Framework for Selecting New Nuclear Technology
Category: Thought Leadership
New nuclear power technology offers many benefits: carbon-free generation, reliable 24/7 operation, 60- to 80-year lifetimes, simplified design and construction, and enhanced safety features, just to name a few.
Prospective owners interested in developing advanced nuclear plants have a number of technology choices — each with its own features (size, license status, delivery timeline, etc.) and menu of applications (electric generation, process steam, district heating, hydrogen production, desalination).
The following framework outlines several factors you’ll need to think about if you’re evaluating advanced nuclear technologies.
Available technologies
Generally, each nuclear steam supply system (NSSS) vendor tends to focus on one technology. This means that selecting a technology usually determines the NSSS vendor.
The catalog of new technologies includes:
- Light water reactors (which dominate the current US fleet)
- Heavy water reactors (a Canadian specialty)
- Gas-cooled reactors
- Liquid metal reactors
- Molten salt reactors
- Fast neutron reactors
- Thermal neutron reactors
- Reactors employing high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel (where uranium is enriched to greater than 5% and less than 20% of the U-235 isotope)
Small modular reactors (SMRs) and advanced reactors using these technologies are in various stages of development. To date, there has been no commercial deployment of these reactors in North America. However, some are moving forward with plans for deployment later in this decade or early in the 2030s.
Considerations
The list below represents a limited sampling of technical, commercial, and organizational items that owners must address when selecting a nuclear technology. There are many more considerations, and each item involves significant detail. Arriving at a prudent nuclear technology selection requires substantial effort considering, at a minimum:
- Project purpose. Will it be used only for electric generation or for other applications (process steam, desalination, ammonia production, etc.)?
- Project capacity, expansion, and footprint
- Owner programs and resources for project planning, development, execution, and plant operation
- Site physical conditions and available existing infrastructure
- Commercial (financing) matters and access to government subsidies
Technology alternative and NSSS vendor evaluation factors
The Department of Energy’s latest Advanced Nuclear Pathways to Commercial Liftoff, published in September, addresses the role of SMRs in grid resiliency as an important consideration for SMR selection. It also asserts that waiting until the mid-2030s to deploy new nuclear at scale could lead to missing decarbonization targets or significant nuclear supply chain overbuild.
This suggests that owners need to pay attention to realistic deployment schedules, especially considering the critical path impact of licensing a technology with limited Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) review history.
The 2023 version of the pathway document also cited higher than necessary direct and indirect labor and materials cost as key causes of overnight capital cost excesses.
To combat these excesses and reduce costs, it recommended:
- Investment in improved pre-project planning
- Learning by doing
- Standardization
- Build time reduction
- Supply chain development
- Modularization
Prospective owners should assess whether vendors have addressed these drivers in their practices and processes. They should also evaluate:
- Design status and technology readiness level (TRL)
- Licensing status
- Project discrete risks
- Project deployment timing and strategy
- Project estimate and project schedule maturity
- Supply chain status and commercial sustainability
- Overall backlog/capacity and capability to support project development and long-term plant operations
Final thoughts
Selecting a vendor is not a simple, one-person endeavor. Even if you have experience with a particular technology and vendor supplier, you need a well-constructed business case, a project roadmap and a budget to assess alternatives, select the appropriate technology, and start the development process.
This requires time, funding, and — most importantly — knowledgeable personnel in-house, supplemented by external subject matter experts to help address each factor. The Modus team can support detail development and vendor evaluation.