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It's kind of surprising an idea like this hasn't happened sooner. We have been using small reactors in subs and ships since the 50s.

Thanks for another interesting video. If they could call them Atomic Small Modular Reactirs (ASMR) everyone might relax a bit about it.

Three Mile Island was actually a bit of a success story. Yes there was a serious meltdown accident but there were no injuries, deaths, direct health effects, or adverse effects to the surrounding environment.

At one time the industry did attempt to standardize. The nuclear plant I work at was one of two SNUPPS (Standardized Nuclear Unit Power Plant System) units built. There were originally 5 that were to be built, but the others were cancelled for various reasons. We share a majority of components with the other plant, which saves time and money. If something breaks, we normally can get it from them. We then send ours to the vendor to be fixed and it gets shipped to the other plant to re-stock their inventory, and vice-versa. Works great! So excited about SMR’s, recycling spent fuel and the future of Nuclear in providing carbon free energy!! 😊

Rolls Royce is also addressing this challenge in the UK with a modularised smaller fast build nuclear plants. We have a huge standard nuclear plant being built right now in the UK (by the French Nuclear experts) and this is a 10 year build. But the small scale modular systems are much more interesting as they lower the costs and time to first electricity.

Another engaging, informative and positive video, thank you. So at $123m each, how would their levelized cost of electricity compare?

Thorium or a small salt-based reactor was something a co-worker said would be a good idea. He was really into this subject. He talked about building these in shipping containers for ease of installation.

I started reading and learning about SMRs in 2018, when they were being discussed in Europe as the solution to green energy. It's cumbersome to deal with nuclear waste, but in fact it's one of our best options to stop burning fossil fuel. Thank you for sharing this, as I was not aware that commercialisation had already started. +1 for the climate :)

3:36 I think you need to clarify this. There are 413 'land-based' nuclear power plants. The US's naval ships are often also nuclear powered, and as far as I'm aware, there have been zero accidents or deaths because of those. And they would most certainly qualify as nuclear power plants.

I worked in construction of nuclear power plants in the 1980’s. A significant part of the high costs were due to the regulatory agency sending down new specifications constantly. Even if something was already installed, they would want it ripped back out and replaced with a slightly different alloy

Great video, and I agree entirely, do not let perfect be the enemy of good. There will never be a one size fits all answer to energy production. This is an excellent step in a great direction. As well, if we hypothesize that our space age tech is going to continue at the pace it has been going, the ability to store or completely rid ourselves of nuclear waste somewhere non terrestrial will make itself available long before our long term terrestrial storage ever becomes a problem. I had also always wondered about the idea of miniature nuclear powered generators for homes, neighborhoods, and even vehicles.

They produce 20 MW, and cost about $100million. What I don't know is the annual maintenance and operational costs and lifespan of the reactor. But I know on larger reactors the operational and maintenance costs are a small fraction of the up-front cost, maybe assume $2 million/year to operate and maintain, - assume a 50 year life span, and 5% interest rate (municipal bond type rates assuming we tame inflation soon), this amortizes out to an energy cost of $0.008 per KWH, call it $0.01. Add the cost of waste storage to that and the cost of the land where it sits, and the end of life costs. The storage cost must be factored in. You need to also front enough money so that the storage costs can be paid indefinitely - basically a 24,000 year annuity. My guess is that's the largest cost in all this.

The renewable’s energy company I work for is working on small nuclear reactors to make micro grids. The. Small cities won’t have to rely on the grid from really far away. They’ve also said these reactors have improved in technology that it could lose all cooling capability and still wouldn’t melt down.

The need for water cooling is also an issue in a warming world and the fact that nuclear plants in countries like France, a major user of nuclear technology, have to shut down in hot weather suggests that a large number of nuclear plants, no matter their size, is a poor idea. With the increase in numbers of reactors, we will run out of fuel for a conventional U238 plants in about 17 years. The amount of cheaply accessed uranium is limited. Then comes the massive cost of decommissioning large numbers of small plants. I don’t think using small nuclear reactors is a solution unless they are molten salt or similar and the cost of those is prohibitive.

Its important to note that deep underground storage of waste is deep enough to have no risk of ever getting back to the surface. Its incredibly deep and even complete collapse with water infiltration would be safe as that water would not even get back to the surface.

This is a very well designed video! Thank you for taking a complex topic and doing the hard work of simplifying 👍🏼

Honestly, I think this is a good piece to add to the various non-fossil fuel strategies going forward.

Thanks, Matt. Great to see progress through simplification as opposed to limiting progress due to complexity. It will be interesting to see how SMR solutions stack up over time with the Thorium plants that are being developed.

