SMR Economics and the Nuclear Secret Sauce feat. Tony Roulstone

In the West, many nuclear advocates have pinned their hopes for a
nuclear renaissance on Small Modular Reactors, or SMRs. SMRs
range from a potentially faster way for nuclear nations to build
more plants; to a way for countries to start their nuclear power
programs; to special application power sources that serve
specific country needs, such as those under development in Russia
and China. Yet-to-be-built SMR designs make a lot of bold
promises. A question looming over the nuclear industry is: will
they fulfill those promises?


In this episode, I am joined by Tony Roulstone, a lecturer in
nuclear engineering at the University of Cambridge with 10 years
of experience as a nuclear engineer at Rolls Royce, which is
currently developing its own SMR. We discuss the “secret sauce”
of past successful nuclear buildouts; the necessity of state
funding; failures of economic policy for long-term
infrastructure; the true meaning of modular construction; the
trade-off between small modular construction and economies of
scale; the minimum order sizes for companies like Rolls Royce to
actually begin manufacturing their SMRs (10 GW); the different
types of SMRs; and the current status of SMR development around
the world. The result is a detailed and sober conversation on the
benefits, drawbacks, and challenges of SMRs.


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