Small reactors, big opportunites: scaling nuclear power
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Why is nuclear power, especially SMRs, critical for meeting rising global electricity demand?
Welcome to Industry Optimise, the AVV podcast. I'm Fran Scott, a pyrotechnician, presenter, and engineer at heart, and I am your host. With global electricity demand on the rise, there is a need for reliable power, and this is becoming increasingly critical. So today we are looking at one important low-carbon source of electricity: nuclear. According to the International Energy Agency, the IEA, nuclear power is already providing around 10% of global electricity generation. An innovation in this space, like the small modular reactors or SMRs as they're known. These are compact factory-built reactors that are designed to be flexible, scalable, and easy to deploy, they could help expand the range of low-carbon, reliable power sources.
For today, and tomorrow. And to help us get our heads around this, I've got two guests joining me today. So please could you both introduce yourselves? Uh let's start with you, Jacob.
Thanks for having me, Fran. Uh Jacob Steadman. So I'm the CEO of Blycala, the Swedish SMR vendor. I make sure that we can actually build uh real nuclear power plants. That's my job. In this industry, there's a lot of power points and lots of ambition. And my job at Blykala is to ensure that we execute on those uh plans to really get SMRs built.
Annelova. Hi, I'm Alova Rygaard, and thank you so much for hosting me on this podcast. I work as nuclear competence cluster lead for energy industries at ABB. And my division at ABB focuses on tying together ABB's total offering towards the energy sectors, also including life science and some other segments, where nuclear is one of our segments that we're Really focusing on currently, and I'm super excited to see the developments that have been happening within the segment the past couple of years, and ABB's increased in.
engagement into the sector. So Ilovra, I'd like to start with you if that's okay. Could you describe to us uh what are the energy needs of our current system and where, if anywhere, it falls short? Energy m demand is
increasing a lot is predicted to almost double until 2050. So we need more energy. That's no no secret. And nuclear is going to play an important part in that. The reason why the energy demand is increasing is because we're moving more and more towards an electrified society where we have electrical vehicles, we have the industry that's also going through a green transition journey. But also an increased population. We have the AI demands. There's so many different demands. And that's why we need more electricity.
What are the current shortcomings of the energy system and how does nuclear address them?
Much of the momentum for the past couple of years has been on renewable energy sources like wind and solar, which are great. And we're gonna see a large increase in these power sources in the future. However, they're also putting a lot of requirements on energy storage. that flexibility and we're still gonna need some type of baseload and this is where nuclear could play a very important role in order to power data centers that are standalone or even industries or small communities. So in short, if I were to define this uh the current needs in three words, I would say it's energy security, stability, and sustainability.
Now, Jacob, this might sound like a a wild question, but why nuclear energy? What role do you think it can play within the future of our energy system?
So nuclear has a number of unique properties. A, it's clean, as opposed to like fossil fuels. B it's baseload, meaning it's not up to the forces of nature to when the sun stops shining or the wind stops blowing. It's it's there. And C, it's deployed at scale. Um you have, you know, you already today you have hundreds or three hundred gigawatt of nuclear power operating in the world. So there is no other energy source. That fits all these three criteria. And that means that everybody, including the president of the European Commission, today realizes that we need to build more nuclear to secure our energy future. That does not, and let me just be clear: that does not mean that we shouldn't also expand other means of generation.
The one thing that nuclear does that very few other means of generation do is it provide stability to the grid.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why is nuclear power, especially SMRs, critical for meeting rising global electricity demand?
0:07–2:53
2
What are the current shortcomings of the energy system and how does nuclear address them?
2:53–6:23
3
Why do nuclear baseload plants provide unique grid stability compared to renewables?
6:23–9:26
4
How do small modular reactors differ from conventional reactors in design and deployment?
9:26–12:39
5
What is Blykalla’s factory‑built, modular approach and its timeline for delivery?
12:39–14:57
6
How can SMRs be combined with renewables to create a flexible, low‑carbon energy mix?
14:57–17:50
7
What role do partnerships (e.g., ABB + Blykalla) play in accelerating SMR development?
17:50–20:53
8
What does the future energy landscape look like with widespread SMR adoption?
20:53–24:45