Cancellation of NuScale Power’s SMR Project Is Bad News For US Nuclear Sector 

The inflation that it created.

You mean IRA Inflation Reproducing Act, reproducing inflation like breeding bunnies usa is F___ed

@@chapter4travels Another U.S. nuclear project scrapped after spending millions. That leave Terrapower as the only possible project that could realistically have an operating reactor in the next decade. I think by 2034, we will have moved on from the nuclear nightmare. Now this is where you tell me about all the SMRs sailing around the world but none can transition to commercial operation....wonder why?

@@clarkkent9080 I 100% guarantee that nuclear power will be around in 2034. 57 plants are under construction right now.

See what you did there.

Agreed, there is not and never has been economies of SMALL scale

The NuScale SMR project (the ONLY SMR project in the U.S.) was to come online starting in 2029 and was supposed to replace electricity from coal plants that are closing. They were give n $2 billion in taxpayer money, free government land on which to build, and NRC fully approved their project. Instead, NuScale and the Utah utilities announced Wednesday (11/ 8/23) they're terminating the project after a decade of working on it. The cancellation comes amid supply chain problems, high interest rates and a failure to obtain the desired tax credits. “The termination of NuScale's contract signals the broader challenges of developing nuclear energy in the United States. Placing excessive reliance on untested technologies without adequate consideration of economic viability, practicality, and safety concerns is irresponsible and clearly won’t work. The failure of this project underscores the need for decision makers to work diligently to ensure that the pursuit of nuclear energy aligns with the imperatives of public safety and financial feasibility. “For all its problems, NuScale is one of the designs with the best prospects for commercialization because of its similarity to conventional light-water reactors, which allowed the company to learn from extensive operating experience and to leverage much of the existing nuclear power supply chain. Thus, the failure of the NuScale project with UAMPS does not bode well for the dozens of other, more exotic reactor types in various stages of development that are being touted as the next best thing in nuclear power, such as sodium-cooled fast reactors, gas-cooled reactors and molten-salt reactors. These reactors, which are based on much less mature designs and generally require fuels and materials that are not readily available, will be even riskier bets than NuScale for the foreseeable future. There are currently no other new nuclear power reactor designs under NRC licensing review. “As private interests continue to turn their attention to emerging nuclear energy technology, lessons from this project should be held top of mind.”

Keep smoking that hopium, Robert.

So much for "clean, green, too cheap to meter"

@@obsoleteoptics The statement electrically energy "too cheap to meter" was claimed by the builders of the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in 1955. I started working there in 1974. No method of power generation is cheap, let alone too cheap to meter. Every method has its pros and cons and for nuclear, the cost is a massive con

The bottom line in the U.S. is cost and there is not and never has been economies of SMALL scale. SMR will always cost more per Mw output to operate than Gw units

Do you have an opinion of the 20MW PWR micro reactor by Last Energy?

@@mhirasuna Is that 20 Mw thermal or electrical? If it is 20 Mw electrical, that would be 1/50 the output of the "standard" PWR. Here are some reasons why smaller is never better. SMRs are less competitive. Building and operating SMRs will cost more than large reactors for each unit (megawatt) of generation capacity. A reactor that generates five times as much power will not require five times as much concrete or five times as many workers. This makes electricity from small reactors more expensive; many of the original small reactors built in the United States were financially uncompetitive and shut down early. Simply put if they can build a 20 Mw electrical output reactor plant for $ 300 million or less, it will be cost effective. However, the cost to design and get regulatory approval for any reactor plant will cost ~ $ 500 million

@@clarkkent9080 The output is 20 MW electrical. It is being sold in Europe where the cost of reliable energy is high. There is no attempt to sell it in the USA because of the NRC. The initial cost per plant is $800M, but it is definitely being built is a factory. They plan to be able to produce 10,000 units, so the cost should come down. They already have orders in the UK, Poland and Romania. Here is a link if you are interested: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-MFN66S-UJBw.html