I personally think that Last is on the right path with these ASMR’s. I worked at a major nuclear powerplant back in the 1990’s and we were bogged down with procedures and QC hold points, regs and rules and much of it was, honestly, ridiculous over kill. Much of it was indeed needed but much wasn’t. Also, the cost was for the documentation. For instance, a common 1/2” bolt you can grab at a hardware store for an inflated price of 1 dollar, the nuclear bolt needs to have documentation from the truck it was offloaded from, literally all the way back to the mine where the iron ore was mined thus upping the cost to 8 or 10 bucks or more.

thats probably the best explnation of the pros and cons of nuclear ive ever heard, well done Sir

So what was the "Levelized cost of Energy" per MWH for the modular units? How did I miss that?

These are being discussed in the Netherlands too now, they can replace fossil fuels and small units powering just a neighbourhood or a village can also provide distant heating which makes these SMRs economically very interesting too, large reactors usually dump their waste heat in rivers, the sea or the air, which is also still common for the large power plants burning fuels.

a point about the dgd facilities atlesat as finland has proposed them, the uranium is stored in metal containers (I think it said tungsten not sure), and they put those canisters in their slots which are sealed in with sement, once the facility is full they seal the entire thing in, and at that point it doesn't even matter if the whole thing collapses as long as those metal containers don't rupture the earth itself is more than enough protection and the rays virtually don't reach the surface. The facility doesn't have to last for 24000 years, but it has to be left alone for 24000 years.

The enthusiasm that Matt Farrell has for all of the things he does is the same type of enthusiasm I saw in myself when I was a child and my niece's now when they watch As seen on TV product infomercials.

Recycling means fast breeder reactor. That means plutonium. 99.3% of uranium is U238, which really should be converted to plutonium. It's crazy to just bury 99.3% of the fuel. Refining U235 is also a big part of the waste problem. The real issue is security of the sites if they are breeding. Burying the reactor under a giant concrete slab could and making it really hard to get to and could make the security easier. Limiting the amount of fuel in each plant would also help. If they can make it a closed system that does not require any maintenance for 20+ years, that would be a game changer since it could be buried:)

In other comments, the LCOE calculation doesn't include the cost of loss of life, nor environmental habitat. Habitat is hard to calculate but solar farms would be a lot worse than small nuclear. Given how precise loss of life calculations are for different forms of energy, why isn't it included in LCOE?

Great to hear some positive news about nuclear energy. Thanks Matt!

I think the biggest advantage of SMRs are often overlooked. That is their use for direct on-site heat/power to industrial sites, sites like chemical processes or steel manufacturing. Those have been notoriously to decarbonize.

For reactors this small, it sparked an idea from one of the Resident Evil movies where a facility sits on top of a really deep hole where if this facility fails the whole facility can be dropped in and buried very quickly to avoid further contamination.

We attempted a standardized system late 70’s / early 80,s. SNUPPS, Standardized Nuclear Unit Power Plant System. I believe there were going to be five plants. I worked on Calloway in Jefferson City, MO. I believe Wolf Creek was ahead of Calloway. I think the program petered out after 3 sites were completed. Calloway was still operating last time I drove through MO in 2021.

There was no mention of how these modular reactor sites are operated / maintained, by whom and how they can have the necessary security in place to prevent someone for example using them to make a deadly terrorist attack; obviously large nuclear facilities need sophisticated and expensive security measures in place. Finally, how does making these sites small impact on the cost of operation, maintenance and site security? This was an excellent video Matt and it already had a lot of detail, but it’s still hard to even begin to get your head around how these small scale sites solve or improve upon the costs of operation, maintenance and security without more information on these points. Would be very interested to hear more if you have time for a follow up video 👍

These have been around in one form or another for a long time. Would have been nice to see the reduced price tag in comparison to the other technologies. Rural communities in particular could benefit from a small independent grid. Decentralization could also be good to strengthen the grid. On the down side, it opens the door to terrorism with so many more potential sites.

Matt, when you talk about the cost per megawatt hour for solar, wind, coal and nuclear, you show that solar and wind are the cheapest. But they are both intermittent power sources that need either backup power generation or battery backup. Once you factor in those costs, they not as cost effective as you portrayed. Unless there is a major breakthrough to bring down the cost of battery storage, wind and solar will not be major players in a stable and consistent power grid.

I and other Georgians have been paying for plant Vogtle for over a decade. Price tag so far is more than $32B and we have yet to see a single electron in our outlets. And when it does go on line my monthly bills will jump 20-30% THANKS big nuclear and thanks GA Public Service Commission!

Integral Fast Reactors (IFR) are the solution. They cannot meltdown, You can also recycle the waste from any other nuclear reactor or even nuclear weapons. What little waste they do produce only need to be stored for 800 years, not 24,000 years. They can be built cheaper and last longer then PWR.

