Over the past few years, small modular reactor (SMR) projects have been making substantial progress, with two reactors currently under construction: the CAREM-25 (a prototype) in Argentina and the KLT-40S in the Russian Federation. Interest in SMRs is being driven by a desire to reduce the total capital costs of nuclear power plants and to provide power to small grid systems, leading to more designs reaching advanced stages of development. To attempt to quantify the size of the market that SMRs could represent in the short to medium term, a project was launched at the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) to collect and analyse economic and market data on SMRs, including factory production cost estimates. The data for this study – gathered through questionnaires and interviews with SMR vendors and potential customers – were used to assess the potential for SMR commercial deployment around the world. Only short- to medium-term projections (2020-2035) and mature technologies (i.e. SMRs based on light water reactor technologies) were considered in the study, and factors influencing the SMR market throughout the world were examined. This report was drafted by NEA staff and overseen by the NEA Working Party on Nuclear Energy Economics (WPNE) and the NEA Committee for Technical and Economic Studies on Nuclear Energy Development and the Fuel Cycle (NDC).
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