@@mhirasuna I did a little research. Last Energy is an American company that was founded just 3 years ago and has never built anything be it a full size plant or even a demo test reactor. They originally stated the cost to be $100 million per plant which by itself is an impossibility. If they are now stating $800 million per plant (I did not find that figure) , that is the typical process where estimated costs skyrocket when these startups actually start submitting bid requests. BTW, if their plant can actually be built for $800 million, that is 2 1/2 times more expensive per Mw generated than the U.S. Vogtle nuclear power plant that just started up and is the world's most expensive power plant (per Mw capacity). $800 million for 20 Mw capacity is grossly expensive for a power plant. Do you realize how many startups are promising the latest unicorn reactor ? Lets talk when they actually build something.

@@clarkkent9080 I may have erred on the $800M figure. That was a number I remembered from a video I saw several years ago. I could not find that video, but I did find the $100M figure in other videos. Last Energy is saying that they could have their reactor running by mid 2025, which is sooner than any other small reactor.

@charlesmartell4484 There are places where wind blows 24/7 and since electricity can travel at the speed of light, east coast solar can power western areas still in the dark and vice versa. But yes, renewables require more spinning reserve than conventual power plants. If you think Thorium is a good idea, then you must get all your information from YT videos,

@charlesmartell4484 Wow, a typical response from a toddler. You can't even comprehend my comment enough to make a logical response.

@charlesmartell4484 another immature comment from a moron who cannot back up their lies

@@clarkkent9080 You don' t understand how an electricity grid, or even electricity in general works, do you? You also clearly dont know that installed capacity for Wind/Solar is a pointless number to look at because no wind or solar farm operates for more than about 30%-40% of the time at best. Look up the term "Capacity Factor" and see how woeful it is for "renewables" anywhere in the world... this means you absolutely need to build backup power generation facilities, mostly the cheapest and least efficient too - open cycle gas turbines.

There is no such thing as economies of SMALL scale. This is from the Des Moines Register (1/2023) an concerning the only Small Modular Reactor (SMR) project in the U.S. today. It should be noted that NuScale said (Jan/2023) the target price for power from the plant is $89 per megawatt hour, up 53% from the previous estimate of $58 per MW hour In 2013, the Wall Street firm Lazard estimated that the cost of generating electricity at a new nuclear plant in the United States will be between $86 and $122 per megawatt-hour. Last November, Lazard estimated that the corresponding cost will be between $131 and $204 per megawatt-hour based upon the 4 recent new nuclear projects in the U.S. . During the same eight years, renewables have plummeted in cost, and the 2021 estimates of electricity from newly constructed utility-scale solar and wind plants range between $26 and $50 per megawatt-hour. Nuclear power is simply not economically competitive. SMRs will be even less competitive. Building and operating SMRs will cost more than large reactors for each unit (megawatt) of generation capacity. A reactor that generates five times as much power will not require five times as much concrete or five times as many workers. This makes electricity from small reactors more expensive; many of the original small reactors built in the United States were financially uncompetitive and shut down early. The estimated cost of constructing a plant with 600 megawatts of electricity from NuScale SMRs, arguably the design closest to deployment in the United States, was originally advertised as costing $1 billion but upon requesting actual bids from engineering firms, increased to $6.1 billion in 2020. Given inflation and other cost constraints that cost today can only be expected to be significantly higher. The cost was so high that ten members of Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems canceled their contracts. NuScale then changed its proposed plant configuration to 6 fewer reactors but increased each reactor output from 50 Mw to 77 Mw costing at total of $5.3 billion. The NRC just last week approved the construction of the 50 Mw design but now will have to start the review process all over given the switch to a 77 Mw design. For each kilowatt of electrical generation capacity, that estimate is around 80% more than the per-kilowatt cost of the Vogtle project in Georgia - before its cost exploded from $14 billion to over $30 billion. Based on the historical experience with nuclear reactor construction, SMRs are very likely to cost much more than initially expected. And they now have delayed the project start until 2025 in an attempt to find more backers. All this before the inevitable setbacks that will occur once construction starts.

@@clarkkent9080 Wind and solar have always been infinitely-expensive, on a sustained basis.

