reality. Technical, regulatory, operational, and economic rearrangements. Those are large barriers to success.

Existing plants have to undergo costly modifications (already an issue since cost recovery is what drives them to be baseloaded).

Financial and economic rearrangements means nuke plants have dozens of utility participants that are locked into partial ownership commitments that are years in length. And changes in have to be coordinated, agreed to, etc.

The article also highlights some of the flexibility operating metrics. Ramp rates that are 30+ minutes, hours long start ups in hot stand by. While those improvements highlight existing capabilities that should continued to be explored, they aren’t very good.

Gas plants can do the same in <10 minutes. Batteries can do it in seconds (I’m not a utility scale LiION storage fan at all for the record, just highlighting the challenges utility decision makers face). All cost less than nuke.

I’m all for SMR and other nuke advancements. But as a resource, it’s facing huge challenges to be a big part of the solutions.