6 Dec (NucNet): The total installed capacity of small modular reactors (SMRs) could reach 40 gigawatts by 2030, driven by the need for basic electricity generation and the supply of reliable energy to remote areas, a conference heard.
Dzhomart Aliev, chief executive officer of Rusatom Overseas, a subsidiary of Russia’s state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom, told a conference on small-sized nuclear power plants in Moscow this week that SMR development and deployment will be the result of “a need for basic generation in countries where solutions for large and medium power reactors are not applicable”.
Mr Aliev said growing environmental requirements will also be a factor in SMR deployment.
There are no SMRs in commercial operation, but they are under development in a number of countries including the US, Russia, Argentina, China, Japan and India. The Russian 35-megawatt KLT-40S will operate on the Akademik Lomonosov floating nuclear power plant, which is scheduled to be completed in September 2016.
Developers of SMRs are forming a new business model in which the customer is not responsible for any operational or management issues of the facility, but simply pays for energy and heat according to agreed rates, Mr Aliev said. He said this “energy outsourcing” is a new model of cooperation.
Ferhat Aziz, of the National Atomic Energy Agency of Indonesia, said SMRs could solve the problem of supplying affordable and clean energy to remote areas of Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands.