@@aliendroneservices6621 Today, there is more wing and solar capacity awaiting approval to connect to the grid than all the capacity we now use. WE need grid capacity not new nuclear. Nuclear is the most expensive way to generate electricity than any other bar none. Why do you see wind and solar farms being built all over the country and after VC Summer and Vogtle no utility is even considering new nuclear. I am pro nuclear but the facts are the facts.

It is a Ponzi scheme. The directors sold out at around 14.

​@clarkkent9080 you live in the US where every decision is based on profit. We live in Romania where things such as energy independence make the difference between life and death. Which is why we have a complete nuclear cycle from mining uranium to fuel pellets production to energy production even though it's not financially ideal. We even produce our own heavy water. Which is why we're still on board with the project and we'll secure funding and be especially glad if we can manufacture them here.

*372 😉 Funny how the AI trade > short seller fundamental trade

The U.S. has designed, built and tested every reactors design known. Do you think a design different from the common PWR or BWR will be less costly???/

@charlesmartell4484 I have to assume that you don't know that there is no such thing as a Thorium reactor. Thorium does not fission or produce power. There is a URANIUM breeder reactor that fissions URANIUM and some of the fission neutrons are absorbed by Thorium which then transmutes into URANIUM. The spent fuel is then processed to extract the URANIUM and mixed with Thorium to be placed back into the breeder reactor. The spent fuel processing is very expensive and that is what makes these reactors too costly. They have been tested many times in the past and all have been abandoned. BTW plese don't consider YT videos as education.

@@clarkkent9080 unlikely because you would need a completely new design and produce it at scale. That’s unlikely. But it’s much more likely than just building small PWRs. Nuclear power is just too expensive. All current modern designs that were focussed even more on safety - like the EPR - were even more costly.

@@tobiwan001 SMRs will always be more costly per Mw capacity than larger plants. In the U.S. the excessive costs have little to do with the designs and more to do with the inability of construction, project management, and suppliers to build anything nuclear. If you look at every cost and schedule over run at the VC Summer and Vogtle projects you will find it is related to one or more of those three areas. They can build great WalMarts and Amazon warehouse where close, good nuff, and sorta is acceptable but they cannot build to exact specifications. ou would think that very specific and detailed build instructions would be easy to follow but if you have any experience with the U.S. work force today, you will understand that they are the problem

@charlesmartell4484 Did you read the article? Do you understand what " nuclear fission of the isotope uranium-233 produced from the fertile element thorium" means? Uranium 233 fissions NOT Thorium!!!! Thorium is NOT fissile, does not fission or produce any power. Thorium will absorb neutrons from fission and transmute into URANIUM 233 which does fission. You need URANIUM to fission and produce neutrons that can then be absorbed by Thorium to create more URANIUM. Did you understand the very significant disadvantage listed (spoiler alert TOO COSTLY). "Significant and expensive testing, analysis and licensing work would be required, requiring business and government support.[23] In a 2012 report on the use of thorium fuel with existing water-cooled reactors, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists suggested that it would "require too great an investment and provide no clear payoff", and that "from the utilities' point of view, the only legitimate driver capable of motivating pursuit of thorium is economics"" You apparently don't understand what you are reading. The U.S. tested Thorium in a 1960s demo reactor and 3 commercial reactors in the 1970s and abandoned all attempts. It does work but it requires reprocessing the spent fuel to extract the URANIUM 233 to continue the process and reprocessing is very expensive. Very simple: why add expensive reprocessing to a reactor project when you can use URANIUM 235 and fission right away? It has been tried and abandoned by many countries over the last 60 years and TODAY there are NO commercial reactors using Thorium. What does that tell you Pal?

NuScale received $2 billion in taxpayer welfare for a project that they said would only cost $1 billion. How much welfare should the 70 year old nuclear industry get???/

Yes nuclear utilities have always been honest.

NuScale's original cost "estimates" were never realistic and nothing more than wild guesses. It was only when they began asking for actual cost estimates from the various suppliers and engineering firms that they realized that the project was not cost effective. Then you look for excuses and inflation is today's buzz word.

