The resulting LUEC estimates were compared to the designers’ cost data (see Figure E.4). Such a comparison was found useful in understanding the various factors influencing the economics of SMRs, and also to highlight the points that may need further clarification. The major findings of the comparison are the following:

• The LUEC estimates are quite sensitive to the selection of the parameter for the scaling law, and the inclusion of the heat credit. It is not clear if the designers have included the heat credit in their announced LUEC values. Thus, two cases have been considered:

— If the heat credit is not taken into account the majority of the independent LUEC estimates are significantly higher when compared to the designers’ data on LUEC.

— If heat credit is taken into account (where it applies), most of the independent LUEC estimates for land-based SMRs envelope the designers’ data on the LUEC.

— However, the independent LUEC estimates for some barge-mounted SMRs are significantly higher than the designers’ data. No explanation has been found for this.

Figure E.4. Difference (in %) between estimated LUEC and the designers’ values for LUEC (dark blue).

light blue — heat credit

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Figure E.5 plots the overnight cost for SMR based plant configurations of Table E.2 versus the total net electric outputs of the plants. It can be seen that, even though the specific investment costs (per kWe) for SMRs are in some cases rather high, the total investments are relatively small for a small reactor. For single module SMR plants with the electric output below 125 MWe the total investments are below USD 1 billion.

Another interesting feature of SMRs is that they could be incrementally deployed in relatively short time frames, owing to a shorter construction period. Together with low per-unit costs, this could lead to a significant reduction of the front-end investment and the capital-at-risk, when compared to using large reactors to increase capacity.

In view of the above mentioned issues, there is an increasing interest of private investors in SMRs. Recently the so-called “mini” or small and modular reactors have attracted a lot of attention. Since 2008, several small private companies have been created in the United States to support the design development, patenting, licensing and commercialisation of several new SMR concepts.

The attributes of small and modular reactors, such as small upfront capital investments, short on-site construction time (with the accordingly reduced cost of financing), and flexibility in plant configuration and applications are attractive for private investors.

In the United States, the formation of public-private partnership supporting the certification and licensing of small and modular reactors is being supported by the new Small and Modular Reactor programme of the Office of Advanced Reactor Concepts belonging to the Office of Nuclear Energy of the Department of Energy (DOE) which started in May 2011. In the Russian Federation, a public — private joint venture company named “AKME Engineering” was recently created to drive forward the project of the SVBR-100 reactor expected to be constructed by 2017 (see Table E.1).

Figure E.5. Overnight cost for various SMRs and large reactor deployment projects