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TIL that Rolls Roys is doing SMR.
I am pretty curious on how this new trend of SMR will evolve in 20 years, I can see how it can be simpler and faster to build than full scale plant. However, I am not sure you'd save by multiplying the NIMBY to deal with and the whole support staff.
They won't evolve. Or at least not without massive subsidies.
Nuclear power is extremely expensive, even for SMRs, and most of the projections don't even account for the waste management, which will cost money for at least several decades (assuming you just dump it somewhere "safe").
There's simply no economic incentive, unless you hope to be subsidized forever and leverage the nuclear bros.
Why build nuclear reactors when renewables are cheaper?
Historically, reactors were sized like modern SMR concepts once. The issue was that they were even harder to secure and ratio of effort/benefit was worse than with fewer, larger reactors. Just like all nuclear projects, SMR construction will run behind schedule and outside of cost estimates, we've already seen that with the cancelled NuScale reactors in the US.
Governments need to stop throwing money at this deadbirth of a technology.