From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
Rolls-Royce has cleared a key hurdle in the race to build Britain’s first mini-nuclear power plant, as competition across Europe ramps up.
On Tuesday, the FTSE 100 engineering giant became the first developer to advance a small modular reactor (SMR) design to the final stage of examination by UK regulators.
Helena Perry, director of safety and regulatory affairs at Rolls-Royce SMR, said the latest approval was “the most important milestone to date in advancing deployment of Rolls-Royce SMRs in the UK”.
She added: “We have built fantastic momentum and the team will move directly into step three of this rigorous independent assessment of our technology – ideally positioning us to deliver low-carbon nuclear power and support the UK’s transition to net zero.”
The Derby-based company wants to build a new generation of lower-cost power plants, made from modular parts that would be produced in factories and then assembled on site.
SMRs would each generate 470 megawatts of electricity and cost between £2bn and £3bn initially. Rolls-Royce aims to bring that number down gradually through economies of scale.
The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) said Rolls has now been cleared to move into the third and final stage of the UK’s generic design assessment.
That process is expected to conclude by the end of 2026, after which Rolls will be able to apply for site-specific approval to build its first SMR.
A summary assessment published by the ONR on Tuesday said that the regulator has “not identified any fundamental safety, security or safeguards shortfalls that could prevent permissioning the construction of a power station based on the generic Rolls-Royce SMR design”.
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Philip Bratby wrote this earlier this year about the painfully slow progress to SMRs:
Progress in the UK on SMRs has inevitably been slow. In 2014 the UK government published a report on SMR concepts, feasibility and potential in the UK. In 2015 the government announced that it would invest at least £250 million over five years in nuclear R&D including SMRs. In 2016 the UK government called for expressions of interest in a competition to identify the best value SMR for the UK. In 2017 the government announced that the SMR competition had been closed and a new two-phase advanced modular reactor competition was launched, designed to incorporate a wider range of reactor types. In 2018 it was announced that eight organisations were awarded contracts to produce feasibility studies. In 2020, the government awarded £10 million to two SMR developers. In 2021 the government announced that it was setting up the Future Nuclear Enabling Fund (FNEF) with £120 million available “to help mature nuclear projects ahead of the government selection process”.
In 2021 the government also announced that it would contribute £210 million to development of the Rolls-Royce SMR. The Rolls-Royce SMR is a PWR reactor, designed for hydrogen and synthetic fuel manufacturing as well as for electricity generation. The Rolls-Royce SMR consortium, involving many of the major UK engineering firms, aims to build 16 reactors, each of 470 MWe. In 2022 Rolls-Royce announced that it had identified four priority locations to build SMR-based power stations in the UK, all on previous nuclear power station sites currently owned by the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).
In July 2023 the government launched Great British Nuclear (GBN) to administer a competition to create SMRs, and then to co-fund any viable projects. It is intended to deliver the government’s long-term nuclear programme and support the government’s ambition to deliver up to 24GW of nuclear power in the UK by 2050. GBN has launched the next phase of the SMR technology selection process and with six potential SMR vendors having registered their interest. The process is intended to identify those SMR projects which the government will co-fund. The date of the decision keeps getting put back. GBN has now delayed its decision on where the first SMRs will be sited until after the next general election. So after 10 years, it might just be possible that the UK will be in a position to start work on building the first SMR!
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Of course, successful development of SMRs would soon make wind and solar power redundant. Why duplicate capacity?
One might almost think that the Green Blob has been deliberately putting the brakes on the development of nuclear power.
That graph is telling. From 2020 to 2025, UK nuclear capacity halves. This supports the view that “net zero” policy is not actually about CO2 emissions, but about starving us of energy and so killing off our industrial civilization.
That’s what the “Duck Test” says.
Also the graph shows 3GW in construction in 2030 which results in 0 GW in operation in 2035 and the same or slightly less in production. That is a singularly uninspiring plan.
They’re probably just waiting for the Antis to die off – next election, 10 years, blah,blah,blah…
That would imply a level of thought and planning not usually found among the ecos.
