Fission battery markets and economic requirements

•No low-cost low-carbon options for users with heat demands of 1 to 250 MWt.•Meet demand with mass-produce small reactors—fission batteries [FBs] of 5 to 30 MWt.•FBs leased and shipped whole from factory and returned whole to factory after use.•Refurbishment, fuel cycle and waste management operations done at factory.•Markets and technical requirements assessed for FBs. Fission Batteries (FBs) are nuclear reactors for customers with heat demands less than 250 MWt—replacing oil and natural gas in a low-carbon economy. Individual FBs would have outputs between 5 and 30 MWt. The small FB size has two major benefits: (1) the possibility of mass production and (2) ease of transport and leasing with return of used FBs to factory for refurbishing and reuse. Comparatively, these two features are lacking in larger conventional reactors. Larger reactors are not transportable and thus can’t obtain the manufacturing economics possible with mass production or the operational advantages of returning the FB to the factory after use. Leasing places the regulatory, maintenance and fuel-cycle burden on the leasing company that is minimized by large-fleet operations of identical units. The markets and economic requirements for FBs were examined. The primary existing markets are industrial, biofuels, off-grid electricity and container ships. Two major future markets were identified—advanced biofuels and hydrogen. In a low-carbon world, the competitive price range for heat is $20–50/MWh ($6–15/million BTU) and $70–115/MWh for non-grid electricity. The primary competition in these sectors is likely to be biofuels and hydrogen produced using alternative energy sources—grid electricity is non-competitive. Larger users of energy have alternative low-carbon energy choices including modular nuclear reactors and fossil fuels with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).