No. People have been talking about this for well over 20 years and no one has succeeded in shrinking reactors (in actual production, not PoC or demos) so they can be manufactured as modules and assembled more cheaply, with lower costs and faster. I was a HUGE fan of GE's (now GE/Hitachi) S-PRISM ( a commercial implementation of the Integral Fast Reactor - a very safe design) and I hoped the AP1000 could succeed and result in many smaller AP reactors built to this vision. It hasn't happened yet and reactors only take longer to build and get more and more costly with worse overruns. Ain't gonna happen. Nuclear will never be cost or time competitive and it will always have the waste and radiation issues IMHO.

Here in the UK Windscale ranks as one of the worst nuclear accidents (details on Wikipedia). Largely covered up by the government, it was renamed Sellafield by Thatcher as the name had become synonymous with nuclear winter.

Can we get a comparison video of the risks and actual real harms of the toxic byproducts of different types of power? I don't really mean co2, though it could be mentioned but more things like coal ash, nuclear waste, end of life solar panels, whatever wastes cones from extracting and burning natural gas, etc. I'm assuming that the low carbon newer technologies generally win out, but I'd be interested to see an actual in depth comparison, especially on the coal and nuclear (one I know has created real issues and one really freaks people out). I think that comparison might also be a useful discussion when people bring up nuclear waste.

Other companies are also working on SMRs. A company called NuScale has even gotten through the regulatory process in the U.S. on one of their designs.

Copenhagen Atomics also has a similar modular approach but with thorium based technology. They are still in pilot/test phase though.

Over 99.9 % of the cask only has to be stored for 300 years. The heaviest stuff is the long term waste which can be recycled. We’ve been doing this since 1964. It’s a tried and true method. Yucca Mountain in Nevada would be a great place.

To answer your question, yes. I can see no way of bringing costs of nuclear energy down to a reasonable level other than by building small modular reactors on an assembly line. Hopefully producing plants on an assembly does not introduce new hazards during the production process. All the same I'm pretty excited about this. If electric vehicles are the future, this will go a long ways towards reducing the need to beef up electrical lines to carry more power over long distances. Having a nuclear reactor that's dedicated to specific locale (be it a city or a manufacturing faciliity) seem like a great way to achieve cheap and reliable energy. Though even with the increased safety, if you have widespread adoption the chances of something going wrong somewhere does offset that increased safety. My fear is that when that one incident happens that it will restigmatize nuclear energy and cause unwarranted apprehension. You mentioned in your video that Last Energy is saying that it is theoretically possible to use spent nuclear fuel. According to this video from Copenhagen Atomics it sounds more like a near reality using their small modular Thorium reactor to burn Plutonium and the long-lived actinides. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/aJ15odenvNWYnaM.html Their first prototype reactor is slated to start up in 2025.

Matt, you need to double-check your sources. Those LCoE numbers are way out of line, which should be unsurprising given that they come from known anti-nuclear energy organization, the WNISR. Both the IPCC and NEA clock nuclear at under $70/MWh, and solar and wind significantly higher than the WNISR. Also, almost all calculations for LCoE that return such low values for renewables are excluding the necessary cost for storage.

Small modular reactors produce more waste and are less efficient than their bigger counterparts. Economically, they're also unfavourable and only really an option when more electricity production is needed comparatively quickly. Fast breeding reactors and their ability to decompose atomic waste with geological half-lifes to a much shorter acting variety, while generating energy on top, is where it's at. These reactors can also be used with Thorium-232 and Uranium-238. India is currently the only country pursuing the construction of such a facility, while Russia is operating two of these in order to make Plutonium.

Love the idea. Timescales to build is one of the factors that holds nuclear back. Finance costs are enormous if it takes 10+ years before you start earning any money back! But also governments change every 4 or 5 years. If you can get a small nuclear plant signed off and producing within a year then politicians will definitely sign up for them.... But you need to get the LCOE down. Sure it can be higher than renewable as they are intermittent and this is baseload.... But if renewables become much cheaper then it will get to the point it is cheaper to built solar for 100% power on the shortest day of the year or cheaper to build wind energy to 100% power the country on the calmest day than it is to power the country via nuclear.... So LCOE is super important. Just an aside. I heard that if we built out solar and wind to power the country then we would need electricity storage for 18 hours for the whole country to make to make sure there were never any outages! Obviously the figure increase to 3 to 5 days if you build only solar or only wind... But it means that a renewable future is probably quite a lot more likely than a nuclear future.

seems that the growth of costs for Nuclear went up between '09 to '21 because of Fukushima and it's issue.

Molten Salt Reactors can use that spent fuel, and the current estimate is that MSR's could power the entire US grid based on projected use for the next 150 years ONLY on that spent fuel.

Are they looking into thorium salt reactors? I don’t know too much about them but from what I understand they’re much safer as they require a catalyst to sustain a reaction and that can be removed in the event of a possible meltdown. Also with the idea that thorium is more abundant, easier and safer to extract, and is more energy dense as well as the byproducts can be reused

At the 3:15 mark when you mention three mile island, I just want to point out that it was FAR from a disaster. A PR disaster more than anything else, the actual amount of released radiation that day effectively has a 0 percent chance of actually hurting anyone. It was a massive media scare more than anything. It showed the way you handled any kind of issue at a nuclear site is very touchy, and that communication and transparency are key.

