Last month, the Trump administration inked a multi-billion-dollar investment framework deal with Japan to finance the construction of several new large nuclear reactors in the United States, generating a wave of headlines across the globe. What has received somewhat less attention is the administration’s small reactor policy.
Earlier this year, under the authority of a White House executive order, the Department of Energy announced the creation of the Reactor Pilot Program, an initiative tasked with establishing a novel pathway for the testing of advanced reactor designs being pursued by energy startups like Terrestrial Energy and Valar Atomics.
The Reactor Pilot Program is the latest development in a technological, regulatory, and commercial transformation of the American nuclear industry.
Nuclear power generation has long been dominated by large light-water reactors, which typically produce more than 600 megawatts of power. All the operating commercial reactors in the U.S.—94 reactors at 54 plants around the country—fit this description. Today, though, dozens of companies are exploring smaller designs, reactors that typically produce less than 300 megawatts of power, including some so-called “microreactors,” which are under 50 megawatts and can be as small as one megawatt or less. (A rule of thumb is that one megawatt is approximately enough to power about 1,000 American households.)
The challenge with conventional nuclear power generation has been that each new nuclear plant was typically constructed as its own megaproject. While other electric power industries like natural gas turbines and solar panels benefit from modular technologies and economies of scale, one-off megaprojects rarely enjoy the learning curves and supply chain efficiencies that lead to lower costs over time. That’s why even in countries like France, which has generated most of its electricity from nuclear power for decades, plant construction costs rose over time. Once they’re up and running, nuclear plants generate low-cost, reliable electricity. But when the distance between a proposed project and an operating plant is more than a decade and tens of billions of dollars, the hurdles to nuclear power commercialization become daunting.
