Small Modular Reactors Nuclear Energy Market Potential for Near-term Deployment

The recent interest in small modular reactors (SMRs) is driven by a desire to reduce the total capital costs of nuclear power plants and to provide power to small grid systems. Over the past few years, many SMR projects have been making substantial progress. Two reactors currently under construction are CAREM-25 (a prototype) in Argentina and KLT- 40S in the Russian Federation. More designs have reached advanced stages of development. To attempt to quantify the size of the market that SMRs could capture in the short- to medium-term, a project was launched at the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) to collect and analyse economic and market data on SMRs, including factory production cost estimates. These data - gathered through questionnaires and interviews with SMR vendors and potential customers - have been used to assess the potential for SMR commercial deployment in the world. Only short- to medium-term projections (2020-2035) and mature technologies (i.e. SMRs based on light water reactor technologies) were considered. Different factors influencing the SMR market around the world are also discussed.