Method to Select the Countries and Scenarios More Appropriate for the Deployment of SMR

Abstract

The evolution of nuclear technologies has led to the development of a large number of reactor designs. In particular there is significant and growing interest towards Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), i.e. nuclear reactor of a size between 40MWe and 700 MWe. Several heterogeneous countries are potentially interested in their deployment and approximately twenty advanced SMR designs are under development all over the world. However, both the market dimensions for SMRs and where they may be deployed remain unclear. This paper presents a method for the identification of countries which could be interested in the construction of SMRs and which factors foster their deployment. The presented method, grounded on a comprehensive literature review, is composed of three screenings and comprises the strategic consequences of the Fukushima accident. The first screening selects all the countries of the world that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and World Nuclear Association (WNA) indicate as possible market for nuclear reactor in general. The second screening selects countries based on their potential interest in SMR development in the short to medium term. The third screening identifies countries where SMRs are a particularly suitable choice. To perform this last “scenario based” selection the strengths and weakness of the SMRs have been analyzed to define their strategic match with the potential countries. The findings of this investigation reveal the strategic factors promoting the deployment of SMR and provide the basis for a ranking of countries in which these factors could create the market for SMR.