As a matter of fact, the UK is ahead in SMRs going into operation, mainly via a Rolls Royce led consortium which has some middle east, Canadian, central Europe and USA links. Slow roll out in the USA was observed from the UK and the many-source 'basket' of power generation approach lent itself to 'always on' baseload back up allowing 17 SMRs to be in test between now and 2025. 3 or 4 SMRs in test and proving status are actually on line to the national grid. Because Rolls Royce has a long history of plants for military use in surface and not surface vessels it has been able to refine its reactor/generator units without new procedures being used by lawyers to slow down the SMR industry in such as the USA. In fact, the SMRs in service or awaiting placement are factory made then siting has been in preparation (mostly underground or alongside the National Decommissioning Authority) has resulted in what is technically a Medium Modular Reactor but of the dimensions of the ones in this feature. With South Africa making progress with RR reactors and South American countries as well as India and China the RR-SMR project is fully capitalised. Siting is up to customers but only to UK standards in order to be a customer. The reactors are adaptable to different 'generation trains' allowing for older stations to be closed down gradually and/or power generation being linked to such as hydro on different shafts. France is in process of refurbishment of its huge nuclear industry with its own variations on the RR model. The feature by Matt is far too US-centric and not for the first time.

I read about a plan to adress the spent nuclear fuel issue I actually agree with. There is a type of nuclear reactor that uses a high power particle accelerator to bombard the spent nuclear fuel pellets with neutrons and induce fission in them. The reactivated fuel pellets are then put into a nuclear reactor and allowed to run a relatively short fuel cycle. The fuel produces neutrons as part of the fuel cycle so the initial activation will burn off more waste than just that which got hit with a neutron in the bombardment. After use the fuel is evaluated and either sent for short term storage (few hundred years) if it is determined to be fully burned or sent back to be activated again. This type of reactor doesn't produce enough power to run the particle accelerator at the level required so it will cost money to run but that can be accomplished with a 5% tax on the electricity produced by nuclear plants. Also since the fuel stuffed into the reactor is so poor it is incredibly hard to get a run away reaction going, instead of the roaring fire of a normal nuclear reactor this is a smoldering coal bed, which incidentally is why it doesn't produce much energy. The other types of reactor that can use spent nuclear fuel usually have problems due to the fact that either significant fuel reworking has to be done or they have problems due to the large amount of plutonium that is produced as part of the cycle. The low and slow method of the accelerator activated fuel cycle sidesteps all this since the fuel is kept at a state where it is basically worthless the entire time and gets more so the longer it is used. The major problem with this system is cost. It doesn't produce a profit and thus will never be built. Burying spent nuclear fuel in the ground is simple and doesn't cost much. Building one of these systems for each 10-20 normal reactors is a huge cost and the fuel will still be dangerous for a century or so after a full burn so it still needs some form of storage after all so why not just bury it from the beginning and let our descendants handle the inevitable problems.

I am so hyped for this. I am so looking forward towards how they and others like them will impact the future of energy.

Excellent video as usual. One of the best channels on KZfaq. Only thing missing was LCOE for SMRs to compare to the LCOE numbers you flashed up for solar, wind, and traditional nuclear

Gee, that tech is cool..." This model of common plant design makes a very practical sense. It is one highly pragmatic solution (and one which has needed solving for a long while - like from the 'beginning', imho. But I am wondering about cumulative effects (radioactive source materials, storage/disposal of no-longer-usable fuel., and, of course, long term exposure of the plant itself to the radioactive fuel. If we go in to replace a malfunctioning widget, it [potentially?] will be radioactive, as well, would it not? With smaller 'plants', you can't just throw a widget in a cannister in the corner and seal it up once it is full. I also wonder about the relative rarity of radioactive materials for use as fuel. It is not, as you say, something you can just run down to the Spacely Sprocket store and have them whip one out, as you mentioned in another sense. Are we just going to dig up the supplies in the grand canyon and turn it into an yet another open-pit mine? And please, don't get me started on carbon storage, and the similar long-term radioactive waste storage. How about a mini-reactor? (Just big enough for a stand-alone house, or say four apartments, or a dozen 'tiny homes' (about oh, ten to twelve)? So much going on, and so many variables...

The U.S. Navy has been using small Nuclear power plants for decades in submarines & aircraft carriers so the idea and the 'challenges' of scaling down, modularizing, costs and safety of Nuclear power plants have already been successfully mitigated / solved and actually implemented into real world everyday usage... How about making a video(s) reflecting / discussing these many accomplishments Matt?

