Koroush Shirvan, an MIT professor and consultant on recent major reports on nuclear economics, sheds light on the hidden costs of small modular reactors. Lower power densities, ballooning containment and reactor vessel sizes, poor economies of scale, and missed opportunities for cost reductions mean that SMRs may not be the panacea for nuclear that many believe them to be.
Listen to Decouple on:
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6PNr3ml8nEQotWWavE9kQz
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decouple/id1516526694?uo=4
• Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1516526694/decouple
• Podcket Casts: https://pca.st/ehbfrn44
• RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/23775178/podcast/rss
Website: https://www.decouple.media
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
04:04 Changes since the last "nuclear renaissance"
10:28 ESBWR versus AP-1000
12:32 Going small
23:09 The impact of natural circulation on reactor design
34:23 Excavation for the BWRX-300 (clip in here)
46:45 Misplaced focus in SMR designs
50:11 Modeling nuclear costs
01:07:00 Adopting best practices
Thumbanil photo: Oregon State University, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Edited to show multiple reactor modules increasing in size.