The US Department of Energy is co-sponsoring a project to see
whether small modular reactors (SMRs), each producing about 180 megawatts (compared with 1000 megawatts from a full - sized reactor) can be made cost - effective.
And if the evolutionary approach does lower the risk of a given
small modular reactor, who can say
whether reduced risks in individual power plants are outweighed by an overall global risk of dispersing a much greater number of nuclear
reactors across the planet?