Accelerating new nuclear and small modular reactor deployment

Global demand for reliable, clean and competitive energy services, including heat and power, is rising, driven by a range of factors including electrification of transport and heat, the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and data centre expansion, and emerging market growth.

At the same time, countries are shifting away from carbon-intensive energy sources, including coal, as they adopt clean and renewable solutions. Large energy users are faced with meeting commitments to decarbonize hundreds of gigawatts of business-critical energy services. Nuclear energy is a solution to meet growing demand and substitute fossil fuels for heat and power.

As nuclear continues to gain interest as a dense, reliable, and clean source of heat and power, small modular reactors (SMRs) and other advanced nuclear technologies are among the solutions that can enable new use cases and strengthen the value proposition for investors.

SMRs are compact, reliable, versatile, require minimal land and have potential for standardized mass-manufacture production that can achieve the scale of deployment required to meet many clean power, heat and clean fuel production use cases for heavy industry, data centres and transport.

Recent headlines highlight a strong demand signal for advanced nuclear – major tech giants Microsoft, Amazon and Google have all publicly made commitments to procuring nuclear energy for their US operations.

Due to their size and modular construction, these reactors could be sited within the existing footprint of existing coal plants, or co-located with refineries, steel, chemical and aluminium plants – to directly and competitively – replace fossil fuels by supplying heat, power, steam or hydrogen to enable continued operation of existing assets, including transmission, without emissions.

For example, a recent report by the US Department of Energy identified the opportunity to add up to 174 gigawatt-electric (GWe) of new nuclear capacity at 145 retired or retiring coal plant sites, and up to 95 GWe additional capacity at existing nuclear plant sites.

Since COP28, more than 120 nuclear energy and technology companies, along with 25 countries, have committed to tripling global nuclear energy capacity by 2050. Most recently, 14 major financial institutions announced their support of this target during discussions at New York Climate Week 2024.

Great British Nuclear has selected four companies to advance to the next phase of its SMR competition for innovative nuclear technologies, while the European SMR Alliance has selected nine SMR projects to support and accelerate their deployment in the European market.

However, to convert this demand into delivery, confidence on cost and schedule is fundamentally important. These large energy users – oil and gas, marine and global technology companies - need energy services that fit within fast and predictable asset deployment process.

Large energy users are telling us that they need reactors that are mass manufactured and licensed at the factory, that can be rapidly deployed to existing facilities as completed products. They need commercially viable licensing pathways that fit within the fast and predictable asset deployment process they currently use. The needed speed and scale of deployments will require radically new approaches to design, licensing, and delivery of clean energy solutions.

The World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Accenture, has partnered with stakeholders across the nuclear ecosystem including Terra Praxis to develop a framework to accelerate the deployment of advanced nuclear and SMRs.

The newly-launched publication A Collaborative Framework for Accelerating Advanced Nuclear and Small Modular Reactor Deployment, serves as a tool to align stakeholders on key actions within nine priority areas.

Both public and private financing sources will be needed to support first-of-a-kind SMR units, which are anticipated to be deployed in the 2030 timeframe.

Unlocking this investment will require purpose-built products that offer high investor confidence, at a defined cost, competitive with fossil fuels, and on schedule. Key stakeholders are already coming together to respond to these opportunities, improve risk-sharing across project stakeholders, and implement innovative strategies for fast, low-cost, repeatable deployment at scale.

The framework is intended to be adaptable to these different stakeholders, use cases and geographies. It could also be applied to other advanced clean energy technologies that require a systemic approach to unlock progress, such as geothermal and long-duration energy storage.

Appropriately configured, nuclear energy can supply emissions-free, dependable and competitive electricity and heat to rapidly increase access to modern energy services and repurpose global energy infrastructure.

This potential offers us a profound choice. By choosing to apply the same strategic intent that successfully scaled renewables, and with the clear-eyed, prioritized focus on collaborative actions outlined in the framework, we can transform health and socio-economic prospects for communities around the world, protect nature, and enable a timely transition of the growing global economy to clean energy.