NuScale received NRC approval a year ago and was given $2 billion in taxpayer welfare for their Idaho project and free government land on which to build it and it was still too expensive. The build it in a factory, economies of small scale for SMRs has been disproven.

@@clarkkent9080 One failed company does not disprove a business model. Obviously, that doesn’t guarantee success, but it does not guarantee failure either.

@@clarkkent9080 - Mush of the subsidy went toward paying the cost of licensing.

@@KevinBalch-dt8ot According to a news article, $400 million of the $500 million for the NRC review and licensing was paid for by the U.S. taxpayer. They also could receive up to $2 billion in matching funds from the U.S. taxpayer and the government gave them free land at the DOE site on which to build their project. If you cannot even start a project with all that taxpayer welfare how can new nuclear survive on its own? No need to answer, because every new nuclear project in the U.S. has been a financial failure. Now they are being sued for fraud by the investors

There is no such thing as economies of small scale. It makes no sense and never has and the build it a factory was tried at VC Summer and Vogtle and that concept was proven to be more costly than on site construction

@@clarkkent9080 You misunderstand what production at scale is. It is not the size of the unit, but the number of units that create the economies of scale. The principle works for any product.

@@FromPovertyToProgress If each SMR cost more per Mw generated than one larger unit, how does making more of them cost effective? Explain that logic? NuScale was doing EXACTLY what you say and they failed because their costs could not even compete with the massively expensive large nuclear plants like Vogtle. Apparently you don't consider REALITY as PROOF. Even a Idaho local newspaper had enough common sense to predict the demise of the NuScale project 10 months ago. This is from the Des Moines Register an concerning the only Small Modular Reactor (SMR) project in the U.S. today. It should be noted that NuScale said (Jan/2023) the target price for power from the plant is $89 per megawatt hour, up 53% from the previous estimate of $58 per MW hour In 2013, the Wall Street firm Lazard estimated that the cost of generating electricity at a new nuclear plant in the United States will be between $86 and $122 per megawatt-hour. Last November, Lazard estimated that the corresponding cost will be between $131 and $204 per megawatt-hour based upon the 4 recent new nuclear projects in the U.S. . During the same eight years, renewables have plummeted in cost, and the 2021 estimates of electricity from newly constructed utility-scale solar and wind plants range between $26 and $50 per megawatt-hour. Nuclear power is simply not economically competitive. SMRs will be even less competitive. Building and operating SMRs will cost more than large reactors for each unit (megawatt) of generation capacity. A reactor that generates five times as much power will not require five times as much concrete or five times as many workers. This makes electricity from small reactors more expensive; many of the original small reactors built in the United States were financially uncompetitive and shut down early. The estimated cost of constructing a plant with 600 megawatts of electricity from NuScale SMRs, arguably the design closest to deployment in the United States, was originally advertised as costing $1 billion but upon requesting actual bids from engineering firms, increased to $6.1 billion in 2020. Given inflation and other cost constraints that cost today can only be expected to be significantly higher. The cost was so high that ten members of Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems canceled their contracts. NuScale then changed its proposed plant configuration to 6 fewer reactors but increased each reactor output from 50 Mw to 77 Mw costing at total of $5.3 billion. The NRC just last week approved the construction of the 50 Mw design but now will have to start the review process all over given the switch to a 77 Mw design. For each kilowatt of electrical generation capacity, that estimate is around 80% more than the per-kilowatt cost of the Vogtle project in Georgia - before its cost exploded from $14 billion to over $30 billion. Based on the historical experience with nuclear reactor construction, SMRs are very likely to cost much more than initially expected. And they now have delayed the project start until 2025 in an attempt to find more backers. All this before the inevitable setbacks that will occur once construction starts.

