New CRP: Technologies Enhancing Competitiveness and Early Deployment of Small Modular Reactors

The IAEA is launching a new Coordinated Research Project (CRP) to identify and enhance understanding of generic technologies that might be applied to more than one design of Small Modular Reactors (SMR) to facilitate their early deployment and support the transition to clean energy systems. The CRP, entitled "Technologies Enhancing the Competitiveness and Early Deployment of Small Modular Reactors", will run for three years and examine how enabling technologies such as additive manufacturing or artificial intelligence (AI) could reduce SMR installation costs, shorten construction times and better meet user needs through greater flexibility or non-electric applications.

SMRs show significant potential for broadening the use of nuclear energy and meeting climate goals by helping to decarbonize the economies. However, SMR commercialization has yet to materialize. To accelerate SMR deployment and reduce upfront capital costs, there is a need to identify SMR technological solutions and advanced applications that are both promising and practical. International collaboration and interaction among stakeholders will be key to achieving this goal.

This CRP, launched on the basis of a 2019 IAEA Technical Meeting on the Competitiveness and Early Deployment of Small Modular Reactors and High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactors, is the first devoted to generic technological solutions that could affect the competitiveness and early deployment of SMRs. While there are a number of interesting SMR designs, this CRP will focus on application to near-term deployable designs, in particular water-cooled reactors and high temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs).

It will examine generic technologies of systems and/or components used in SMR designs that are not specific to one design. Additive manufacturing, compact steam generators, use of digital twins and AI at the design phase, and innovative solutions with regards to construction and erection phases are all technologies that could apply to different SMR designs and might not even be nuclear-specific. Innovation in these fields could lead to qualification and licensing issues, bringing more risk and delay to commercialization. On the other hand, technologies involving non-nuclear aspects of SMR designs (e.g. civil work) could hold great potential for reducing construction times or lowering costs.

Collaboration on these technologies at an international level may yield a positive outcome. It would incentivize stakeholders to allocate resources on the identified technological solutions, while also creating an opportunity to develop or adapt commonly applicable Codes and Standards for technologies not yet covered, thereby reducing costs and deployment times.