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Thursday 25 May 2023 - How can SMRs open new use-cases for nuclear energy, decarbonizing problem industries in the process? Where in the world are SMRs developing today and where would they be expected to see greatest success? Are evolutionary vs. revolutionary approaches to reactor design more likely to see success in the global SMR fleet? What are the major roadblocks to deployment of SMRs and how could these be overcome? What players are working on SMRs and who is closest to delivering outside of Russia and China?

Epishine's Unique Production Process Brings Further Advancements to the Solar Energy Industry - Swedish Epishine has made advancements for printed outdoor organic photovoltaics within the Solar Era funded project NFA4R2ROPV thanks to their breakthrough manufacturing process of roll-to-roll printed solar cells.

Small modular reactors (SMRs) promise cheaper nuclear energy, supplying zero-carbon grid baseload and enabling new use cases for nuclear reactors. By shrinking the size of nuclear reactors compared to conventional large nuclear reactors, much of the construction is transferred to factory assembly lines, cutting capital costs and making nuclear power cost-competitive with renewables in many applications.

Joint venture GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (Hitachi GE in Japan) is developing the BWRX-300, an SMR (small modular reactor) that is based on the BWR (boiling water reactor) design. It hopes to deploy the first of its SMR designs in 2028.

China's HTR-PM reactor, developed primarily by Tsinghua University, is the first land-based, commercial-scale SMR (small modular reactor) to enter operation globally, with full power operation achieved in late 2022.

Canadian "young growth tech company" Terrestrial Energy is developing a small modular reactor (SMR) with flexible use-cases based around a molten salt reactor (MSR) design with short core lifetimes.

NuScale Power is a US firm which is designing and commercializing a nuclear small modular reactor (SMR) based on multiple small integral pressurized water reactors (iPWRs). It could be the first firm to operate a commercial SMR in the USA.

The CAREM25 reactor is under construction at the Atucha NPP facility near Buenos Aires, Argentina and is expected to come online in 2027. It is the closest SMR to completion outside of Russia or China and is administered by the state-owned utility Nucleoeléctrica Argentina SA.

U-Battery is a primarily British consortium of companies including Urenco, Rolls Royce, and others working on a micro small modular reactor, largely for industrial power applications. The gas-cooled reactor would have an electrical power output of 4MW. IDTechEx attended a roundtable with the U-Battery team.

KEMET produces flexible haptic actuators for a range of applications including AR/VR. IDTechEx spoke with Valerio Zerillo, Product & Business Development Manager.