The designer of what is likely to be the first small modular reactor (SMR) complex in the United States believes the reactor will ultimately prove easier to decommission than a conventional nuclear power facility.
NuScale Power, of Portland, Ore., is seeking approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to build its first SMR plant at the Idaho National Laboratory.
“In comparison to a current full-sized reactor, in many areas, the decommissioning of a NuScale plant would be relatively easier and less expensive such as removal of primary system equipment given the modular nature of NuScale’s technology,” company spokeswoman Mariam Nabizad said by email. “Overall, we expect decommissioning of a NuScale power plant to be easier than decommissioning a current full-sized nuclear reactor facility.”
That is essentially because a NuScale reactor will consist of prefabricated parts that can be disassembled into those same components once operations end, Nabizad wrote.
A small modular reactor is a prefabricated facility of 300 megawatts or less. The concept is that all the major components would be built at the manufacturing site and then shipped to the reactor location for assembly.
NuScale has not yet selected its manufacturing partner or its central manufacturing site, Nabizad said.
A small modular reactor would create as much used fuel as a more conventional pressurized water reactor of the same size, Nabizad said. For example, a 600-megawatt small modular reactor complex will use the same amount of fuel and produce an equal amount of spent fuel as a 600-megawatt pressured water reactor.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying arm for the nuclear industry, has advocated strongly for domestic development and regulatory approval of small modular reactor technologies. Perceived benefits of using SMRs are lower initial capital costs, flexibility in ramping up, and flexibility in siting the smaller reactor complexes.
However, NEI has not yet studied the decommissioning aspect in-depth, said spokesman Matthew Wald.
NEI noted in a 2010 position paper that small reactors being designed at the time were intended to limit both production of radioactive waste and contamination of the property itself. It made the case for fitting decommissioning funding levels to the design and “site-specific estimates” of the SMR, instead of funding formulas in place for today’s light-water reactors.
Some research suggests decommissioning small modular reactors could be more expensive in comparison to today’s reactor plants.
“While there is a debate about how much higher the construction costs of [small-medium reactors] will be, there appears to be no debate that other costs associated with SMRs will be higher because the lost economies of scale cannot be made up with economies of mass production,” Mark Cooper, a senior fellow at the Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and the Environment, said in a 2014 presentation critical of SMR technology. “Operating costs are projected to be between one-fifth and one-quarter higher than for large reactors. Decommissioning costs are projected to be three times as high.”
In a statement to RadWaste Monitor, NuScale Chief Operating Officer Dale Atkinson said the 2014 presentation’s conclusions are dated and do not reflect on how NuScale’s reactor is designed.
For example, the NuScale reactor would not simply be a smaller version of today’s standard-sized light-water reactors, Atkinson said. Key differences include the use of natural circulation and a near-vacuum containment space that pares back the parts found in large reactors.
Congress and the federal government have gotten behind the NuScale project, with the Department of Energy in recent months directing about $50 million, matched by an equivalent amount of non-DOE funds, to help NuScale complete its work.
The NRC expects to tackle three more phases in 2019 and to wrap up its review by September 2020. At least one partner company should submit a construction and operations license application for the technology next year, NuScale has said.
While a number of U.S. companies have looked at the technology, only NuScale to date has submitted a license application for a small modular reactor to the NRC.
With financial backing from Fluor Corp., NuScale hopes to build the first actual SMR complex at the Idaho National Laboratory by the middle of the next decade. The INL complex is forecast to cost $2.9 billion to build over three years. Energy Northwest, which already runs the Columbia Generating Station north of Richland, has first dibs to operate the plant.
NuScale intends to provide its first small modular reactors to the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, a consortium of utilities in Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho.
NuScale’s design would allow up to 12 50-megawatt modular reactors to be hooked together into one main unit capable of producing 600 megawatts of power.
