It would look like 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 vegetation 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 instances previously, this invoice would carve out an exception for small modular reactors, or SMRs, the present pipe dream of nuclear advocates.
SMRs are sometimes 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 huge ones. And Trump’s tariffs solely make the mathematics 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 properly 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 vegetation previously — and doubtless will maintain doing so.” A 2014 journal article concluded a lot of these “constructing help for small modular reactors” are placing ahead “rhetorical visions imbued with components of fantasy.”
However isn’t there a nuclear renaissance happening? 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 value was $35 billion, or about $16 million per megawatt of producing capability — way over methane (pure gasoline) or photo voltaic and wind with battery storage.
As such, Vogtle is “the most costly energy plant ever constructed on Earth,” with an “astoundingly excessive” estimated electrical energy value, famous Power magazine. Georgia ratepayers each paid $1,000 to help this plant earlier than they even obtained any energy, and now their payments are rising more than $200 yearly.
The excessive value of development and the ensuing excessive vitality payments clarify why nuclear’s share of world energy peaked at 17% within the mid-Nineteen Nineties however was all the way down to 9.1% in 2024.
For many years, economies of scale drove reactors to develop past 1,000 megawatts. The concept abandoning this logic would result in a decrease value per megawatt is magical considering, defying technical plausibility, historic actuality and customary sense.
Even a September report from the federal Department of Energy — which funds SMR growth — modeled a price per megawatt greater than 50% greater than for giant reactors. That’s why there are solely three working SMRs: one in China, with a 300% value overrun, and two in Russia, with a 400% overrun. In March, a Financial Times analysis labeled such small reactors “the most costly vitality supply.”
Certainly, the primary SMR the U.S. tried to construct — by NuScale — was canceled in 2023 after its value soared previous $20 million per megawatt, greater than Vogtle. In 2024, Invoice Gates advised CBS the complete value of his 375-megawatt Natrium reactor could be “close to $10 billion,” making its value practically $30 million per megawatt — virtually twice Vogtle’s.
All of this has performed out towards a backdrop of historically cheap pure gasoline and a rapid expansion of renewable energy sources for electricity generation. All that competitors towards nuclear energy issues: A 2023 Columbia University report concluded that “if the prices of latest nuclear find yourself being a lot greater” 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 a whole bunch 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 kids 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 saved rising, and they’re now the most costly energy supply. However photo voltaic, wind and battery costs have saved dropping, turning 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 gasoline.
China is the one nation constructing many new nuclear vegetation over the subsequent 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 vegetation. And the dual threats of inflation and better rates of interest enhance the chance of even worse development value overruns.
Additionally, China, Canada and different buying and selling companions present essential provide chain components wanted to mass-produce SMRs — and mass manufacturing is essential to the gross sales pitch claiming this know-how might grow to be reasonably priced. 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 really modular.
Joseph Romm is a former appearing 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.”