Anti-nuclear is a long-standing green position, anti-carbon is newer but just as deeply embedded in the green psyche, the fact that the two positions are mutually exclusive is far too complicated for people who think that disrupting motorways, or spraying orange paint on things, is going to “save the world”.
Anti-nuclear, anti-carbon? You’re making it over-complicated.
Anti.
That’s the Green position.
Ed Milliband will do everything to stop it for his renewable paymasters
I used to think that but I nowadays think they actually believe it will work. Any fringe benefits are their just reward for bringing Britain’s energy into the 21st century.
The nuclear lobby IMO would have offered the same “incentives” and the renewable mob, so it can’t just have been about money.
The reason it won’t work is subtle enough so even techies can be fooled, so what hope does a technology dyslexic politician have of untangling the lies?
what hope does a technology dyslexic politician have of untangling the lies?
Allow the truth to be published.
Hey Eric, have you changed terms from engineering dyslexic to technology dyslexic to be more inclusive? I think you will have to come up with another term to include economics or at least mathematics.
Frankly, most politicians have shown little aptitude for anything more than reciting talking points fed to them by the oligarchs.
FJB & FKH (HUH)
HDH
HUH = Heels Up Harris
Talking points from oligarchs, certainly.
But what about waving like a flag in the winds of public opinion?
There they are experts. After all, public opinion is what gets them reelected.
The oligarchs have a lot of sway with public opinion since they control most of the social media, news outlets, and education systems.
Any deviation from the narrative is shunned and hidden to great effect since most people are more concerned with their daily lives rather than spending a little time doing their own fact checking.
Most people live on autopilot unless there is a need to concentrate on logic and truth seeking. Unfortunately, things have to get real bad before people get out of their stupor and realize how much they have been lied to.
The climate hoax has been going on for about fifty years with lots of brainwashing to obscure the failings of the leftist agenda. There are still a great many, probably a majority of people that give credence to the crap that has been spewed by the “experts”.
As Benjamin Franklin said, “It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.”
FJB & FKH (HUH)
STEM Dyslexic. Official DEI approved term.
That’s a winner. Hope Eric is paying attention.
______________________________________________________________
“Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.” Maurice Strong quoted in the September 1. 1997 edition of National review magazine.
Of course, the objective is to reduce or eliminate the human population to “save the world”.
Top scientists like Maurice strong WILL cause the collapse.
Doubtful, a) he wasn’t a scientist and b) he’s dead
but the beat goes on
“One might almost think that the Green Blob has been deliberately putting the brakes on the development of nuclear power.”
And ‘One’ would be most definitely correct in thinking that. Wind and solar are, the Blob claims, clean and cheap and yet nuclear is the cleanest and most reliable energy (along with natural gas) there is and operates reliably form the start for one hell of a lot longer than either a PV panel or a turbine construction could achieve in even their wildest dreams.
The Green Blob needs to be exterminated as a certain fictional species might suggest and soonest the better for all of humanity and sensibility.
Yet I read
A state-backed nuclear laboratory at the heart of Britain’s proposed mini-reactor revolution is facing closure in a headache for new Energy Secretary Ed Miliband.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/07/12/top-mini-nuclear-reactor-lab-closure-blow-miliband/
Sure. EDF bailed out, Nuscale is sued by its investors for being a scam. And everyone with a bit of knowledge knows that the expensive powerpoint reactors will stand no chance against renewables.
2050 UK will have a nuclear phaseout – like most countries. The only reason for nuclear will be military applications.
Meanwhile in the real world:
Wind and solar energy overtake fossil fuels to provide 30% of EU electricity
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/30/renewables-overtake-fossil-fuels-to-provide-30-of-eu-electricity
The Cleantech Revolution | It’s exponential, disruptive, and now
https://rmi.org/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2024/07/RMI-Cleantech-Revolution-pdf-1.pdf
If nuclear isn’t adopted soon… UK, EU, and the USA won’t have a “phase-out”..
… they will have a total, almost permanent BLACK-OUT.
And gormless twits like you will be to blame. !
