While they would be considered small at 440MW, they are still full nuclear plants - the novelty seems to be that as much of the structure as possible will be assembled from prefabricated modules constructed off-site.
I can't figure out the economics here. They project $2.7B to construct each 440MW plant. This is presumably an optimistic estimate since they haven't even designed it.
Then you have high running and security costs and subsequent decommissioning costs. You need security infrastructure for storage and transport of fuel and waste.
And I guess it's envisioned it will take a least 10 years to get the first one operational given they've just started on design work?
In contrast, you can build 2GW of on-shore wind capacity for that money and have it delivering electricity in a year or less. The plant will require almost no personal at all to run, and maintenance can be done one or two part-time engineers. Operating costs are effectively zero.
Sure, depending on location 10% of the time you'll dip below 1/3 operating capacity but that will still exceed the output from one of these plants. Even if the peak 2GW cannot be utilised efficiently immediately, advancements in storage and increases in BEV sales will make the excess valuable.
I think there little future role for fusion for electricity generation - it's just too complex and expensive. The collapse in price for wind/solar in the last decade have changed all the numbers. Prices are so cheap that you can basically over-provision wind/solar by a factor of 3 to minimise effect of fluctuations. Add in cheap efficient combined-cycle gas peaker plants to provide smoothing in production and you can get to 80% carbon-free relatively easily and economically.