Dr. Conca reports that the U.S. will soon have five new reactors online in the United States and the industry is abuzz with the potential of small modular nuclear reactors, called SMRs.
Because of their small size - 300 MW or less - SMRs have many unique applications, including generating emission-free electricity in remote areas with little or no access to the main power grid, or providing process heat to industrial applications, and for providing power after an urban disaster, such as the weather attack on New Orleans by Hurricane Rita. Some SMRs will have long operating cycles between refueling and do not use water as a coolant or a moderator, making them better adapted to desert regions or where water is in short supply.
Whether they are molten-salt designs -IMSR, air-cooled, liquid-metal, advanced fast-reactors - e.g. TerraPower; General Atomics, or variations on the traditional light-water reactor by NuScale, these new, small reactors build on the successful experience of previous designs and the redundant safety systems developed over the last 60 years.
SMRs are modular in design, which means they can be manufactured completely in a factory and delivered by truck or rail-road car, and installed at the site in modules, allowing incremental increases in power as demand grows or as fossil fuel plants like coal and oil are phased out.
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