Small Reactors May Be Nuclear Power’s Future
Advocates of small modular reactors, pictured in this illustration, say they can bring costs down.(Babcock & Wilcox)
While countries such as Japan and Germany are moving away from nuclear energy in the wake of the Fukushima reactor meltdown in 2011, the United States is taking a different tack.
"The promise of nuclear power is clear," Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said in July at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, adding, "Nuclear power has an important role in President Obama's all-of-the-above approach to energy."
For the White House, part of nuclear energy's promise comes in the form of scaled-down facilities called small modular reactors, or SMRs. The average U.S. nuclear reactor has an operating capacity of 1,000 megawatts or more; SMRs, by contrast, have a generating capacity of less than 300 megawatts. They have yet to be deployed on a commercial scale, but the administration is betting on this option as a way to diversify the nation's energy portfolio and rein in carbon emissions.
Obama has put the Energy Department at the helm of a $452 million public-private partnership to finance SMR construction. In November, DOE awarded a grant to U.S-based Babcock & Wilcox to create a 180-megawatt SMR in cooperation with the Tennessee Valley Authority and Bechtel. The reactor is slated to be up and running by 2022.
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