Nuclear Energy Insider has announced that it is planning its 4th annual conference aimed at people who are professionally interested in small modular reactors. The conference will be held March 31 – April 1, at the Ritz-Carlton in Charlotte, NC.
The organizers have lined up a veritable “who’s who” of people involved in SMR design, licensing, financed, and supply chain development.
Atomic Insights has agreed to be a media partner in the event; as a result of our agreement we are able to offer readers an additional discount.
Use the contact form at the bottom of the page to email me directly for a code that will provide an additional $100 discount over the regular price. If you register at https://secure.nuclearenergyinsider.com/smr/register.php before January 10, this coming Friday, you will be eligible for an early bird discount of $600 for a total of $700 off of the regular price.
I’m planning to attend and look forward to talking with you face-to-face. Here’s a fair warning for any speakers, I will probably have a question or two early in the Q&A.
An interest in SMRs is all well and good, but will they ever be allowed to be built? I don’t think it would take much research to show that the people who control oil/gas/coal are now running the nuclear power industry, with the help of the NRC and its political comrades. Their agenda is to make nuclear power as expensive as possible so that it offers no advantage cost-wise over carbon fuels.
It may sound extreme, but what I think the USA needs to be doing is bringing home a goodly number of its armed forces supposedly protecting us from foreign enemies and rounding up large numbers of domestic enemies, who are are far greater threat to the average person in the USA.
Why do you suppose the nuclear folks are any better?
@ GaryN
Of the seventy or more reactors being built right now, only 4 are in the US. Internally, the NRC is doing a fantastic job of stalling any half decent flow.
The COL cycle was supposed to facilitate the process. It will not.
But the pressure will come from outside. Americans understand commerce and influence. Secretary Kerry is having a hard time to sell nuclear deals abroad and most of all, keeping a straight face doing so. He has no credibility and can’t Heinz it up.
Russia on the other hand is signing deals everywhere as the French, Koreans and Japanese are. (Canada is even on the front row for a CANDU encore in Romania)
So the bottom line is this. It is happening without the US, the nuclear revolution that is. And most of it is under the radar. Nobody is seeing it.
I cannot help but notice that all proposed nuclear plants forecast TODAY are excluding SMRs that are coming within 2 years from Russia, India, China and Argentina. Even the WNA does not understand the market that will emerge with SMRs.
Where are the Russian floating SMRs firm orders from Vietnam, Indonesia, China, the Mid East, North Africa in those forecasts?
Your post is a contradiction of itself. On the one hand you criticize the USA for not building large LWR’s right now. On the other hand, game changers called SMR’s are going to be revolutionary and bankrupt the state backed monolithic monster nuclear corporations like Areva and Rosatom primarily selling large LWR’s.
It can’t possibly be a rosy picture for all the nuclear players.
@starvinglion
Light water SMRs are not game changers, they are game expanders. Adding them to the mix is like hiring an excellent running back for a team that has a quarterback like Payton Manning or Dan Marino.
As the US demonstrated throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, building large numbers of small light water reactors at the same time as building large numbers of large light water reactors is eminently possible and even advantageous. The smaller reactors give parts suppliers sustaining business because they use exactly the same kinds of materials. The enterprise of operating smaller reactors is like the NCAA teams that supply experienced players for the pros.
Of course, we goofed up a good model by keeping the smaller reactors limited to the US Navy and telling all of the players that most of the information that they learned about those smaller reactors should be kept locked up in a very secret playbook.
I suspect that other leagues (Russian, Chinese, Korean, French) might learn from our mistake and make a different choice. It is generally good business to offer a larger line of similar products that can serve a wider variety of customer needs.
Rod, it is Peyton Manning, with an E. Walter Payton was with an A.
As Peyton’s fellow University of Tennessee graduate, I am unable to refrain from pointing that out.