The thing that tends to make nuclear power plants more safe than other forms of energy plants is the massive regulation that you have to have around them to ensure that they do not fail in a way that could cause a nuclear release. The small nuclear plants have also to be certified before they can be operated this will be hopefully equally stringent. Once you have that it will be very hard to update new features in ongoing updated designs because that will require full recertification. Say in 10 years you find that your initial design has accelerated aging of certain components. I imagine that for a cost benefit analysis it will be easier to just shut that plant down than attempt to fix it. The waste problem was similarly treated as we don't have a problem we just leave it in its fuel assemblies and after a certain period of time we bury it in deep underground repositories. But in the next section they say actually it would be better to reprocess the fuel so we can make new fuel and nuclearly burn some of the highly radioactive products to reduce their lifetime of the waste. Nuclear fuel reprocessing has not gone well anywhere in the world that has done this. The UK has stopped nuclear reprocessing and they now have a multi billion pound and 30 year project to try and clean up the Sellafield reprocessing site. The security issues around Nuclear sites are also never mentioned. In the uk I believe all Nuclear reactor sites have dedicated armed police forces. The real killer for me is that the lcoe is the highest for nuclear energy, if you took the money you spent on nuclear and also invested in energy storage the price overall would be much lower than for a small amount of nuclear power. You would not have the longer term radioactive waste problem or the societal distortions in having to protect your nuclear assets from small groups out to terrorise your society. A case in point now is the threat of an attack on a nuclear power plant by the Russian's. The bottom line is technology has to work within a faliable human society just thinking technology will solve the worlds problems by "better engineering" often leads to just bigger problems down the line. I am not a Luddite better engineering does make things better but often its the mistakes along the way where you learn the most. The risk reward for Nuclear power does not make sense for me now.

“Are there 24,000 year solutions? It’s kind of difficulty to say. I’m going to guess no.” I appreciate the sarcasm, but let’s be direct. No, there are no 24,000 year solutions, and no one can make a cost/benefit analysis that is that long. Therefore, it’s impossible to estimate the danger of waste that is dangerous for so long.

Interesting video Matt. I am curious how the embodied carbon of nuclear stacks up against the other options, like wind and solar. I wish I heard more people talking about embodied carbon because it shows a more complete picture. Much like you included the capital vs. operating costs in this video.

The biggest hurtle to nuclear energy is the 5+years it takes to get through permitting. There are power plant sites ready to start construction but have been waiting almost a decade for their licenses.

If the LCOE os SMR is lower than solar + sodium ion batteries, sure, great. But the fact that the actual LCOE of these SMRs isn't included in the video, makes me think it's still quite expensive

Very interesting. My first concern is Security, meaning the protection of the nuclear material from vandalism and theft. With many locations scattered over a wide region, how do you ensure the nuclear materials are secure?

e) LCOE is not a measure that accurately compares system costs. It does not include firming costs and arbitrarily limits the life time of the assets in the calculation. Lazards latest addition includes power sources WITH firming costs (for 4h, which is woefully little), showing that even the highly inflated costs for Vogtle 3 (with a mid build design change mandated by an openly anti-nuclear NRC commissioner...), compare very favorably to solar+firming. (This is actually the reason for why developing countries are still building large amounts of coal... they need firm energy and opt for the cheapest way to get it...)

SMRs unless they are based on molten salt still face challenges with radioactive waste, low fuel efficiency, and the risks associated with high-pressure reactor vessels. While SMRs can serve as a short-term solution, Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) are considered a more promising mid-term solution due to their potential to address these issues more comprehensively. Hopefully, we will have fusion by the time we run out of uranium and thorium. The differences between Light Water Reactors (LWR) and Thorium Molten Salt Reactors (TMSR) are significant in fuel utilization and waste production. LWRs use approximately 0.5-1% of uranium fuel, leading to the generation of long-lived radioactive waste due to inefficient energy conversion and the use of enriched uranium. In contrast, TMSRs can achieve fuel efficiency of up to 99%. This is achieved by converting fertile thorium-232 into fissile uranium-233, substantially reducing waste production and more manageable radioactive waste. Uranium Molten Salt Reactors (UMSR) are just as effective as TMSRs. 800 kg of natural thorium in a Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) can generate 1 gigawatt (GW) of electricity for one year. In comparison, generating the same amount of energy in an LWR would require mining 250 tons of uranium. In an MSR, the storage requirement for 800 kg of spent fuel is 300 years, whereas in a LWR, 35 tons of spent fuel need storage for 300,000 years. MSRs can utilize the spent fuel from LWRs. A coal power station will need to burn 4.55 million tons of coal and emit 13 million tons of carbon dioxide to produce the same amount of energy for one year. That amount of coal contains 4 to 18 tons of uranium, 13 to 68 tons of thorium, and 4 to 45 tons of arsenic. Of the six proposed fourth-generation nuclear reactor types, the MSR is the only type that does not generate substantial amounts of plutonium. The fissile uranium-233 produced by the MSR is difficult to use for weapons because of the presence of highly radioactive uranium-232. MSRs can adjust power output to match electricity demand, thanks to the inherent and automatic load-following capability provided by the fluid nature of the molten salt coolant. A key safety feature of MSR is that it automatically adjusts to prevent overheating. This is achieved through a "negative thermal reactivity coefficient," which means that as the temperature rises, the reactor's reactivity decreases, preventing a runaway chain reaction. Additionally, the MSR has a "negative void reactivity coefficient," ensuring that the reactivity decreases if there is a loss of coolant or boiling, preventing potential overheating. These safety measures help keep the reactor stable and safe under various conditions. Looking ahead to 2040, China plans to deploy Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) for desalination of seawater, hydrogen production, powering of ships equipped with Thermoacoustic Stirling Generators, and power plants with Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Turbines within its borders and globally. In the Earth's crust, thorium is nearly four times more abundant than uranium. Every atom of natural thorium can be harnessed, unlike natural uranium, where only 1 out of every 139 atoms can be used. China produces thorium as a byproduct of its rare earth processing. Similar to the trends observed with solar and wind technologies, MSR costs are anticipated to decrease with the scaling up of production and the development of robust supply chains.

