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But in general, those face tougher technical challenges, as well as regulatory ones, and may take longer to develop. “The safety case is second to none,” says Tom Mundy, chief commercial officer at NuScale.Ī number of other companies and research institutions are pursuing so-called fourth-generation SMR technologies, including molten-salt and high-temperature gas. It would also enable a passive safety system to shut the reactor down automatically and cool it without human intervention, even in the event of a sustained power loss like the one triggered by a tsunami in Fukushima, Japan.
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That would eliminate the need for additional tanks, pumps, and piping. Among other things, the reactor would be placed underground in a pool of water, which would also serve as the coolant. They’re scaled-down and streamlined versions of traditional pressurized light-water reactors, but with novel safety features. Any given project site, however, will still have to go through additional regulatory permitting.Įach of NuScale’s power modules would be 74 feet tall and 15 feet wide, and they could break down into three components designed to be shipped by barge, truck, or train. But the hope is that once the NRC signs off on the reactor designs, and the company establishes its supply chain and third-party manufacturing process, it will become faster and easier to line up customers and roll out reactors. That, of course, is still nearly a decade off. If all goes well, it will begin generating electricity in 2026. NuScale’s inaugural power plant would be owned by the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems and operated by Energy Northwest. In contrast, Westinghouse’s Vogtle plant in Georgia, which includes two 1,200-megawatt reactors, was initially slated to cost $14 billion-and swelled to well over $20 billion. Small modular reactors like NuScale’s 50-megawatt module promise to be orders of magnitude cheaper. Even the company’s full-scale, 12-module configuration would cost around $3 billion, the company estimates. Raising the massive up-front capital to construct new full-scale reactors has become increasingly difficult in the United States, particularly after ballooning budgets for two plants in Georgia and South Carolina ended up tipping Westinghouse Electric into bankruptcy, nearly taking its parent company with it (see “ Meltdown of Toshiba’s Nuclear Business Dooms New Construction in the U.S.”). The most immediate advantage, however, is that they might be cheap enough to get built at all. It also opens the possibility that nuclear power could serve smaller markets, and even military or industrial applications, where a full-scale reactor wouldn’t make economic sense. Over time, the technology could introduce new levels of predictability, reliability, and economies of scale to an industry that’s become synonymous with billion-dollar cost overruns and years of delays. Up to 160 people, including 60 elderly patients and medial staff who had been waiting for evacuation in the nearby town of Futabe, and 100 others evacuating by bus, might have been exposed to radiation, said Ryo Miyake, a spokesman from Japan's nuclear agency.The grand promise of commercial SMRs is that they would be compact enough to prefabricate in factories and ship to their destination, where they could be stacked together to produce whatever level of energy generation is needed.
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More than 170,000 people had been evacuated as a precaution, though Mr Edano said the radioactivity released so far into the environment was so small it did not pose any health threats.Ī complete meltdown - the collapse of a power plant's systems and its ability to keep temperatures under control - could release uranium and dangerous contaminants into the environment and pose major, widespread health risks. "If there is an explosion, however, there would be no significant impact on human health." "At the risk of raising further public concern, we cannot rule out the possibility of an explosion," Mr Edano said. That would follow a blast the day before in another unit at the same power plant, as operators attempted to prevent a meltdown by injecting sea water into it. Meanwhile, operators are frantically trying to keep temperatures down at the power plant's other units and prevent the disaster from growing even worse.Ĭhief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said that a hydrogen explosion could occur at Unit 3 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, the reactor that could be melting down. Japanese officials are struggling with a growing nuclear crisis and the threat of multiple meltdowns, two days after the country's north-eastern coast was savaged by a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami.Ī partial meltdown is already "likely" to be under way at one nuclear reactor, a top official said.