NuScale certainly is not a scam – that’s a completely preposterous statement that could only come from a dedicate- to-ignorance propagandist greenie like you.
NuScale produced the world’s first fully approved small modular reactor design, approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The first reactor deal fell apart because of a large increase in construction costs caused mostly by the Democrats’ vast tax money giveaway and subsidization of so-called “renewable energy” that led to the highest inflation rates in more than 40 years … inflation that was also exacerbated by the supply chain disruptions of COVID that have taken years to overcome.
Wind and solar cannot produce sustainable 24/7/365 base load power, period, by definition, no matter how many extravagant claims are made on its behalf, or on behalf of so called cost efficient energy storage made of “Unobtainium”. Nuclear has always been the most reliable source of base load power since the first commercial plants went into service.
But of course that is why greenies like you hate nuclear, because it defeats your actual objective of constricting energy supplies to force all people to live short ugly lives without modern and cheap energy available
Northern Europe had particularly strong level of winds during the first half of 2024. But Europe also regularly has long periods of dunkelflaute when there is little wind. So what happened earlier this year is irrelevant in the scheme of things. Learn something about what you post.
“..uh, seven straight days with no wind…”
30%? Wasn’t it 100% last week, with a great fanfare?
Tell that to the Ontario government which is expanding its nuclear capability, obviously they missed your memo.
You believe any headline the media pushes.
Too bad you cannot think for yourself.
This was exactly the reaction he (or she) wanted, the more of them the better. That’s the only reason he (or she) posts. Its not about argument or belief at all. Its about polluting the comments section by drawing reactions.
Meanwhile, China is constructing no fewer than 36 new nuclear reactors.
More slow movement in nuclear…….www.terrapower.com
Starting from scratch and assuming no real government interference, I wonder how long it would take SpaceX or a new Elon Musk entity to design and get an SMR up and running.
Seems to me that the fuel, technology, engineering and operation for SMRs have been sorted for decades now.
The delays are from timidity in political will, and over-fretting the “safety” aspects of siting.
Here’s hoping that rationality can begin to kick in from here on
Should I comment on the millions of designs that never made it to the next step of operational prototype units? Naw, I don’t think that will be necessary.
Waiting for the generation that put full faith in CBS news at the time of Three Mile Island to pass.
Are you talking about carbon capture, green hydrogen or the next new battery designs?
Those and uncountable more. Just do a Web search on “worst design failures” and enjoy the hundreds of hits.
Just a few that immediately come to mind:
— flying cars
— personal jet packs
— space elevators
— interplanetary/interstellar spaceships powered by nuclear fusion bombs
— hyperloop transportation (high speed “trains” in vacuum tubes)
. . . all well-designed on paper/computer!
All 5 examples are for transporting humans from A to B.
4/5 are fighting the same enemy: gravity
Second to last paragraph of the above article:
“Of course, successful development of SMRs would soon make wind and solar power redundant. Why duplicate capacity?”
OK, I’ll bite: because the main issue is not capacity as much as it is about supply reliability. Wind and solar are, by their very nature, intermittent and cannot be relied upon 24/7/365. Nuclear power typically operates at nameplate capacity for something like 95% of its design life.
Given this, the decision factors then become what mix of solar, wind and nuclear is (a) politically acceptable, and (b) economically optimum.
Weather dependent unreliables cannot produce electricity 24×7. Period. If reliable power is goal, they require 100% backup. That could be duplicate capacity or some other costly scheme.
No matter how you do it, it’s expensive and a complete waste of resources.
Yes. When you do the numbers it is cheaper to have a 100% nuclear fleet that you turn down a notch when they oversupply. The duplicated costs of having wind/solar that cannot even guarantee the minimum makes no sense and never has.
The real argument should be that fossil fuels can outcompete nuclear, but is that due to nuclear having larger regulatory hurdles to overcome before they can even start generating market supply.
That’s a simple answer.
100% nuclear
0% wind
0% solar
Perhaps it’s simple for you because you haven’t recently looked at the actual cost of nuclear power plants when they reach the point of becoming operational.