Matt gave the final price but did he ever mention the power figure or the LCOE for these SMRs? Had to laugh at the "lightning fast" 2 years construction timeline! I think "comparatively" might've helped in that sentence :)

If they can switch to high temp from high pressure in a modular form they will definitely go a long way. High temp could also lead to burning off the older spent fuel and solve the disposal problem as well.

Thanks Matt! I have 2 comments. Your cost of nuclear is skewed by the huge cost and time overruns at Vogtle. Now that Vogtle 3 and 4 are done there is a great possibility that the next AP-1000 reactor will be far cheaper and quicker. The design is already approved by NRC and the supply chain and workers are in place. Many are going in overseas. Also, SMRs are not standardized. There are a relatively large number of vendors all building first of a kind reactors of very different generation 4 technologies. That will add significantly to the cost and each competing company will sell fewer than expected making them more expensive. And all of those designs have to go through a separate approval at NRC, a horrendous task. I say dont give up on the AP-1000. Just build many of them simultaneously in the US as new reactors and replacements for the old fleet. Most of the old reactor sites are designed to handle additional reactors. SMRs for old coal plants is a great idea but we dont need 100 new designs to compete with each other!

...to include the estimated levelized cost per MWh of SMR's would have added balance to the discussion. Thanks Matt, great video!

Standardisation worked against France when they discovered 24mm cracks in 27 mm thick water pipes. Between that and maintenance shutdowns 32 of their 56 reactors were down in the middle of an energy crisis. In addition other reactors had to operate at reduced power due to inadequate cooling as the rivers they relied on were too hot. And that was on top of audits showing that their actual costs were 2 ½ times what they had been claiming. Due to nuclear's long history of cost & schedule overruns, including with other SMR makers, I remain highly skeptical of Forever Energy's claims until they actually deliver a working reactor and there's independent verification of costs & reliability. Until then the money is better spent on what we know actually works, is cheaper & getting cheaper, and is far quicker to deploy.

Unfortunately there was no cost comparison with the likes of solar and wind, neither there was a breakdown on the question of fuel reusability and disposal, standardization and market availability and safety (a lot more difficult with large number of facilities which can be targeted, think about Zhaporizhia multiplied). But nice video nonetheless.

I love the whole concepted idea of these nuclear plants but I do believe they are lacking a protection perimeter around it which I was thinking of massive concrete stones or huge rocks that can be delivered and placed around it on site; this will prevent future accidents like vehicles accidentally hitting them or bumping into them and rocks will permanently stop a vehicle at full speed... And since they do cost $123 million and 2 full years to construct, it would be better protected. FYI.

Hi Matt, love the show, thanks so much for all the hard work you put in preparing it, now it's my turn to give back something, may I suggest you look into vitrification? a process invented by the French and used by the Brits to grind nuclear waste into a material roughly the size of coffee grounds, wherein it's mixed with sand, fired in a kiln at 1500 degrees centigrade, and once cooled stored in stainless steel containers and buried under ground. The silica atoms bind to the nuclear atoms making them too heavy to escape their solid form, they're totally inert. I personally met the person who operates this process and I still don't understand why more people don't know this process exists, the blocks of glass are totally inert unless you decide to heat them back up to 1500 degrees centigrade, thought you'd like to know, one more reason to be clear that we've been misled about nuclear energy all along.

I would love to see smaller scale safer plants until a full scale / full grid like the Mega Packs used in Australia. That is pretty cool to see. Old EV batteries put to use in some here in CA also

What's the projected LCOE for an SMR plant? Unless it's cheaper than solar, wind and storage (after accounting for intermittency), it's unlikely to get much traction, because if you can get the same performance for the same price from a technology that is never going to make you glow in the dark (and I understand the reality, but public perception is difficult to change), you'll take the (perceived) safer option every time.

