From prior research, I understood the main problem of nuclear power plant cost to be constant site-specific design adjustments leading to constant cost and schedule overruns. This means there is no standard plant design or construction, each installation is unique with its own quirks, its own parts, its own customizations and so nothing is fungible and training is barely transferrable.
This was the main economic promise behind small modular reactors: small, standard reactors modules that can be assembled at a factory and shipped to a site using regular transportation and just installed, with little assembly, and which you can “daisy chain” in a way to get whatever power output you need. This strikes right at the heart of some of the biggest costs of nuclear.
Of course, it might just be a little too late, as renewables are now cheaper than nuclear in almost every sense. Just need more investment in infrastructure and grid storage.
From prior research, I understood the main problem of nuclear power plant cost to be constant site-specific design adjustments leading to constant cost and schedule overruns. This means there is no standard plant design or construction, each installation is unique with its own quirks, its own parts, its own customizations and so nothing is fungible and training is barely transferrable.
This was the main economic promise behind small modular reactors: small, standard reactors modules that can be assembled at a factory and shipped to a site using regular transportation and just installed, with little assembly, and which you can “daisy chain” in a way to get whatever power output you need. This strikes right at the heart of some of the biggest costs of nuclear.
Of course, it might just be a little too late, as renewables are now cheaper than nuclear in almost every sense. Just need more investment in infrastructure and grid storage.