Lately, the nuclear sector has seen a trend towards small modular reactors (SMRs), sometimes developed by start-ups. Numerous light water SMR concepts are flourishing around the world, based on a wide range of technologies and outputs. AMRs (Advanced Modular Reactors) are equivalent concepts of 4th generation: fast sodium, molten salt or high-temperature reactors, with a longer deployment time than SMRs.

Jean-Michel Ruggieri

Maxence Cordiez

Stéphane Sarrade

a trend towards small modular reactors (SMRs)

, sometimes developed by start-ups. Numerous light water SMR concepts are flourishing around the world, based on a wide range of technologies and outputs. AMRs (Advanced Modular Reactors) are equivalent concepts of 4th generation: fast sodium, molten salt or high-temperature reactors, with a longer deployment time than SMRs.

outputs ranging from a few MW to a few hundred MW

. With different timeframes, they target different customers and uses: isolated communities, cogeneration, replacement of medium power coal plants, etc. These 

 developed by a small handful of engineers and communicators, most of which will probably never materialise, 

, such as the SMR on board the Russian barge Akademik Lomonosov.

France is part of the game. EDF, CEA, Technicatome, Naval Group and Framatome are jointly working on an SMR model for the end of the decade.  

This article will present the stakes, the interest, but also the issues

 linked to the design and deployment of SMRs to achieve carbon neutrality while preserving our energy security.

As recently outlined by the French electricity grid operator RTE in its Energy Futures 2050, 

 to replace fossil fuels. Today, electricity accounts for 15 to 25% of the final energy mix, depending on the European country (25% in France). However, electricity is probably the easiest energy vector to decarbonise. This is why its share in the final energy mix will have to increase to achieve carbon neutrality (up to 50-60% in France according to the national low carbon strategy).

 the European Union needs to rely on all the low-carbon energies 

at its disposal, including the first among them (in Europe at least): 

many limitations in the current reactor catalogue

, ranging from medium to high power. For instance, large reactors are tailor-made for their location and power grids, and their deployment can be limited by the cost of capital. It is indeed a challenge for many countries (let alone private actors) to finance large 

multi-billion euro reactors, which can take up to 10 years to build

 (thus delaying the start of the return on investment).

Another limitation of these reactors is that, while they are particularly well suited to massively produce competitive electricity on demand, they are less suited to cogeneration: it would be less convenient to locate a 1650 MW EPR next to a conurbation for the cogeneration of electricity and district heat, for example.

The idea of designing low power modular reactors was born to complete the current offer. The 

 (ranging from a few MW to a few hundred MW) in which most of the components are previously assembled in factories to minimise the number of operations to be carried out onsite during the construction. This makes it possible to 

 of slippage by simplifying onsite operations.

These smaller (and cheaper per unit) reactors would be 

. Smaller, they would also be better suited to cogeneration applications closer to the place of consumption, which is of interest in certain regions: electricity and urban heat for Finland, electricity, industrial heat and hydrogen for Poland, etc.

Indeed, without massive production of low-carbon electricity, available regardless of external conditions, the prospects for the deployment of a European hydrogen industry appear compromised. The 

available hydraulic and nuclear capacities

 to implement in some countries than large-scale reactors, which remain economically relevant in countries that can finance them and absorb their output. SMRs can work in synergy with other low-carbon sources of electricity such as wind and solar PV to provide electricity at any time of the day, in any season and under any weather conditions. Their smaller turbine size allows for greater load-following responsiveness than large reactors, and the increased capacity of these reactors to be located across the country can help stabilise the electricity grid. They 

offer the opportunity of moving away from a long-term dependence on coal and fossil gas

design and production of small reactors is not new

. Many countries, including France, the UK, Russia, the USA and China, have been using them for years to power submarines, aircraft carriers and icebreakers. While it is clear that civilian SMRs cannot embody military technologies, this experience enables the incorporation of major innovations. Most of the concepts, such as the French Nuward or the American NuScale, have chosen a primary circuit integrated into the reactor vessel, which eliminates the risk of a primary breach. Nuward has also chosen plate steam generators, which makes it the most compact concept.

The reduced power of these reactors also allows for a 

. This means that in the event of an incident or accident, the reactor remains in a safe configuration for a significant period of time, without human intervention or external power supply.

