Small modular nuclear reactors can help meet US energy and emission goals—if we let them

Curiosity in small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs, is skyrocketing with tech firms together with Google, Amazon and Microsoft investing within the rising low-carbon vitality expertise.

It has the potential to assist these firms and the nation meet their emissions targets whereas satisfying rising vitality calls for. However the US has but to energy up its first SMR and the expertise faces substantial deployment challenges with its value and complexity.

Nonetheless, new analysis from the College of Michigan reveals that SMRs are economically viable and poised to start out dwelling as much as their potential by 2050.

“While expensive and challenging, SMRs do have the potential to be deployed,” mentioned Max Vanatta, lead writer of the brand new study within the journal Nature Power. Vanatta is a doctoral scholar in U-M’s College for Atmosphere and Sustainability and within the Division of Industrial and Operations Engineering.

“Even though they’re expensive, they can still be the lowest cost option,” Vanatta mentioned.

The examine predicts that sufficient SMRs may very well be deployed by then to cut back the nation’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 59 million metric tons. To get there, although, they will want some assist from the federal government and the industries constructing and implementing the expertise.

Tasks not merchandise

One of many benefits of nuclear energy is that how we find yourself utilizing it is extremely much like how we use vitality from fossil fuels. Due to that, it integrates pretty seamlessly with the prevailing grid.

However nuclear energy additionally has distinctive concerns—so distinctive that no two nuclear power plants are utterly an identical, the researchers mentioned.

“Nuclear reactors aren’t products like we think about other technologies,” mentioned co-author Robb Stewart, chief expertise officer of Alva Power. “They’re extra like construction projects.”

For typical nuclear energy crops, these tasks contain a number of specialised buildings and components, together with their well-known cooling towers. The online consequence within the U.S. is, on common, a plant that produces about 1 gigawatt of electrical energy, based on the U.S. Division of Power.

SMRs are nonetheless tasks, Stewart mentioned, however smaller ones. They shrink down the reactor to suit right into a extra modular design, which comes at a price to the utmost energy capability. The biggest SMRs produce about 30% the facility of a mean typical plant, however they are often housed in a single constructing on the location the place the facility can be used.

Within the new examine, Vanatta, Stewart and Michael Craig, a U-M assistant professor in energy systemsthought-about the deployment of SMRs in additional than 900 amenities utilizing natural gas to fulfill their industrial heating wants. The amenities represented 14 heat-intensive industries, together with paper mills, petroleum refineries and chemical producers.

“Providing cheap enough heat through low-carbon means is really hard,” Vanatta mentioned. “That’s where SMRs have a really good opportunity.”

For its evaluation, the staff developed a mannequin to challenge the diploma and affect of SMR deployment in these settings within the context of three variables.

Learn how to make SMRs aggressive

One variable was the price of pure gasoline. The staff discovered that SMRs may compete when pure gasoline was priced at $6 or extra per metric million British thermal models, or MMBtu, a regular unit of measurement for warmth content material. Though that is not the bottom quantity you will see for the price of pure gasoline, it’s a practical industrial worth, Vanatta mentioned.

One other variable was how the federal government incentivized SMR growth by coverage. Right here, the researchers discovered incentives like tax credit and carbon taxes made an enormous distinction, whereas direct subsidies didn’t.

“If you were to just subsidize SMR development with a $10 billion pool, build as many modules as you can for that amount at the cheapest facilities, it still doesn’t take off,” Vanatta mentioned. “Other policies had a very valuable impact. They go a long way.”

The ultimate variable was how a lot the expertise of constructing and putting in an SMR would drive down the price of future SMR tasks. The staff referred to this as studying, and it is a element of the challenge that stood out most to Stewart.

“That capability of the model makes it a first of its kind,” Stewart mentioned. The mannequin may thus assist deliver a brand new dimension to comparable research of different applied sciences, particularly within the low-carbon vitality area, he added.

“There’s a lot of technology that’s just coming out of the lab,” Stewart mentioned. “Whether that’s nuclear or battery storage or geothermal technology, we’re going to want to capture how the costs evolve from building the first system to the 100th.”

Traditionally, there hasn’t been a lot cost-reducing studying on the subject of typical nuclear energy crops. That is one other consequence of how distinctive every nuclear challenge is, Vanatta mentioned.

However he is optimistic the smaller, modular designs of SMRs may assist buck that development. Even within the worst-case scenarioalthough, the place SMRs expertise damaging studying and the price goes up between tasks, the staff nonetheless noticed potential for deployment.

Nonetheless, the researchers pressured how a lot simpler the trail turns into with optimistic studying.

“We need to make sure that we’re capturing that learning and scaling it,” Stewart mentioned. “We need to make sure it doesn’t get stuck inside a certain business or utility.”

Per the U.S. Power Data Administration, typical nuclear crops at the moment present the nation with about 100 gigawatts of energy capability. The amenities analyzed by the staff may deploy greater than a further 20 gigawatts within the best-case state of affairs for SMRs.

“It’s going to take everything, but it’s all in the service of reliable, low-carbon energy,” Vanatta mentioned.