Fundamentally, any power plant must be competitive in the marketplace. The severe build-cost problems of large conventional nuclear power plants are well known. The uncertain financial risk associated with building such assets is more than most U.S. utilities and private firms are willing to accept, as demonstrated by the decades-long dearth of new U.S. nuclear construction. Historically, power production costs have been reduced through larger and more efficient machines as opposed to smaller, more numerous, less efficient, and less profitable assets. Therein lies a major challenge for small reactors: While they may cost less to build than large reactors, production costs are likely to be noticeably higher. Large conventional reactors already face severe competitiveness problems in the U.S. marketplace. At this point, it remains unclear if advanced reactors will be able to overcome this inherent profitability problem.
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