 (in the plural) for SMRs are becoming increasingly clear: 

 with cogeneration needs, etc. Whether it is the Americans, Russians or Chinese, all the major nuclear reactor designers are deeply involved, with different approaches and concepts. The competition will be tough. In Europe, the United States has kicked off by organising an event to promote its SMR technologies in partnership with the European Commission on 21 October 2019. In this strategic area for its independence, its sovereignty and its climate objectives, the European Union must be proactive. We must develop European technologies, with the intellectual property and the manufacturing industry for critical components.

. This would be the case if European projects (including Nuward) were not to be supported even if nuclear power has been recognised at its true value in the taxonomy of “sustainable” investments that the Commission is currently putting in place.

, this is not without reason: to a certain extent, making a reactor larger allows for 

. Whether a reactor is medium or large, the certification process, public enquiries and construction will be comparable. The more powerful the reactor, the more the costs can be amortised over a large output. In addition, the larger the reactor, the more efficient it is in its fuel use, i.e. the less fuel it consumes and the less waste it produces.

Ensuring the competitiveness of small reactors is therefore not an easy task. 

 One of the challenges is therefore to achieve true modularity, making the most of factory production to reduce the number of actions to be carried out on the construction site.

: SMRs will only be competitive if they are produced in large numbers and if the fixed costs (component production plants, design and certification processes, etc.) are amortised over a large number of units. The use of conventional pressurised water reactor fuel is also a way to take advantage of the available current fuel cycle infrastructures to limit the development time and cost of electricity produced by SMRs.

This raises a twofold issue. Firstly, whatever the SMR, its market cannot be limited to a single country. Secondly, it is necessary to bring the safety requirements of the various countries where an SMR concept may be deployed as close as possible. The objective is to avoid having to modify the concept in each country, as this would require new engineering studies and the modification of industrial chains, which would make the economic equation for SMRs impossible. 

The discussion between SMR manufacturers and safety authorities around the world should therefore start at an early stage of the design.

How to maximise the chances of success for the European projects?

We should all keep in mind that a continent has to anticipate the future and take advantage of all low carbon energy sources. Therefore, 

we cannot give up all our skills and industry in nuclear energy

, at the risk of being left with nothing if – as we believe – we eventually realise that this energy source is absolutely necessary to achieve carbon neutrality while preserving our energy security.

The European Union must therefore support the emergence of one or more European SMRs. The 

, initiated by France, is today the most advanced and is therefore a good candidate. However, this project cannot remain solely French. It must become a truly European project because the first (and potentially most) examples will serve the European market.

This is why the European Union should also work with the national safety authorities on a 

, which respects both the independence and the autonomy of the various safety authorities while avoiding the multiplication of standards in Europe.

Europe is at an energy crossroads. We need to 

ensuring the security of electricity supply

, which is threatened in the next few years by the closure of many European dispatchable power plants. At the same time, the price of fossil fuels is soaring in the face of chronic underinvestment in the upstream oil and gas industry over the past several years and continued strong demand growth in Asia. 

 to answer to all these constraints, not only to produce electricity, but also urban and industrial heat, hydrogen and even to desalinate seawater. The needs are huge and it is 

now time for Europe to position itself on the SMR and AMR technologies

 it will need, in order to have domestic technologies that will provide qualified jobs and guarantee its strategic autonomy. The window is closing and if we do not act quickly, we will once again be dependent on imported technologies in a strategic field.

This article is also published in French on 

Energy Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Energy & Sustainability writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.

Small Modular Reactors are a key technology to decarbonize our economy

The European Commission is about to modernise its Renewable Energy Directive. It has to take this opportunity to start the necessary process of revising the system for guaranteeing the origin of electricity, which is currently suffering from shortcomings that prevent it from achieving its objectives.


Bertrand Charmaison

The European Commission is about to modernise its Renewable Energy Directive. It has to take this opportunity to start the necessary process of revising the system for guaranteeing the origin of electricity, which is currently suffering from shortcomings that prevent it from achieving its objectives.

