Globalization, urbanization, population expansion, and worldwide growth in middle
class consumerism are challenging the size and shape of today’s electrical generation
needs. As the world searches for affordable, emission-free and carbon-free clean
energy, the U.S. Department of Energy projects the electricity demand in the U.S.
alone to increase 21% by 2040. That equates to roughly 340 GW of new capacity. Global
demand for new electric capacity will outpace the U.S. by tenfold in the same period.
Further compounding the electrical generation challenge is the re-building of aging
infrastructure, new environmental regulations, volatility of natural gas pricing,
and the significant cost to replace retiring base load generation. So, how important
would it be if we could take the benefits of nuclear energy (i.e., safe, clean,
reliable and economical) and make it even safer, fabricate and modularize a majority
of the components in a factory, ship a fully assembled containment / reactor vessel
module for site installation, and construct the plant on a three-year schedule?
NuScale’s SMR is designed to achieve all of these objectives.
NuScale’s innovative thinking led the development of an Integral Pressurized Water
Reactor (IPWR). The reactor, steam generator, pressurizer, and containment are integrated
into a single module. It is manufactured in a factory setting, and then shipped
to the plant site. The NuScale Power Module is only 45 MWe, and a plant can be designed
to accommodate growing electrical demand by simply adding additional modules as
the need arises.
To learn more about the current energy market and compliant regulations:
Energy Issues
Downsized simplified reactors are poised to reinvent nuclear energy and bring economic
carbon-free power to meet global demand.
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