雅思阅读 123: The Small Modular Revolution（小型模块化反应堆革命）

改编自 U.S. Department of Energy / Informed Clearly（2026年）。雅思阅读 Section 3 难度，约 1050 词。 素材来源：https://informedclearly.com/en/energy/61629/small-modular-reactors-fusion-race-2026

Reading Passage

A. For decades, the story of nuclear power in the West was one of stalled construction, ballooning costs and public hesitation. Generation III reactors, built as enormous bespoke projects on individual sites, routinely ran years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. By the early 2020s, the industry appeared stuck — unable to demonstrate that new nuclear capacity could be built at a price the market would bear. Yet a remarkable shift has gathered pace since 2025, driven less by environmental politics than by an unexpected demand: the voracious electricity appetite of artificial intelligence. Data centres training large language models require vast quantities of reliable, always-on power, and renewable sources alone cannot easily supply it. Into this gap has stepped a new generation of reactors designed not as monumental civil-engineering works but as factory-built, transportable units small enough to be assembled on site like prefabricated housing. These are the small modular reactors, or SMRs, and their advocates argue they solve precisely the problems that dogged the last nuclear boom. Proponents also emphasise that the smaller size suits markets too small for a gigawatt-scale plant — remote mining towns, military bases, industrial parks and island nations — where a conventional reactor would simply be overcapacity. Critics, however, note that the very same features that make SMRs flexible also introduce challenges: transporting oversized reactor vessels by rail imposes width limits, and the regulatory framework for serial design still assumes bespoke, site-specific reviews. Whether regulators can adapt their approval processes to a factory-line model, rather than reviewing each unit as a unique plant, may determine how quickly the cost savings actually materialise.

B. The defining idea behind SMRs is serial manufacture. A conventional reactor is designed once and built once, each iteration essentially a prototype. An SMR, by contrast, is meant to be standardised, mass-produced in a factory and shipped to its destination by road, rail or barge. Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Jacopo Buongiorno uses a simple analogy: "Think Lego. I have my prefabricated bricks and I connect them to make my reactor." By repeating the same design hundreds of times, manufacturers hope to drive down unit costs through learning curves that no one-off construction project can replicate. Most SMRs produce under 300 megawatts of electricity, a fraction of a conventional plant's output, but several modules can be combined on a single site to reach the required capacity. The smaller scale also means that if one unit needs maintenance or refuelling, the others continue operating — a degree of modular resilience that large plants cannot match.

C. 2025 and 2026 marked the moment the SMR concept moved from paper to regulatory reality. In May 2025, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted NuScale Power standard design approval for its uprated 77-megawatt US460 module, the second SMR design to clear that hurdle on American soil. A year earlier, Kairos Power had received its construction permit for the Hermes test reactor. Then, in March 2026, TerraPower's Natrium design secured the first-ever Generation IV construction permit, breaking ground at Kemmerer, Wyoming — a coal-mining community betting its future on a sodium-cooled reactor paired with molten-salt energy storage. In Canada, Ontario Power Generation's Darlington site became the first in the West to receive approval for construction of a GE Hitachi BWRX-300, a 300-megawatt boiling-water module. China, meanwhile, is already operating: its HTR-PM gas-cooled demonstration plant has run commercially since late 2023, and the Linglong One at Hainan Island, a 125-megawatt pressurised-water module, was expected to connect to the grid in the first half of 2026. Russia's floating Akademik Lomonosov has supplied remote Arctic communities since 2020.

D. The commercial pull behind this regulatory activity comes from an unusual direction: technology companies. In early 2026, Meta announced plans to procure eight small modular reactors dedicated entirely to powering its data centres — an extraordinary step for a firm that had previously bought electricity from the open market. The company did not name a vendor, but the logic was straightforward: training increasingly large AI models consumes enormous quantities of baseload power, and intermittent solar and wind cannot supply it without costly storage. Owning or contracting dedicated nuclear capacity, Meta concluded, was more reliable and ultimately cheaper than competing with every other data centre operator for scarce grid connections. The U.S. Department of Energy reinforced this trend in March 2025 with 900 million dollars in SMR deployment grants, and the European Commission followed a year later with up to 200 million euros for European SMR construction. The global SMR market was valued at roughly 6.5 billion dollars in 2025 and is projected to reach about 10.7 billion by 2033, growing nearly three times faster than the conventional nuclear sector.

E. SMRs are not without critics. Environmental groups remain concerned about uranium mining, long-term waste storage and the risk of proliferation, arguing that investment would be better directed at renewables plus battery storage. Economists point out that the serial-manufacturing cost savings remain hypothetical — no factory is yet producing hundreds of identical modules, and the first few units will likely cost as much as any bespoke project. Public acceptance, too, is uneven: polls in the United States show strong support among younger voters but lingering suspicion in regions that host existing nuclear waste. Proponents counter that passive safety designs — many SMRs shut down automatically without human intervention or external power — reduce accident risk far below that of older reactors, and that the alternative to carbon-free baseload power in an electrifying world is continued reliance on natural gas. Whether the SMR delivers on its promise depends less on physics, which is well understood, than on manufacturing: can the industry actually build the same reactor, over and over, cheaply and reliably, at the scale the data-centre demand curve now requires? The answer will determine whether this nuclear renaissance is real or merely another hopeful footnote.

Questions 1-4

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B, C, D and E from the list of headings below.

List of Headings i. The principle of mass-produced reactor units ii. The history of coal mining in Wyoming iii. The regulatory breakthroughs of 2025-2026 iv. Why technology companies are buying nuclear reactors v. The unresolved objections and remaining uncertainties vi. How uranium is mined and refined vii. The cost of electricity from solar panels

1. Paragraph B: ____
2. Paragraph C: ____
3. Paragraph D: ____
4. Paragraph E: ____

Questions 5-8

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

5. What is the core design philosophy behind SMRs? A. Building larger reactors on remote sites. B. Standardising and factory-producing reactor modules. C. Replacing nuclear with solar power. D. Using only fusion technology.

6. What happened in March 2026? A. NuScale received its first NRC approval. B. TerraPower's Natrium secured the first Generation IV construction permit. C. China opened its first floating nuclear plant. D. Meta cancelled its reactor order.

7. Why did Meta decide to procure eight SMRs? A. To sell electricity back to the grid at a profit. B. To power AI data centres with reliable baseload electricity. C. To replace coal plants in Europe. D. To develop new reactor technology itself.

8. What do critics of SMRs argue? A. The technology is physically impossible. B. The serial-manufacturing cost savings have not yet been demonstrated. C. Nuclear waste no longer needs storage. D. Renewables cannot work without SMRs.

Questions 9-13

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer?

Write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. Most SMRs produce more electricity than a conventional nuclear plant.
10. China's HTR-PM demonstration plant has operated commercially since late 2023.
11. The global SMR market is projected to grow at roughly three times the rate of the conventional nuclear market.
12. Public opinion on nuclear power is uniformly positive across all age groups in the United States.
13. The Linglong One is located on Hainan Island.

Questions 14-15

Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.

The SMR model relies on (14) __________ manufacture of standardised reactor units, allowing cost reductions through repeated production. Key players include NuScale, TerraPower and Kairos Power, while demand is increasingly driven by (15) __________ operators seeking reliable baseload power.

答案与解析

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