Tbh? I think a mix of solar and nuclear can pretty much take care of the energy grid. Especially with this tech, fabracting scaled to order plants for energy entensive facilities like factories or hospitals sounds fisable after optimization. while on a big enough scale, it's very realistic to expect a solar home community to create it's own independent grid, diverting excess power to places that need it and basically annihilate the power bill to only the standard maintenance cost. You could then complemnt it with wind to buff up the supply in low sun area and stormy weather, as they tend to pick each others slack. Something I think a lot of ppl miss, is that no energy is either capable nor should be expected to reasonably power an entire planet (and yes I'm counting coal, poisoning the planet is not reasonable). Not in any reasonable price or effectiveness at least. Mixing and matching which method fit best where on the other hand will ease the strain on whatever single method and bluster the entire grid against failures

Modules like this, and the one Rolls-Royce has been developing, will become more useful, and more necessary, as we as a species expand away from our parent star. PV becomes less effective further out as input energy drops away, but nuclear fission, and hopefully fusion too, remains the same output from the same input. Closer to home, disaster management is where small nuclear units become very effective - fly in under a helicopter, put on the roof of a hospital, power the equipment to keep people alive. (Do the same on shopping centers and malls to keep power on while surviving the Zombie Apocalypse,...) Standardization is key, so they can plug in anywhere, followed by swapping cycles to keep pulling energy out of what we currently class as 'spent' fuel.

Thank you. You nailed it. Now we need to wait and see the cost of the small reactors. By the way, the LCOEs numbers you showed don't take into account decommissioning of coal (and soon also gas) power plants earlier than planned. This trend increases their LCOE.

Security requirements of SMR can't be less than that of larger sites. For naughty people, grabbing some of the nasty stuff for nefarious uses may be even easier.

My country, France, has been mentioned as an example of "serial" production or nuclear plants. That's true, and the cost was way lower. However there is a downside, last year a lot of reactors were down in order to check for cracks after some were found in one of them. I don't like when LCOS of an intermittent energy source like solar and wind is compared to the LCOS of an "always on" source like nuclear. At least add the LCOS of storage, if it's even possible (in winter, solar won't produce much for weeks on end so storage can't do much about that). After a few years where nuclear was not in favor after Fukushima, France has embarked in a new cycle, and while the president has allocated some funds towards SMR, the plan is clearly to build bigger, 6 new EPR reactors (1650MW) then on to EPR2, these should be conceived to be cheaper to produce.

I’m not sure using the reactor as the containment cask is necessarily a good idea. All that neutron bombardment for 6 years will have likely caused some damage or embrittlement of the cask and/or other components so I definitely wouldn’t expect it to contain stuff in the long term. The fuel will still need to be removed and repackaged I think for long term storage.

Quite disappointed that after those 4 current tech LCOE examples, you don't give us the expected LCOE for the new SMRs as a comparison.

Everyone talks about nuclear waste and how wind or sunlight is safe... But almost no one talking about stability: Just one week without wind can result in billions in losses if you rely mostly on wind power. Economic damage is not "just money", it is basically the live and health of people. Nuclear power is 99.99% stable and never fails if you follow the instructions and do everything right. Yes, it costs a little more and maintenance is a little more complicated, but in the long run the benefit is clear.

Love your show, however nuclear almost always shows a strong bias for this topic, just looking at the difference in information quality (even if not malicious): A) Where did you find $6-10 billion for a 110MW plant? It just doesn't square with any real word data or even pessimistic projections B) Operating costs are not high. They're actually very low, and the reason why when a NPP is completely amortized it becomes the cheapest source of electricity (IEA) C) Despite the hugely misleading name, WNISR is written by an openly anti-nuclear organization working for a nuclear energy-free world (LCOE comments aside)

It's only „CO2-free“ if you don't count the CO2 for uranium mining, uranium-purification, the CO2-costs for building the reactors and for disposing the radioactive waste...

The more of your videos on nuclear tech that I watch, the more time I spend digging into it myself. It's led me to realize just how many companies have their fingers in the nuclear energy pie. Like Westinghouse, who made the TV I watch most of your videos on, recently unveiled a new SMR design. They (Westinghouse) also developed some of the technologies used in 430 of the world's 440 nuclear reactors. I'd love to see a video from you going over some of the less expected members of the nuclear family. Like Rolls-Royce and their SMR, or Westinghouse who is mostly known for making mid-quality televisions in the public eye.

