Westinghouse scraps Small “Marketless” Reactors

Westinghouse is scrapping a multi-million dollar and decade long investment in new Small Modular Reactors (SMR).  Company officials admit that there is no market for the foreseeable future for assembly line nukes.

Westinghouse had advertised its 225 MWe Small Modular Reactor (SMR) as simplified, passively safe and secure. Rather than typically build one behemoth power reactor, new individual reactor modules were to be added onto to the same control room and plugged into the turbo-generator-transmission system, shortening construction times and compartmentalizing the financial risk. Eventually, Westinghouse figured out that there are so few customers at the end of such an assembly line that it makes no economic sense to build the factory. Since the Department of Energy has snubbed Westinghouse twice now for federal taxpayer money, Westinghouse wasn’t willing to financially risk their own money.

The announcement comes as no surprise. Forbes reported nearly two years ago that the new mini-nuclear power plants were already priced out of the market. Additionally, with the nuclear industry still in the shadow of an unending Fukushima catastrophe, reactor safety design problems and regulatory failures make mini-nukes a challenge that Westinghouse admits it is not up to.