Nuclear technologies have typically struggled to compete with natural gas on economics alone, as nuclear
technologies tend to come with high capital costs and significant operational and maintenance costs.
HolosGen is a very-small modular reactor design company that has developed the Holos Quad, a reactor
core that can address the cost issues associated with nuclear. It was designed with a number of
characteristics that allow a much lower cost and potential economic competitiveness with fossil fuels in
some markets including a semi autonomous design with true load following, a small EPZ of only 50 meters,
no need for an on-site operation team, transportability by ISO containers, scalable size, passive safety, and
more. This technology was developed with the help of ARPA-E and DOE National Labs. While this
technology offers promise to address cost issues with nuclear power generation technologies, the Holos
technology still remains to be demonstrated. Furthermore, certain costs may be disadvantageous to small
reactor designs, such as NRC licensing fees, as these costs are fixed regardless of the size of the reactor.
Additionally, if the Holos Quad offers a number of characteristics that are not valued by the electricity
market, such as flexible operation, then these characteristics may not end up being cost saving measures.
