In March, Poland’s National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ) released a report on the advisability of small modular reactors (SMRs). The report says that while SMR nuclear power plants (NPPs) might become important for the Polish power industry, it is very unlikely that they will play a key role as a base load electricity source in Poland, and they are unlikely to appear before 2030.
Research and development (R&D) on various SMRs—high-temperature reactors that might cogenerate electricity and heat—are conducted in many countries. The United States, Russia, Korea, France, Japan, and China are supporting works on innovative nuclear-reactor solutions with large financial outlays to make the best use of their research collected during operation of their high-power nuclear reactors, the report says.
Andrzej Strupczewski, NCBJ Nuclear Safety Chair, says, “Our government’s policy is to develop in Poland by 2030 nuclear reactors of a combined electric power of 6000 MW. A few tens of SMR reactors would be needed to attain that power level. Such a large number of SMRs would be not only economically unjustified, but also technically unfeasible. Besides, since safety is an absolute priority issue, we in Poland are going to deploy only such reactors that can demonstrate a record of successful operation in other countries, have been verified in detail during the recently concluded stress test program, and meet the most stringent safety standards. Therefore they will be the third-generation reactors.” NCBJ, located in the Świerk district of Poland, is the only research institution in the country operating a nuclear reactor.
According to the report, SMRs are not expected to replace high-power reactors; however, they may serve well for locations far from the national power grid (such as northern territories of Russia or in Alaska), or in small countries with small total power demand where high-power units are difficult to use because of an imbalance of the national power grid they introduce. In Poland, SMRs might be used by large industrial plants or by municipal central heating systems as sources of heat, says the report. If Poland is to be among the first beneficiaries of that new technology, NCBJ recommends that a program of R&D in that field be started now.
