TPT September 2013

Global Marketplace

› According to Siemens’s Mr Laske, one of the new electric buses costs at least $519,000: as much as twice the price of a comparable diesel bus. But he expects that to drop as production rises. He also noted that some of the expense of a new bus is offset by lower operating costs from savings on fuel and maintenance. Anna Reich of Wiener Linien, the municipal transport company, pointed out the savings to the city from not having to build new infrastructure for its bus fleet. “Vienna has the fifth largest tram infrastructure in the world,” Ms Reich told the Herald Tribune . “We wanted to use [what] we already have.” If licensing can be speeded up, smaller reactors could hold promise for a beleaguered American nuclear power industry Small modular reactors (SMRs) can be made in factories, assembled on-site, and arrayed in multiple-reactor configurations to incrementally scale up capacity. As further described by Navigant Research in its report “Small Modular Reactors,” released 4 June, SMRs have

lower upfront capital costs, enhanced safety features, flexible deployment modes, innovative fuel cycles, and a broader range of applications. Countering the economies of scale offered by larger facilities with economies of mass production and standardisation, these upstarts would appear to offer a range of advantages to producers of nuclear power. And Navigant (Boulder, Colorado) expects them to seize their opportunity. The specialised services firm forecasts global SMR capacity to grow from a few dozen megawatts (MW) this year to at least 4.6 gigawatts (GW) – and conceivably to surpass 18GW – in 2030. “The move toward smaller, more flexible reactors is returning the nuclear power industry to its roots, in the US Navy’s nuclear submarine program,” according to Richard Martin, Navigant’s editorial director. “It’s clear that, for the so-called renaissance of nuclear power to achieve its potential, SMRs must become a significant part of the world’s nuclear fleet.” The company found strong government support for SMR research and development, with the barriers to commercialisation for vendors of SMR technology falling steadily. But there are hurdles. In the US, one of the largest is gaining approval and licensing from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which recently approved the first new large, conventional reactors in the nation in more than 30 years.

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September 2013