goals for 2050 need nuclear power.
He told parliament: " You can focus on
solar and wind, but then you need backstop.
If you add a few nuclear power stations,
you have just a little more stability. "
A 2020 study by the UK's University
of Cambridge concluded that a modular
concept for nuclear power would reduce
project costs by as much as 25%. The
study also found that standardization
of construction, along with more efficient
production of components, would
achieve cost-savings of 16% to 17%. UK
Prime Minister (PM) Boris Johnson recently
announced that the country would
invest as much as £250 million ($332 million)
in SMRs. An accompanying policy
document from the UK government said
that investment would " unlock up to
£300 million private-sector match-funding. "
SMRs also can help balance power
grids, providing electricity during periods
of peak demand, and ensuring power
continuity in areas that rely on intermittent
renewable power without significant
storage capacity.
" I'm really optimistic about SMRs, "
Leslie Dewan, a nuclear engineer who
recently founded Criticality Capital, a
venture capital firm focusing on nuclear
and other carbon-free energy investments,
told POWER. " You have designs
like NuScale's SMR that has already
gone through regulatory approval, that
should be able to get to market relatively
quickly. You can mass manufacture a lot
of these, for all of those designs, whether
it's metal-cooled, molten salt, whether
it's traditional LWR [light water reactor]. "
NuScale Power, based in Portland, Oregon,
is developing a new modular LWR
(Figure 3). The company said its design
features a fully fabricated NuScale Power
Module, capable of generating 77 MW
of electricity, " using a safer, smaller, scalable
version of pressurized water reactor
technology. " NuScale's SMR technology
can be used across several platforms,
January 2021 | POWER
following support for renewables, very
high-reliability microgrids, and process
heat or steam for district heating, desalination,
and other industrial uses. " The
company has said its reference power
plant " can house up to 12 NuScale Power
Modules for a total facility output of
924 MW, " and also can be used in smaller
configurations.
" We see three key opportunities for
nuclear energy to contribute toward
otherwise unsolved decarbonization
challenges, " said Kirsty Gogan, managing
partner of LucidCatalyst, an international
consultancy offering thought
leadership, strategy development, and
techno-economic expertise focused on
zero-carbon technology options for largescale,
market-based decarbonization of
the global economy. Gogan told POWER,
" Firstly, flexible advanced reactors being
rapidly commercialized today can provide
economical and clean dispatchable generation
that will complement and enable
high penetrations of variable renewables
into future electricity grids. Secondly,
these advanced clean heat sources can
re-power coal plants, enabling continued
operation of the plant and associated
infrastructure, including transmission,
without emissions. "
Gogan, who also is a co-founder of
Energy for Humanity, an international
community of pro-nuclear environmental
activists based in the UK and
Switzerland, also said, " Thirdly, beyond
electricity, new advanced heat sources
have potential to supply heat to homes,
businesses, and industrial processes;
produce hydrogen and synthetic fuels
to support cleaner transport, including
the hard-to-abate sectors of aviation and
shipping; desalinate and purify seawater
in regions suffering water scarcity; support
access to modern energy services
in remote and developing communities;
and offer industry an emissions-free
source of high-temperature heat, all in
support of clean energy transitions that
can benefit society and lift up living standards
around the world. "
Dewan agreed that the use of SMRs
to provide power for a range of applications,
as noted by Gogan, is a large part
of the technology's appeal. " You have
economies of scale that kick in, and it
becomes easier to use SMRs in situations
where it's useful to build additional
reactor units, and in the ways that you
can improve them, " Dewan said. " You
can use [early experience] to potentially
tweak the design, in ways you couldn't
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POWER January 2021

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