The NuScale SMR project (the ONLY SMR project in the U.S.) was to come online starting in 2029 and was supposed to replace electricity from coal plants that are closing. They were give n $2 billion in taxpayer money, free government land on which to build, and NRC fully approved their project. Instead, NuScale and the Utah utilities announced Wednesday (11/ 8/23) they're terminating the project after a decade of working on it. The cancellation comes amid supply chain problems, high interest rates and a failure to obtain the desired tax credits. “The termination of NuScale's contract signals the broader challenges of developing nuclear energy in the United States. Placing excessive reliance on untested technologies without adequate consideration of economic viability, practicality, and safety concerns is irresponsible and clearly won’t work. The failure of this project underscores the need for decision makers to work diligently to ensure that the pursuit of nuclear energy aligns with the imperatives of public safety and financial feasibility. “For all its problems, NuScale is one of the designs with the best prospects for commercialization because of its similarity to conventional light-water reactors, which allowed the company to learn from extensive operating experience and to leverage much of the existing nuclear power supply chain. Thus, the failure of the NuScale project with UAMPS does not bode well for the dozens of other, more exotic reactor types in various stages of development that are being touted as the next best thing in nuclear power, such as sodium-cooled fast reactors, gas-cooled reactors and molten-salt reactors. These reactors, which are based on much less mature designs and generally require fuels and materials that are not readily available, will be even riskier bets than NuScale for the foreseeable future. There are currently no other new nuclear power reactor designs under NRC licensing review. “As private interests continue to turn their attention to emerging nuclear energy technology, lessons from this project should be held top of mind.”

There is and has never been economies of SMALL scale nuclear. It was a scam from the beginning and they are being sued for fraud

I saw a turd stock for $2 a share....are you in?

The Chinese stole the design of the Westinghouse AP1000 and now call it CAP1000. And NO there are no U.S. utilities interested in the AP1000 after the VC Summer and Vogtle financial failures.

NuScale canceled their project after receiving billions in taxpayer welfare.

Do you believe it could possibility cost less in the future?

What future?

dude NuScale was given $2 billion in taxpayer money, free government land on which to build, and their reactor was NRC approved and their estimated cost was almost the same as the 1 Gw AP1000 reactor. What more did they want? Today, there is more wind and solar capacity awaiting approval to connect to the grid than all the capacity that we currently use. We need more grid capacity not generating capacity

Wow, you used to be a NuScale fan boy but now that it failed you are denying that you ever liked it and are now a Terrestrial Energy IMSR fan boy. Too bad it is all just a concept with nothing built or even lab tested and that concept is at least 5 -7 years behind where NuScale was. NuScale had a NRC construction and operation approved design, free government land on which to build, and $2 billion in taxpayer welfare to spend and still could not ESTIMATE a cost that utilities could afford.

@@clarkkent9080 I never thought new scale had a chance at anything.

@@chapter4travels Revisionist BS., They were your "build it in a factory" hero's and their high pressure reactor was exactly like the many sailing around the world that you continue to point to as proof of the success of that concept. The only question now is when will Terrapower cancel their project? All you have left is unicorn startups that have great power point presentations, no actual operating plants or even lab mockups, and are trying to build in countries with lax safety requirements. Terrapower is at least 10 years away from haveing an actual power producing plant if and only if they can begin construction. There are NO other nuclear projects even close to Terrapower so if they fail in the U.S. that is the nail in the nuclear coffin.

@@clarkkent9080 You seem pretty pleased with yourself but you are thinking of someone else. I have only been a fanboy of low-pressure/high-temperature reactors. Old-school water reactors are obsolete. Terrapower has a chance but not in the US, the NRC will make sure of that.

@@chapter4travels The old NRC conspiracy even though the NRC fully approved VC Summer (canceled) , Vogtle (unit 3 running and unit 4 shutdown for a reactor coolant replacement even though it never ran) and NuScale (canceled even with $2 billion in taxpayer welfare and free government land on which to build). NO VC Summer or Vogtle bi annual PUC reports EVER stated NRC regulations or requirements as a reason for ANY delays or cost over runs As you know, I worked my entire life in the industry and I am not pleased with the situation. I know the issue is NOT the NRC and it is not even the AP1000 design. I have been proven correct in everything I have been saying.