Downsizing Nuclear Power Plants

A standard nuclear power plant generates a gigawatt or more of low-carbon power, a boon in this age of anxiety over climate change. The problem is getting the thing built in the first place: At US $7 billion to $10 billion apiece, nuclear plants are tough for even the largest utilities to finance.
President Obama proposes to handle the problem by tripling federal loan guarantees to such plants, to $54 billion. But now a more economical solution is coming under scrutiny: downsizing nuclear plants from gigawatt scale to more affordable units that can be built by the dozen. ”Size matters. In this case, small size,” says Andrew Kadak, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT.
Small modular reactors, or SMRs, of 70 to 210 megawatts are under construction in China and Russia, and a mix of start-ups and established nuclear technology firms, such as Westinghouse Electric Co., General Atomics, and the Babcock & Wilcox Co., are shopping similarly modest designs in the United States.
This strategy overturns the drive toward economies of scale that has pushed nuclear designers toward ever-larger reactors since the industry’s inception. Now the designers may instead rely on the ”economies of multiples” that accrue to the mass production of everything from cars to iPhones.