Yeah, one justification I’d heard was that it was a cheap and low risk way to revive the industry enough for bigger projects, but I’m not sure that’s particularly compelling.
Sounds like a very expensive argument to invest billions on the hope that something might happen 😬. Hope it’s not my money.
Yes, but also literally every industry starts that way. Start small and scale up. Nuclear’s special because we did it once and then almost completely stopped building them globally for so long that the capability faded away.
The tech shifted in the meantime, so even the knowledge that was preserved is for designs we wouldn’t want to build today.
The SMNR format suffers from being small and therefore difficult to be cost effective and that renewables are 4 times as cheap. Not easy to make money in this environment. https://cleantechnica.com/2023/11/06/nuclear-energy-free-market-capitalism-arent-compatible/
Yeah, one justification I’d heard was that it was a cheap and low risk way to revive the industry enough for bigger projects, but I’m not sure that’s particularly compelling.
Sounds like a very expensive argument to invest billions on the hope that something might happen 😬. Hope it’s not my money.
Yes, but also literally every industry starts that way. Start small and scale up. Nuclear’s special because we did it once and then almost completely stopped building them globally for so long that the capability faded away.
The tech shifted in the meantime, so even the knowledge that was preserved is for designs we wouldn’t want to build today.
It’s a weird situation.