with the initial operational date of 2024 . Meanwhile , mPower ( another previous beneficiary of Department of Energy funding to the tune of $ 80m per year ) has been struggling to advance a similar project mooted in Tennessee which was terminated in March last year . Elsewhere , South Korea ’ s System-Integrated Modular Advanced Reactor ( SMART ) is the first land based SMR to receive regulatory approval anywhere in the world . However , SMR ’ s are often found to be too expensive on a perunit generating-capacity basis which has led to this project being shelved . The words of incoming South Korean premier President Moon echo the sentiments of many world leaders now exploring other forms of energy creation : “ We will scrap the nuclearcentred policies and move toward a nuclear-free era . We will eliminate all plans to build new nuclear plants .”
Sam Friggens is an energy economist with engineering and development consultancy Mott MacDonald , experts in the nuclear sector . He suggests that emerging innovations in renewables , power storage , efficiency and smart technologies , driven by fast manufacturing cycles , are yielding rapid cost reductions and improving performance , which means that by the time SMRs are ready for mass deployment in the 2030s the market may have disappeared .
He adds : “ Will SMRs be acceptable to the public ? The closest-to-market SMR technologies produce the same waste as current large reactors and will need refuelling every few years . New sites closer to demand may be attractive from an energy system perspective , but perhaps not to residents of the cities in question . Overall the challenges associated with SMR deployment are likely to be of similar magnitude to those faced by carbon capture and storage . At the same time , recent work suggests that if these challenges can be overcome then smaller , flexible nuclear technologies could still play an important role in future energy systems in countries like the UK .” In any case , it appears SMR construction projects would need the support of major government
35