Fortum and MIT start 3-year cooperation on techno-economic modelling tool for small modular reactor (SMR) projects

01 October 2020, 13:00 EEST

Fortum and MIT start 3-year cooperation on modelling tool for SMR projects

Fortum corporation business release 01.10.2020

Fortum and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) have entered into a 3-year cooperation project to create an open source tool for techno-economic modelling of small modular reactor (SMR) projects. Through the modelling work and the sensitivity analysis of the results, we hope the project will generate greater understanding of SMR projects and characteristics.

Current SMR designs in the industry feature many new and exciting innovations in the areas of manufacturing, siting and construction. Gaining a more in-depth understanding of these new features and determining which ones are the most important to focus on will be critical in ensuring the feasibility and success of these projects.

“We are excited to start this SMR cooperation project with MIT. They have done extensive work in, for example, identifying the cost drivers of new nuclear. This is a great opportunity for our nuclear experts at Fortum and the researchers at MIT to learn from one another,” says Konsta Värri, Project Manager at Fortum.

“We hope that making the modelling tool open source will drive the nuclear sector forward and a step closer to making SMR's a reality,” Värri continues.

“SMR's have the potential to reduce the risk to cost overruns by leveraging their smaller and simpler designs. However, reducing risk alone is not enough and they must still provide competitive cost to meet market demands. We hope to explore this relationship between risk and cost within our multidisciplinary team,” says Koroush Shirvan, Principal Investigator, from MIT. At MIT, the project will be performed in collaboration between researchers in nuclear science and engineering and the civil and environmental engineering departments. 

 

Further information:
Konsta Värri, Project Manager, Nuclear Services, tel. +358 40 545 9597
Fortum Consultation Services for SMRs