The Benefits of Passive Safety in Nuclear Design

Editor’s note: There’s new interest in nuclear power from electric utilities, the White House, and the public. While NuScale’s deal to build a small modular reactor failed last year, TerraPower is currently building the U.S.’s first advanced non-light water reactor in Wyoming. So we’re revisiting an episode from last November with The Good Energy Collective’s Dr. Jessica Lovering unpacking one of nuclear’s biggest challenges: cost.

Nuclear construction costs in the U.S. are some of the highest in the world. Recent estimates put the cost of building conventional nuclear reactors at more than $6,000 per kilowatt, as measured by overnight capital cost. But high costs are a problem for new small modular reactors (SMRs) too, killing what was going to be the country’s first SMR before it got built.

Meanwhile, South Korea has some of the lowest costs in the world. Estimated overnight capital costs for reactors in South Korea are closer to $2,200 per kilowatt.And then there are countries like China, France, and the United Arab Emirates that fall between those extremes.

So why the wide range in costs? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to Dr. Jessica Lovering, co-founder and executive director at the Good Energy Collective, a non-profit that researches and promotes policies that support nuclear power. A former director of energy at the Breakthrough Institute, she also authored a comprehensive study of nuclear construction costs in 2016. 

Shayle and Jessica talk about things like:

• What goes into the cost of construction and South Korea’s secret sauce for low-cost nuclear reactors
• Why Jessica thinks we should manufacture and regulate reactors like large aircraft
• Driving down costs with modularity, small reactors, passive safety features, and more construction 
• Why changing regulations might be necessary, but not a silver bullet 
• Why the pro- and anti-nuclear camps talk past each other — and why Jessica says she’s somewhere in between 

Recommended Resources:

Latitude Media: Is large-scale nuclear poised for a comeback?

Energy Policy: Historical construction costs of global nuclear power reactors

National Academy of Engineering: Chasing Cheap Nuclear: Economic Trade-Offs for Small Modular Reactors

Joule: Evaluating the Role of Unit Size in Learning-by-Doing of Energy Technologies

Science: Granular technologies to accelerate decarbonization

Canary: Future of small reactors at stake as NuScale deal flops

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