It may seem that everyone, from venture capitalists to the information media to the American Energy Secretary, has aroused small modular reactors like the key to unlocking a nuclear rebirth and resolving both climate change and the voracious need for modern data centers.
On Monday, the California's natural resource committee will examine a bill to repeal a long -standing moratorium on state nuclear power plants, which was to be in place until there is a lasting plan for what to do with radioactive waste. Defeated several times in the past, this bill would size an exception for small modular reactors, or SMRS, the current dream of the pipe of nuclear defenders.
SMRs are generally less than 300 megawatts, compared to the 2.2 gigawatts combined with the two operational reactors of Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo. These small nuclear weapons have received so much attention in recent years, mainly because modern reactors are so expensive that the United States and Europe have almost stopped building.
The sad truth is that Small reactors have even less sense that the big ones. And Trump's prices are only making mathematics more discouraging.
I have analyzed nuclear energy since 1993, when I started a five -year stay at the Ministry of Energy as a special assistant of the Deputy Secretary. I helped him supervise both the nuclear energy program and the energy efficiency and renewable energy program, which I led in 1997.
So I know too well that the media threshing is built on moving sands – in particular, a failure of failure of seven decades. Inasmuch as 2015 analysis In other words, “the economy has killed small nuclear power plants in the past – and will probably continue to do so”. A 2014 newspaper article In conclusion, many of those who “strengthen support for small modular reactors” offer “rhetorical visions imbued with fantasy elements”.
But isn't there a nuclear rebirth? No. The Georgia Vogtle factory is the only new nuclear power plant that the United States has successfully completed and have started in recent decades. The total cost was 35 billion dollars, or about $ 16 million per megawatt of generation capacity – much more than methane (natural gas) or solar and wind with the storage of the battery.
As such, Vogtle is “the most expensive power plant ever built on earth”, with an estimated “incredibly high” electricity, noted, noted Power Magazine. Georgia taxpayers each paid $ 1,000 To support this factory even before having power, and now their invoices are Increase more than $ 200 annually.
The high cost of construction and the resulting energy bills explain why the nuclear share of global energy culminated at 17% in the mid -1990s, but was down 9.1% in 2024.
For decades, economies of scale have prompted reactors to grow beyond 1,000 megawatts. The idea that the abandonment of this logic would lead to a lower cost by megawatt is magical thought, defying technical plausibility, historical reality and common sense.
Even a September report of the Federal Energy Department – which finances the development of SMR – modeled a cost per megawatt of more than 50% higher than for large reactors. This is why there are only three operational SMRs: one in China, with a cost exceeding of 300% and two in Russia, with an exceeding of 400%. In March, a Financial time analysis Labeled such small reactors “the most expensive energy source”.
Indeed, the first SMR that the United States tried to build – by Nuscale – was canceled in 2023 after its cost climbed by $ 20 million by Megawatt, higher than Vogtle. In 2024, Bill Gates told CBS that the total cost of his Natrium reactor of 375 megawatts would be “Almost $ 10 billion».
All this took place in a context of Historically cheap natural gas and Rapid expansion of renewable energy sources for electricity production. All this competition against nuclear energy is important: a 2023 Report of Columbia University concluded that “if the costs of the new nuclear end up being much higher” than $ 6.2 million per megawatt, “the new nuclear seems to be playing a role, if necessary, in the American energy sector”. RIP
The SMRs are only one of the many promises of madly over-type promises on which the world is ready to spend hundreds of billions of dollars by 2040, in particular the energy of hydrogen and the direct capture of air carbon.
But nuclear energy is original over-type energy technology. When he was president of the Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis Strauss – the character of Robert Downey Jr. in “Oppenheimer” – predicted in 1954 that our children would appreciate nuclear energy “Too cheap for the counter. “”
However, when I joined the Ministry of Energy in 1993, nuclear energy costs had increased regularly for decades. Since then, the prices of new reactors have continued to increase, and they are now the most expensive source of power. But the prices of solar, wind and batteries continued to decrease, becoming the cheapest. Indeed, these three technologies constitute a remarkable 93% of the planned public services scale Additions of electricity generation capacity in 2025. The rest is natural gas.
China is the only country that builds many new nuclear power plants over the next five years – around 35 gigawatts. Less than 1% of this projected capacity would come from small reactors – while more than 95% will come from reactors of more than 1,100 megawatts. Now compare all this to the 350 gigawatts of solar and wind China built – Just in 2024.
For the United States, President Trump's erratic rates make small modular reactors an even more risky bet. If the American economy is shrinking, the demand for new power plants. And twin threats of inflation and higher interest rates increase the risk of even worse construction costs.
In addition, China, Canada and other business partners provide critical elements of the supply chain necessary to mass produce SMRs – and mass production is the key to the sales argument saying that this technology could become affordable. This logic would only apply if practically all current SMR companies fail and that only one or two end up continuing mass production.
So, can we please stop talking about small modular reactors as a solution to our power needs and starting to build real solutions – wind, solar and batteries? They are cheaper and cleaner – and in fact modular.
Joseph Romm is a former interim energy secretary and the author of “Media on hydrogen: False promises and real solutions in the race to save the climate. »»
