DOI: 10.12688/nuclscitechnolopenres.17819.1 ISSN: 2755-967X

Aggregating Demand and Standardizing Supply: Instrument Choice for U.S. Small Modular Reactor Deployment

Bradford Arnold
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The United States leads the world in small modular reactor (SMR) designs and has yet to complete a commercial deployment. Federal awards, hyperscaler agreements, and state funds are now underwriting first units for the leading projects, but serial factory production, the basis of the SMR value proposition, has begun nowhere, because the supply chain has neither a standard to tool against nor firm orders that justify tooling. This article asks what the minimal sufficient intervention is. Comparative analysis of SEMATECH, the French and Korean nuclear programs, and five decades of American standardization and cost-share attempts yields four diagnostic dimensions, and seven candidate instruments are scored against them, including a SEMATECH-style broad-membership consortium, which is dominated. The design that prevails pairs two institutions. A voluntary subcommittee under ASTM International, staffed by industry engineers, standardizes SMR pressure vessels and primary components, and NRC endorsement converts the standard into a stable licensing basis. A time-limited program in the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy, holding a no-year appropriation and express multi-year contract authority, provides milestone payments and a backstop offtake commitment that pays per unit meeting the standard, so any qualifying design competes and the facility spends only where private demand fails to convert. The standard makes federal demand vendor-neutral, and federal demand makes the standard bankable; neither works alone. The authority sunsets at seven years while obligated contracts run to completion. Coordination is necessary but not sufficient: the framework exists to run the serial-production cost test, not to guarantee its result.

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