SMR Critique
Posted: 24th September 2025
You can feel the buzz: nuclear is back. Or so we’re told. From Brussels
to Washington, a new wave of enthusiasm for so-called Small Modular
Reactors (SMRs) is sweeping through policy circles, think tanks, and energy
startups. These compact, supposedly plug-and-play nuclear units are being
hailed as the perfect solution to power data centers, feed artificial
intelligence’s growing hunger, and backstop our energy transition with
clean, stable electricity. There’s just one problem. Actually, there are
many. None of them small. SMRs are currently being marketed like they’re
the iPhone of nuclear energy: smarter, smaller, cheaper, scalable. A
miracle solution for everything from remote grids to decarbonizing heavy
industry and AI’s server farms. Countries like the U.S., Canada, and the
UK have announced ambitious deployment plans. Major developers, including
NuScale, Rolls-Royce SMR, GE Hitachi, and TerraPower, have painted glossy
timelines with glowing promises. Except the fine print tells a different
ory. There are currently no operational commercial SMRs anywhere in the
world. Not one. NuScale, the U.S. frontrunner, recently cancelled its
flagship Utah project after costs ballooned to over $9,000 per kilowatt and
no investors could be found. Even their CEO admitted no deployment would
happen before 2030. Meanwhile, Rolls-Royce’s much-hyped SMR factory
hasn’t produced a single bolt of steel yet. So, we’re betting on a
technology that doesn’t yet exist at commercial scale, won’t arrive in
meaningful numbers before the 2030s, and would require thousands of units
to significantly contribute to global energy demand. That’s not a
strategy. That’s science fiction. Back to SMRs. Let’s suppose the
best-case scenario plays out. A couple of designs clear regulatory approval
by 2027–2028, construction starts in the early 2030s, and the first
commercial units are online before 2035. Even then, the world would need to
build and connect thousands of these small reactors within 10–15 years to
displace a meaningful share of fossil generation. That’s a logistics
nightmare, and we haven’t even discussed public acceptance, licensing
bottlenecks, uranium supply, or waste management. For perspective: in the
time it takes to build a single SMR, solar, wind, and battery storage could
be deployed 10 to 20 times over, for less money, with shorter lead times,
and with no radioactive legacy. We are in the decisive decade for climate
action. Every euro, dollar, and yuan we invest must yield maximum emissions
reduction per unit of time and cost. By that standard, SMRs fall flat.
Nuclear power, small or large, is simply too expensive, too slow, too
risky, and too narrow in its use case to lead the energy transition. So
let’s cool the reactor hype. Let’s focus instead on the technologies
that are already winning: wind, solar, batteries, heat pumps, grid
flexibility, green hydrogen. These are not dreams. They’re deploying by
the gigawatt, today. SMRs are fascinating, yes. But when it comes to
decarbonization, we need workhorses, not unicorns.
Oil Price 23rd Sept 2025
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Small-Nuclear-Reactors-Will-Not-Save-The-Day.html