Thank you for providing me with this opportunity to speak with you.
My name is M. V. Ramana. I teach at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. I carry out research on various technical and policy challenges associated with nuclear energy and small modular nuclear reactors.
I will focus my remarks on three topics: potential markets for SMRs, the potential for manufacturing and job creation from SMRs, and the impacts of investing in SMRs on climate change mitigation.
At the very outset, I would like to emphasize that SMRs cannot solve all the problems confronting nuclear energy, especially the inability of nuclear power to compete economically with alternative sources of energy such as electricity. SMRs will be less competitive because they will be more expensive per unit of generation due to the loss of economies of scale.
Second, because of the adverse economics, there is little demand for SMRs. Russia's KLT-40S design, China's HTR-PM design and South Korea's SMART design, which was licensed for construction about a decade ago, have attracted no customers. In the United States, many utilities have exited the proposed NuScale project due to its high cost.
Although many developing countries claim to be interested in SMRs, none have invested in the construction of one. Good examples are Jordan, Ghana and Indonesia, all of which have been touted as promising markets for SMRs for years, but none of which are buying one.
Niche markets—for example, remote mines and communities—are very limited. My research showed that even in a best-case scenario, remote mines and communities in Canada cannot provide the minimum demand necessary to justify investment in the factories needed to build these reactors.
A frequently heard argument for SMRs is that they will lead to jobs. This is misleading. The real question is whether such investment creates more jobs than would be created by investing the same amount of money in other low-carbon energy technologies.
The literature is unambiguous that nuclear reactor construction generates comparatively fewer jobs than renewables like solar and wind energy per dollar invested. Based on one recent study, I estimate that investing $1 billion U.S. in solar energy would create roughly 17,000 job-years of construction-related work. The same investment would create between 1,200 and 3,000 job-years in onshore and offshore wind energy and, finally, less than 1,000 job-years in nuclear energy. To the extent that SMRs are different from conventional large reactors, they will actually reduce the number of construction jobs created by adopting processes such as modernization and factory manufacture.
Finally, investing in building a product that has few customers can never lead to sustained employment.
SMRs will set back efforts to mitigate climate change for two reasons. First, there's an economic opportunity cost. Money that is invested in SMRs would save far more carbon dioxide if it were invested in renewables and associated technologies.
Second, no SMR will be constructed for at least another decade. This compounds the problem of the economic opportunity cost, in that the reduction in emissions from alternative investments would be not only greater but also quicker.
I'm happy to provide references for these statements, either from my work or that of others. I'm also happy to answer any questions.