If the global appetite for nuclear energy does not weaken, it is especially the small reactors that stimulate the imaginations.
Of the 130 or so projects under development in around fifteen countries, according to the Third Way think tank, most relate to small modular reactors, known as SMR (Small Modular Reactor), or AMR (Advanced Modular Reactor), also small and very innovative.
SMR could represent 10% of nuclear production in the world by 2040, predicts the Nuclear Energy Agency, an offshoot of the OECD.
We are still far from it.
The only active SMR category reactor was recovered from a submarine and then put into operation on a barge at sea in eastern Siberia.
The big historical players, the United States, France, Russia and China, are interested in it.
But the first copies will not be put on the market until the end of the decade.
Bill Gates engaged
Many SMR projects are based on so-called third generation, light water technology
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