I’d like to understand the economics of size in nuclear reactors better. It seems like there are almost irresistible forces pushing towards bigger reactors. I’m looking particularly at the newish Westinghouse designs. Back in the early 2000s, Westinghouse designed the AP600, 600 megawatts, and it was supposed to have a lot of modularity and factory construction. No one bought one though and so they came out with the AP1000, of which a number have been built. China has now extended the design to the CAP1400 and they’re working on a CAP1700, almost triple the original power.
> seems like there are almost irresistible forces pushing towards bigger reactors
Those advantages go down when you include construction and permitting time (billions of dollars) and transmission costs (billions more over the plant’s lifetime).
On SMRs: we don’t know their economics because they don’t practically exist yet. Certainly not in a mass-manufactured flavour.
