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On the sandy shores of Lake Michigan, set against a backdrop of thick forest, a sharp-angled grey concrete building could be the face of an American nuclear renaissance.
The Palisades nuclear plant, about a two-hour drive from Chicago, was decommissioned in 2022, judged to be uneconomical in a world of cheap American gas. But Florida-headquartered company Holtec is reviving it. It will mark not only the first ever restart of a shuttered US nuclear plant, but, if all goes to plan, Palisades will also be the birthplace of a nuclear breakthrough: America's first commercial "small modular reactors."
These advanced nuclear reactors, known as SMRs, are like mini nuclear power plants but touted as cheaper, safer, faster to build and easier to finance than their conventional counterparts — and hype around them is rising fast.
The reality, as ever, is likely to be messier and experts are sounding notes of caution.
The total cost of SMRs may be lower than conventional plants, but they are still very expensive, meaning the price of electricity they produce will be far higher than wind, solar or gas, experts warn.
They also take a long time to get up and running. There are only three operational SMRs in the entire world, and none are in the US. One is on a Russian barge off the Siberian coast and the other two in China.
Whether the SMR hype is warranted will only start to become clear once they are built — and the race is on to do so.
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📸 : Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