For reference, the Vogtl Unit 4 nuclear reactor (rated at 1114 KW electrical output) cost over $15 billion in 2024 USD.
Oh, BTW, it took 15 years from the start of construction of Vogtl 4 until it was brought on-line for commercial electricity generation (in April 2024).
No, it’s simple because nuclear can provide the energy needed, on demand.
Wind and solar cannot, and will never be able to, so they are worse-than-useless parasites on the grid.
Well, if it’s as simple as you repeatedly claim, I’m left wondering why nuclear power plants aren’t currently supplying at least 95% of all electricity demand in the US.
There is simple dreaming . . . and then there is harsh reality.
Canada invented the first one in 1957 at rhe Chalk River, Ontario nuclear facility and provided engineering data to assist development of the second one at US’s Oak Ridge, Tennessee establishment in 1960. The US Nuclear Commission ordered the latter closed after a few years out of concern it could replace the the technology that produced plutonium needed for weaponry. Canada’s original plant operated until 1997, producing the entire range of isotopes for medical, technical and research applications for the world!
https://torontopubliclibrary.typepad.com/local-history-genealogy/2019/08/going-nuclear-in-ontario-historic-photos-of-chalk-river.html
“Canada’s original plant operated until 1997”
Panels can’t compete with characteristics like 40-year operating life so it must not be talked about.
The tiniest part of civilization knows that the Chernobyl site had multiple reactors and that the site produced electric power for decades _after_ the famous incident. Also no-longer-mentioned: Chernobyl is in Ukraine.
That is a good thing, at least the second half of that statement!
The Chernobyl nuclear reactor Number 4 explosion, fire and core meltdown occurred on April 26, 1986. The last operating reactor at the Chernobyl power plant was shut down on December 15, 2000.
(source: https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/chernobyl/faqs )
That’s an interval of 14.7 years, nowhere close to “decades”.
This headline from CNBC (April 26, 2023):
“Ukraine’s nuclear power plants are still a source of nightmares years after the Chornobyl disaster”
(source: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/26/37-years-after-chornobyl-ukraines-nuclear-plants-are-again-in-danger.html )
“a source of nightmares“? Oh no?
Did you forget so soon? Ukraine and Chernobyl in the same sentence.
Oh, no!
And:
https://www.cns-snc.ca/nuclear-history/
Rolls Royce’s £3 billion 470 MW nuclear reactor is not a small modular reactor by any stretch of the imagination. It’s simply a scaled-down version of their larger reactor. It’s a joke to call it an SMR, but they saw all the government subsidies being thrown at SMR development and shrewdly held out their hat with a wink and a nod. It’s massively expensive, which is the fundamental problem SMR’s are supposed to solve. Actual small, modular reactors are small enough to be built on an assembly line, drastically reducing assembly costs, self-contained, and easily shipped to the site and dropped into place rather than an expensive on-site custom build, as every utility-scale nuclear reactor has been. We need Elon Musk to start building them. He’s the modern Henry Ford, constantly innovating ways to assemble cars and rocket engines more simply, reliably, and inexpensively. Rolls Royce isn’t up to the task.
Jay Bhattacharya talked about government backed research and that the ideas being funded are now much older than in previous years. Now the ideas are 7-9 years old when they used to be only around 2 years. He mentioned the research on Alzheimer’s being locked in on the amyloid plaque even though the drugs developed seem to have minimal effect.
No doubt, the same is true of the NRC and sources of funding for small nuclear reactors. No new designs seem to be moving forward, most likely because they are what you described, scaled down old designs.
There are very few Elon Musk industrial innovators, in fact, the term industrial innovator seems to be an oxymoron in today’s world.
That is the biggest shame of the current status quo, all the designs are basically old and inefficient: they run at lower temps and use solid fuel that makes it difficult to separate out the waste, and doesn’t get the full use of the fuel.
China has made a master move in developing molten salt thorium reactors – high temperatures mean that they can be about 50% efficient instead of 30, and the molten aspect means that online refueling and reprocessing can happen, and also thorium is cheaper than uranium (its basically a waste byproduct of rare earth metal production so there’s lots of available stocks), and has much shorter lifespan waste products.
