Matthew Bandyk reports that about two years ago, the small modular nuclear reactor was looking to be on track to be the next generation of nuclear technology, as suggested by U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz.
In 2013, Generation mPower, a venture between Babcock and Wilcox Co. and Bechtel Corp., had recently been awarded a quarter of a billion dollars in U.S. Department of Energy funding to help get its small modular reactor built by the early 2020s. Politicians were exploring what the fuss was about - the Legislature in Indiana, for example, passed a resolution citing renewed interest in small and simpler units for generating electricity from nuclear power.
Also that year, Christofer Mowry, the head of mPower, said in a presentation to the National Conference of State Legislatures that state policymakers could do more to provide incentives to small modular reactors, or SMRs. Under legislative and policy enablers for the technology, he listed that SMRs could be included in state clean energy standards. But in the months following these developments, the interest in the mPower SMR supposedly failed to materialize. After a search for investors came up empty, Babcock and Wilcox slashed much of its funding for mPower and terminated Mowry in the spring of 2014. A year later, however, at least two states are looking at enacting SMR-friendly policies, including those SMR enablers hoped for by mPower that could make the technology more valuable for electric utilities.
SMR technology could be an alternative to traditional, large-scale nuclear plants by providing a more compact, portable nuclear reactor that could be easily installed at former coal plant sites. But there are still questions around whether policies like these are a big enough enabler to get over the hurdles facing SMRs. A commercial SMR is at least about eight years away based on estimates from NuScale Power LLC, now seen as the front runner SMR developer...but others say sooner than later.
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