Excellent video! According to Google, there are 11 rbmk reactors still in service. They all began operating between 1979 and 1990. They have been operating safely over that time. Not bad for a poor design. As to levelized cost, another term that is just now being discussed is capacity factor. I'm curious if capacity factor has been figured into the numbers you presented. If not, the adjusted numbers would be nuclear 167 per mw, wind approximately 152 per mw, and solar would range between 144 & 360 per mw. This does not factor in the US estimated 30% increase in transmission line miles needed if we were to transition to a wind/solar dominated grid. I found this interesting. In order for a typical newly installed wind farm to equal the power generation of Last Energy's, smr occupying 1/2 an acre. That farm would need to cover 2 square miles.

Matt I really like this small version, for all the reasons you Identified. I am also a fan of the thorium reactor.

Plant vogtle in ga is just coming in line will cost nearly $30Billion (way more than $9-10B) and is raising the cost of power in Ga by an est 40% over the next 3 years that really impacts those least able to afford. The future of modular reactor my mind will be a different technology -- molten salt is in example that have inherent safety aspects (over PWR and BWR reactors) as the fuel is in the salt itself. These designs are way for efficient in using more of the uranium with less (expensive) enrichment (before being depleted) and are designed to to buun up and eliminate actinides (fission by products) and reduce half life of the waste to 300-400 years.

One thing you didn't mention are these LWR or Molten Salt reactors. That would effect the safety and simplicity of the reactors.

Fascinating, I always wond wondered if making smaller reactors would be better than making really big ones. Glad there is a company is actually doing it...

Look at the 2023 Lazard LCOE study chart. The nuclear LCOE shows a range that includes your number. However, there is a small diamond down around $30/MWh with a footnote 5. Footnote 5 says that the median cost of nuclear power from a fully depreciated plant is comparable to wind or solar. Hence, the cost of nuclear is largely the cost of money. Once to mortgage is paid off, the cost is comparable to wind and solar. And that low LCOE for wind and solar does not include the cost of storage. Nuclear fuel cost is around 5% of operating cost,

Matt your cost estimate at 10:00 is off by about a factor of 5. For example Georgia Power Vogtle Units 3 & 4 both rated at around 1100 MWE total cost estimate comes in a little north of $30 billion. 2200 MWE would equal 20 110 MWE units. Making 110 MWE plant priced on a linear scale of about $1.5 billion.

Good video, Matt. As per usual. My first question was also as many others have posed, how does Last Energy compare in LCoE? Someone else below has asked about incorporating capacity variables into LCoE and some clarification on that would be quite interesting. However, my biggest question is why on earth are we not recycling the waste (and when I say "We", I mean North America since you mention that Japan is already doing so) and is that something that is legislated against so Last Energy can't do it or is it just to cumbersome/expensive to make it viable? Seems to me that might make a pretty good video on it's own. Thanks!

Matt, I really like your videos. They are interesting and lead to more questions. With regard to nuclear energy waste, what about vitrefication? Has that method gone passé? Also, what about the grid, itself? I understand that our aging grid is a big part of the reason more green energy hasn't been okayed to plug in. And what about microgrids? It seems microgrids could build resilience in the face of a changing climate. Thanks!

I didn't see the LCOE for SMR Nuclear. Is it anticipated to be in line with wind and solar, or just cheaper than conventional nuclear?

Great video/s Matt! Unbiased. I definitely think SMRs are the way forward for the majority of our energy. You don’t need the massive grid infrastructure because you could localise them. Although solar is the cheapest I am strongly apposed to solar farms taking the space of farmland/housing or natural areas. I do think every roof should be covered with them though as this would give some energy independence to homeowners. Definitely not just one solution but need to take into account space and natural areas too, the amount of land per megawatt hour. Your deaths per kwhr was interesting. I wonder what the ecological damage per kwhr would be for each? Cheers

Running many facilities of same kind looks good on the first look, but gives us a huge cluster risk (like France showed, as they hat to shutdown many plants due to a problem which affected all of the same reactors). Betting on many of a kind baseload power facilities being available at all times can get us in real trouble, like France showed last winter

I wouldn't say there is no carbon footprint. Nearly no carbon while operating, but construction of the facility and mining and preparing the nuclear fuel do, and a lot.

Last Energy certainly seems further down the road than most SMRs but it still has plenty of hurdles to jump. Its long-term power offtake agreements are subject to regulatory approvals, plant financing and (presumably) delivering power at a competitive price. With a capital cost of $6m/MW - about 5x that of solar - that will be hard to do.

Thanks for another great video Matt, I would like to add that I feel that there is another answer to long lived nuclear waste that is important to mention. Companies like Elysium and Moltex are developing fast neutron reactors that can burn long lived nuclear waste and turn it all into energy, leaving waste that only lasts a few 100 years. We don't need to waste money planning to bury nuclear waste for 100,000s of years. Once generation 4 fast reactors come into operation they will probably take over the market for new reactors. There is several hundred years worth of US total energy requirements sitting in dry casks waiting to be put to good use. It would be a huge waste of money AND a waste of unused energy to bury it now just as these new fast reactors are about to come into operation.