Part-2: Small Nuclear Reactors: How Hunger for Power Will Unite Artificial Intelligence and Uranium/Thorium Mining. SMRs with Uranium and Thorium

SMRs are compact, reliable, versatile, require minimal land and have the potential for standardized mass-manufactured production that can achieve the scale of deployment required to meet many clean power, heat and clean fuel production use cases for heavy industry, data centres and transport. Recent headlines highlight a strong demand signal for advanced nuclear – major tech giants Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have all publicly made commitments to procuring nuclear energy for their US operations. Due to their size and modular construction, these reactors could be sited within the existing footprint of existing coal plants, or co-located with refineries, steel, chemical and aluminium plants – to directly and competitively–replace fossil fuels by supplying heat, power, steam or hydrogen to enable continued operation of existing assets, including transmission, without emissions. In the US, only the opportunity exists to add up to 174 gigawatt-electric (GWe) of new nuclear capacity at 145 retired or retiring coal plant sites and up to 95 GWe additional capacity at existing nuclear plant sites. The overall prospect of these technologies is discussed in this part.