The European system for guaranteeing the renewable nature of electricity does not fully achieve the virtuous objectives it seeks to promote. In practice, it allows any electricity to be labelled as “renewable”, provided that at some point in the past twelve months an equivalent amount of renewable electricity has been fed into the grid somewhere in Europe. For example, a consumer in Northern Europe can guarantee that one MWh of electricity consumed at 7pm in winter is “renewable” thanks to the certificates generated by the production of one MWh of electricity at 1pm during the previous summer by a solar photovoltaic plant in Southern Europe.

This system operates as a free virtual storage of renewable electricity. It deters the deployment of storage infrastructures and the changes in usages made necessary by the intermittent nature of renewable electricity to maintain the equilibrium between supply and demand at all times. This undermines the sustainability of the European electricity supply and the achievement of decarbonisation objectives.

How do guarantees of origin for electricity work?

In the current Guarantee of Origin (GO) system for electricity (open only to renewables), a producer produces electricity and guarantees of origin. Both are independently tradable and, by default, a guarantee of origin is valid for one year.

In concrete terms, this means that a producer can sell its electricity to supplier A (necessarily in real-time, as electricity is difficult to store for large volumes) and its guarantees of origin to another supplier B at any time during the year following the production of this electricity. Thus, the electricity consumed by A's customers cannot be qualified as renewable (even if it is), unlike the electricity consumed by B's customers, even if it is physically produced from fossil fuels (coal, gas...).

This mechanism gives no incentive to make the electricity system more flexible, either through controllable supply, electricity storage or demand-side flexibility.

In order to align the renewable electricity actually produced and consumed in real-time, the lifetime of guarantees of origin should be gradually reduced. Today it is one year. It could be reduced immediately to one month (as it is already the case in France), and a timetable for the progressive reduction of the validity of GOs to one hour should be announced. This would give time for producers and suppliers to adapt their contracts and investments to provide the required level of flexibility (supply, demand and storage sides).

Furthermore, in order to avoid that guarantees of origin issued in certain States could flood the European market, international exchanges of guarantees of origin should be limited to the reservations of interconnection capacities. Thus, it would no longer be possible to sell more guarantees of origin than can physically be exchanged between countries, a practice that is common today and leads to a structural weakness in the price of guarantees of origin.

This would allow Europe to aim at a 24/7 supply of low-carbon electricity. Several companies, including Google, are already addressing this challenge.

GOs could be an effective tool to track the electricity supplied

Today, GOs are increasingly used to “trace” electricity and allow actors to claim that their consumption is from a renewable origin. Once the corrective measures described above have been implemented, it would be possible to extend the GO system to all energies used to produce electricity (coal, gas, fuel oil, nuclear, etc.).

Issuance of guarantees of origin and their transfer to the final consumer should become mandatory. This would improve consumer information by displaying on the bills the breakdown by source of the electricity supplied, as well as the associated carbon impact. Consumers could therefore make an informed choice between different electricity supply contracts.

Guarantees of origin and hydrogen production

The evolution of the GO system for electricity is also essential to avoid that the hydrogen promoted by the EU and Member States is produced from fossil fuels but mislabelled as “renewable”. Otherwise, the production of hydrogen by electrolysis, which is supposed to be more climate-friendly, would risk emitting more CO2 than current production processes, to the detriment of the fight against climate change[1].

Of course, the European Commission is considering a more stringent system for tracking electricity for hydrogen production, with a quarter-hourly time step, local production and requirement for additional renewable capacity. However, even if these provisions were to be put in place, it would not make sense to keep a failing system for all electricity applications except hydrogen production. The certification mechanism must be functional, robust and universally applicable.

The development of flexibilities (supply, storage and demand) will be a long process. It needs to be approached gradually in order to reduce costs and for new consumption patterns to be established. Developing the system of guarantees of origin would make it possible to accelerate the necessary efforts, to the benefit of the European objectives of decarbonisation and stability of the electricity system.

This article is also published in French in 

[1] S. Sarrade, B. Charmaison and M. Cordiez, "Hydrogen: what for and why", Confrontations Europe, 2021

To achieve carbon neutrality, we need to fix the system that guarantees the origin of electricity

Maxence Cordiez is Head of European Public Affairs at the 

French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission

You can’t miss it!

Maxence Cordiez

Maxence Cordiez

To achieve carbon neutrality, we need to fix the system that guarantees the origin of electricity

Recent publications

Readers also like

Want to know more about illuminem Voices?