The economics are yet to be borne out. I believe the NuScale cost (feel free to correct me if this information is wrong) is still above the cost of renewables and storage [1] but below that of traditional PWRs (684Mw @ $3 billion [2], ~25 cents/kwh [3]), which is competitive in places like Hawaii (which is still relying heavily on diesel fuel for what solar isn't providing) and geographies with limited land or renewables potential, but not elsewhere (storage aside, you're still competing with renewables around 1-3 cents/kwh at utility scale).
Congrats to NuScale for making it through to the other side of US nuclear regulatory purgatory. Optimism is warranted ("all of the above" to replace fossil fuels), but cautious optimism. It's not real until a commercial reactor is generating. Vogtle is still not done [4]. I hope I get to see a factory churning out prefab reactors ready for shipment.
EDITs (to not pollute thread with replies): A carbon tax in the US is very unlikely, and you cannot count on economies of scale until you have arrived at scale.
Thing is this kind of design benefits massively from economies of scale, same kind of thing that has drawn the price of PV down and other green energy.
> same kind of thing that has drawn the price of PV down
A nuclear power generator is a complex beast, that requires a ton of material, of very different kinds, worked into some detailed and non-repetitive patterns. (Have you looked at a steam turbine?)
PV is a simple pattern of a few different substances, repeated over and over again.
Even if scale was all going into the PV price, nuclear will never be able to achieve the same amount of it.
Up until recently the "economy of scale" meant massive reactors when it came to nuclear, and small modular reactors were abandoned because people didn't think they could be economical.
We have radically different construction skill sets now than we did in the 1970s, so the economics may be different now, and it could have been that the planners were wrong before.
But I'm any case, until a few of these have shipped, I'm not sure we'll know the true cost.
These are manufactured like airplanes, a few at a time. Whereas solar has massive plants with hundreds of thousands of the same part assembled and shipped. I'm hopeful that they will provide another tool in the fight against climate change, but not super optimistic. There are many many technologies that are at a similar stage of development that could be used instead, such as cheap hydrogen electrolyzers, long-duration storage flow batteries, etc. And if these other techs succeed, they will also help SMR nuclear, assuming SMR nuclear can compete with renewables on cost!
Given the general cost disease affecting large construction projects, I think that massive reactors are an unviable proposition in western countries at this point. While the reactor core designs seem to be templatized, the projects to build them are not, and so there is huge inefficiency. E.g. see https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/climate/nuclear-power-pro....
If NuScale can build hundreds or thousands of these small reactors, they should be able to perfect a turnkey installation playbook that would hopefully reduce costs significantly, and perhaps more importantly, reduce variance on project spend/timelines. I think an unpredictable total cost of ownership is one of the things hurting nuclear projects.
The big question in my mind is whether they can deploy enough of these to get to that scale, given that there's a fairly universal NIMBYism against nuclear power, even where this would be displacing CO2-emitting sources.
This kind of design actually starts out with losing massive economics of scale of traditional PWR and hopes to get it back by economics of scale in manufacturing.
I don't think NuScale will have much trouble competing with traditional PWR, but if they can compete in the overall market is a huge question.
For example, right now we have a pretty serious externality with CO2 for coal and other sources, what are the costs that folks would assign to CO2 to clear to needed target? That could bring comparative cost (with CO2 impact) down a bit.
Congrats to NuScale for making it through to the other side of US nuclear regulatory purgatory. Optimism is warranted ("all of the above" to replace fossil fuels), but cautious optimism. It's not real until a commercial reactor is generating. Vogtle is still not done [4]. I hope I get to see a factory churning out prefab reactors ready for shipment.
EDITs (to not pollute thread with replies): A carbon tax in the US is very unlikely, and you cannot count on economies of scale until you have arrived at scale.
[1] https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019
[2] https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits/cost-competitive
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24346808
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24061448