There are a number of problems that, I think, are inherent to the technology. There's only so much you can do. One that Dr. Charbonneau mentioned as an example is the production of waste. Small modular reactors are going to produce more waste per kilowatt hour of electricity being generated, compared to a large reactor. That's not something that research is going to solve. That's a given fact. It's because when you go to smaller reactors, there will be more neutron leakage and various other sorts of inefficiencies that will creep in. I don't see this as a problem that research can necessarily fix.
The second point I want to mention is that even doing the R and D required to try to prove that one of these reactors is safe to build is a very expensive proposition. I go back to the example of the NuScale Reactor in the United States. They have spent over $1 billion U.S. at this point, and their reactor design is nowhere near actual completion or ready to be constructed. Most estimates are that they're going to go to about $1.5 billion or $2 billion U.S. This is all the expense that you have to incur in order to run the tests and do the calculations in a careful fashion to show that the reactor would operate in a safe manner under all possible circumstances, including, for example, if there's an earthquake or a fire, or if there's an operator error.
These are not cheap R and D projects. This is why many companies that start off often never move their reactor designs to completion. That's the other thing that I want to emphasize here. If you're going to try to move one of these products to a point where you can feel confident about them being constructed, somebody has to be willing to spend that $1 billion to $2 billion U.S. I don't see the market being willing to do that.