It’d appear to be everybody from enterprise capitalists to the information media to the U.S. secretary of Vitality has been hyping small modular reactors as the important thing to unlocking a nuclear renaissance and fixing each local weather change and fashionable information facilities’ ravenous want for energy.
On Monday, the Pure Sources Committee of the California Meeting will think about a invoice to repeal a longstanding moratorium on nuclear crops within the state, which was meant to be in place till there’s a sustainable plan for what to do with radioactive waste. Defeated a number of occasions up to now, this invoice would carve out an exception for small modular reactors, or SMRs, the present pipe dream of nuclear advocates.
SMRs are usually beneath 300 megawatts, in contrast with the mixed 2.2 gigawatts from Diablo Canyon’s two working reactors close to San Luis Obispo. These smaller nukes have obtained a lot consideration lately primarily as a result of fashionable reactors are so pricey that the U.S. and Europe have all however stopped constructing any.
The unhappy reality is that small reactors make even less sense than large ones. And Trump’s tariffs solely make the maths extra discouraging.
I’ve been analyzing nuclear energy since 1993, once I began a five-year stint on the Division of Vitality as a particular assistant to the deputy secretary. I helped him oversee each the nuclear vitality program and the vitality effectivity and renewable vitality program, which I ran in 1997.
So I do know all too nicely that the hype is constructed on quicksand — particularly, a seven-decade historical past of failure. As a 2015 analysis put it, “Economics killed small nuclear energy crops up to now — and possibly will maintain doing so.” A 2014 journal article concluded lots of these “constructing assist for small modular reactors” are placing ahead “rhetorical visions imbued with components of fantasy.”
However isn’t there a nuclear renaissance occurring? Nope. Georgia’s Vogtle plant is the one new nuclear plant the U.S. has efficiently constructed and began in current many years. The overall price was $35 billion, or about $16 million per megawatt of producing capability — way over methane (pure fuel) or photo voltaic and wind with battery storage.
As such, Vogtle is “the costliest energy plant ever constructed on Earth,” with an “astoundingly excessive” estimated electrical energy price, famous Power magazine. Georgia ratepayers each paid $1,000 to assist this plant earlier than they even received any energy, and now their payments are rising more than $200 yearly.
The excessive price of building and the ensuing excessive vitality payments clarify why nuclear’s share of worldwide energy peaked at 17% within the mid-Nineteen Nineties however was right down to 9.1% in 2024.
For many years, economies of scale drove reactors to develop past 1,000 megawatts. The concept that abandoning this logic would result in a decrease price per megawatt is magical pondering, defying technical plausibility, historic actuality and customary sense.
Even a September report from the federal Department of Energy — which funds SMR growth — modeled a value per megawatt greater than 50% increased than for big reactors. That’s why there are solely three working SMRs: one in China, with a 300% price overrun, and two in Russia, with a 400% overrun. In March, a Financial Times analysis labeled such small reactors “the costliest vitality supply.”
Certainly, the primary SMR the U.S. tried to construct — by NuScale — was canceled in 2023 after its price soared previous $20 million per megawatt, increased than Vogtle. In 2024, Invoice Gates informed CBS the total price of his 375-megawatt Natrium reactor could be “close to $10 billion,” making its price practically $30 million per megawatt — virtually twice Vogtle’s.
All of this has performed out in opposition to a backdrop of historically cheap pure fuel and a rapid expansion of renewable energy sources for electricity generation. All that competitors in opposition to nuclear energy issues: A 2023 Columbia University report concluded that “if the prices of latest nuclear find yourself being a lot increased” than $6.2 million per megawatt, “new nuclear seems unlikely to play a lot of a job, if any, within the U.S. energy sector.” R.I.P.
SMRs are simply one in all a number of wildly overhyped false guarantees on which the world is poised to spend tons of of billions of {dollars} by 2040, together with hydrogen vitality and direct air carbon seize.
However nuclear energy is the unique overhyped vitality know-how. When he was chairman of the Atomic Vitality Fee, Lewis Strauss — the Robert Downey Jr. character in “Oppenheimer” — predicted in 1954 that our youngsters would take pleasure in nuclear energy “too cheap to meter.”
But by the point I joined the Division of Vitality in 1993, nuclear energy prices had grown steadily for many years. Since then, costs for brand spanking new reactors have stored rising, and they’re now the costliest energy supply. However photo voltaic, wind and battery costs have stored dropping, changing into the most cost effective. Certainly, these three applied sciences represent a exceptional 93% of planned U.S. utility-scale electric-generating capability additions in 2025. The remainder is pure fuel.
China is the one nation constructing many new nuclear crops over the following 5 years — about 35 gigawatts. Lower than 1% of this projected capability could be from small reactors — whereas greater than 95% can be from reactors over 1,100 megawatts. Now evaluate all that to the 350 gigawatts of photo voltaic and wind China constructed — simply in 2024.
For the U.S., President Trump’s erratic tariffs make small modular reactors an excellent riskier wager. If the U.S. financial system shrinks, so does demand for brand spanking new electrical energy crops. And the dual threats of inflation and better rates of interest improve the danger of even worse building price overruns.
Additionally, China, Canada and different buying and selling companions present important provide chain components wanted to mass-produce SMRs — and mass manufacturing is vital to the gross sales pitch claiming this know-how may turn out to be inexpensive. That logic would apply provided that just about all the present SMR ventures fail and just one or two find yourself pursuing mass manufacturing.
So, can we please cease speaking about small modular reactors as an answer to our energy wants and get again to constructing the true options — wind, photo voltaic and batteries? They’re cheaper and cleaner — and truly modular.
Joseph Romm is a former performing assistant secretary of Vitality and the creator of “The Hype About Hydrogen: False Guarantees and Actual Options within the Race to Save the Local weather.”
