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See, sometimes people don’t think bigger is better.
Neither does the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). TVA has agreed to assist Babcock & Wilcox of Lynchburg, Va. in gaining certification of a “mini” nuclear power plant. TVA has signed a non-binding agreement to evaluate a possible site for building a small modular reactor near Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
The nuclear reactors would be approximately one tenth (≥125 MW) the size of a normal size nuclear power plant (1000 - 1600 MW). The nuclear reactions would be contained in an enclosure that is stored underground.
It is roughly estimated that a 125 MW reactor would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $750 Million, whereas recent estimates for the new generation nuclear plants that are being reviewed by the NRC show a cost of construction around $10 Billion.
The article mentions that one issue the companies may face in obtaining a design certification is that the NRC is currently busy with licensing requests from utilities for new designs of standard size nuclear plants. A license application for a “mini” reactor has not yet been submitted to the NRC, but could be in as little as two years, states Chris Mowry (President and Chief Executive of B&W Modular Nuclear Energy LLC). Once an application is submitted to the NRC, a review could potentially take several years.
Here is a link to the original article.
Here is a link to another recent article that discusses the possibility of this “mini” reactor:
