If a country wants to build a lot of nuclear power fast, should the industry follow the mantra of bigger is better, or shift to focus on small modular reactors, or even microreactors, to follow the promise of factory fabrication? The new NIA report, “Right-Sizing Reactors: Balancing trade-offs between economies of scale and volume,” by Dr. Jessica Lovering explores this question through economics literature and original analysis.
As Dr. Lovering concludes in the report, there absolutely is evidence for economies of scale with nuclear reactors, but there is also a history of significant cost overruns due to the challenges of megaproject management. When other energy technologies are small and modular, we see numerous benefits including steeper cost reduction curves, faster deployment, and lower financial risk. But there are some potential obstacles to nuclear energy benefiting from the same attributes as these other so-called “granular” technologies (small and modular), particularly uncertainty around scaling regulations.
The challenge now is to create the enabling conditions that let customers choose the right reactor for their specific needs and market. Success requires coordinated public and private actions that support a diverse portfolio of reactor designs and sizes—backed by efficient demonstration programs, accessible financing, strong project development, committed customers, risk-sharing tools, and real order books. Crucially, these actions must empower vendors to rapidly apply lessons learned, improve designs and processes, and compete on cost and performance, regardless of reactor size. If industry, government, investors, and civil society build this enabling environment, we can unlock cost declines on the scale of what solar and wind achieved over the past few decades.