![]() The ability to scale up generation means that with the right technology, you could achieve relatively fast profitability in manufacturing. Desirée Comstedt mentions Canada specifically as a pioneering country that is hoping to put the first plant into operation by 2028, but she also believes that most of the world’s major nations want to get their SMR technology on the market early. North America is driving development of the SMR for the most part. But the idea of passive safety is that no external input is required for it to work." Part of Estonia project As a last resort, manual measures can be taken. But even today’s large reactors with active systems are very safe and have several different, double safety systems that can switch on automatically in the event of an incident. In practice, no active measures, signalling, external electricity supply or anything else is required for this to happen. "One positive feature of SMR reactors is passive safety, a way of designing a reactor so that the laws of nature mean that it simply switches to a safe mode in the event of a serious breakdown. They can also be used to produce heat or hydrogen gas."Ī third obvious advantage of SMRs is safety, although Desirée Comstedt emphasises that today’s nuclear power plants are already very safe. "You don't waste as much heat with an SMR and you can use them in processing industries. The power of an SMR plant is about a quarter of a full-scale plant (about 300 megawatts versus 1,300), which makes them more useful in the electrification of industry, for example. ![]() In addition to reduced costs, Desirée Comstedt can also see both the flexibility of the SMR and having a lot of usage areas as advantages over large nuclear power plants. If these two are reduced, it will be easier to finance.” More usage areas and better safety What costs money within nuclear power is partly the financing and partly the licensing costs. Reduced project lead times and project risks thanks to adaptable licensing will facilitate financing.” The conditions should be good for an SMR reactor to be co-licensed within the EU, in contrast to the licensing of large-scale nuclear power plants that have been constructed up to now. “Common licensing may reduce project risks so that the same reactor type may be built in several countries. ”A premise to reduce costs is the opportunity for joint licensing among responsible authorities in countries that have nuclear power”, says Desirée Comstedt. This makes SMR reactors easier to build, operate and maintain, which also reduces costs. Desirée Comstedt, Vice President Fleet Development at VattenfallĪccording to Vattenfall’s Desirée Comstedt, there are many advantages to small nuclear power plants: technical innovations, better data modelling, and modern building technology are making reactor construction easier.
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