Problem Power: On Small Modular Reactor Plan

The Indian government is planning to team up with the private sector to study and test small modular reactors (SMRs). 

Small Modular Reactor Plan

• Nuclear energy is an important power source in the world’s energy mix as it waits for the development and maturation of (other) renewable energy technologies while fossil-fuel based sources, especially coal, continue to remain relevant and more affordable. 
• Nuclear power offers a sufficiently high and sustainable power output, even if externalised costs like those of building safe and reliable reactors and handling spent nuclear fuel complicate this calculus.
• Indeed, cost and time estimates that expand to nearly twice as much as at the point of a project’s commissioning are not unheard of. 

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• The nuclear power tariff is thus higher from ‘younger’ facilities, even if they also fill gaps that haunt power from renewable sources. 
• SMRs, of 10 MWe-300 MWe each, are smaller versions of their conventional counterparts. 
• They aspire to be safer without compromising commercial feasibility by leveraging the higher energy content of nuclear fuel, a modular design, a smaller operational surface area, and lower capital costs. 
• But the challenge is to have this aspiration survive SMRs’ external costs.
• The government’s privatisation of nuclear power generation will also increase the demand for regulatory safeguards against radioactive material being diverted for military use. 
• The first-generation SMRs are expected to use low-enriched uranium in facilities assembled on-site with factory-made parts, to produce waste that can be handled using existing technologies and power that can be sold at economical rates. 
• But the reactor will need frequent refuelling and will yield a consequential amount of plutonium; both outcomes will stress proliferation resistance.
• The IAEA has touted the use of ‘safeguardable’ reactor designs but such solutions will increase capital costs. 
• Subsequent SMR generations may also require more enriched uranium, especially if their feasibility is pegged on longer periods of continuous generation, or more sophisticated systems to increase fuel-use efficiency, which would increase the operational surface area and the generation cost. 
• In fact, nuclear reactors have a fixed baseline cost and safety expectations that do not change with energy output, which means SMR-based tariffs need not automatically be lower.
• This is why the Department of Atomic Energy increased its reactors’ capacity from 220 MW to 700 MW. 
• SMRs’ ability to bolster the prospects of nuclear power in India will thus depend on their commercial viability — and in turn on the availability of less uncertain market conditions, stable grids, and opportunities to mass-produce parts — and the price of proliferation resistance.

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Conclusion

Small Modular Reactors offer potential advantages in safety and cost, but their commercial viability and proliferation resistance will determine their success and integration into India’s energy mix.