It’s the closest thing to a Mr. Fusion device, and would probably be cheaper than even a fusion reactor would be (at least until D-D fusion is developed)
So it feels to me like the current designs are a waste of resources, but yet they are being built, and even the cost overruns of ones like Vogtle aren’t scaring the utilities from planning more.
I was only in the nuclear industry for a short bit in the 90s, so if the more experienced members of the craft could chime in some real numbers about reactors in the western world, it would be appreciated.
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/the-two-lies-that-killed-nuclear
Same people you left are probably still there.
Well when you regulate a product into oblivion it’s hard to justify R&D for the “latest” tech.
The real issue is being able to make a reactor in an efficient, probably modular, factory built and tested way, and then assembled at the remote site.
So whether it’s a sub-100MW design that might fit on the back of a truck, or a much larger design that is built up of smaller parts, the goal is really to take advantage of having the experienced workforce, specialized equipment and tools and other increasingly rare and expensive facets in one, dedicated factory setting instead of trying to find experienced people and technologies at various sites that might only be a nuclear construction site for a couple of decades and then nothing happens for the next few decades.
Also there is a thing called economies of scale – the Koreans have a very successful reactor design that was recently completed in UAE with 4, 1.345GWe reactors – probably cheaper than the per GW of the small reactors. The 5.6GW at Barakah plant was built for under $25B, even though UAE had no pre-existing nuclear experienced construction companies. The article above quotes about $3B for just .4GW, though it does mention that RR is hoping to build repeat units cheaper.
The smaller units have the advantage of being able to be completed quicker and be generating money sooner so that the financing costs can be reduced so that is a big plus for utilities and ratepayers.
“1.345GWe reactors” That’s a lot of decimal places. Howabout “1.3”?
The people who know how to do it have been working on navy ships and big reactors for a looonnnng time. SMR might have to wait for new minds. Also, broken record alert, if B Gates bailed on the idea there might be something wrong I have not heard yet.
Groucho Marx understood the Greens before they were Green.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=groucho+marx+whatever+it+is+i%27m+against+it&iax=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DxHash5takWU&ia=videos
The Germans have a word for it that infiltrated the English language long ago. Angst.
The stock price of many Western politicians, pharmaceutical companies, and greentards, has benefited greatly from it.
Wind and solar plants were redundant from day 1
These are the reactor developers which, in my opinion, best fit the Elon Musk style of management:
NuScale (50 MWe & 77 MWe modules)
Kairos Power (140 MWe modules)
Oklo (15 MWe & 50 MWe modules)
Last Energy (20 MWe modules)
NuScale and Kairos are targeting the power utilities as their major customers. Oklo and Last Energy will construct, own, and operate their own reactors and sell the power they produce as energy service providers.
Last Energy is looking only at foreign markets. The firm, based in Washington DC, views the NRC licensing process as being extremely onerous and cumbersome in ways which add nothing of value to what are already well-known safe reactor design principles for light water reactors.
If the money were to be made available, NuScale could have their first plant operational in the US before the end of the decade. Last Energy could have their design operational in Europe even before that.
Which reactor design less than 1000 MWe will be first to go live in commercial operation on the North American continent?
Most likely it will be the GE Hitachi BWXR-300 design. Simply because the Canadians are financing the reactor and because the major reactor components will be produced in Canada.
Slow but it’s progress, let’s get a move on.
Go nukes!
Sod the UK. Barge mount them, and sell them to the world now.
Politicians (British ones at least) see SMRs as small and cuddly. This one is certainly small and you will probably need a at least dozen of them on a single site to produce a worthwhile amount of electricity and have sensible running costs, including safety systems and fuel handling costs, because they definitely ain’t cuddly.
This doesn’t necessarily invalidate the concept of the SMR but there is a need to view it in hard, practical, terms.
What does mean as the price per kwh on my electric bill?
It will ALWAYS go up . . . no matter wind, solar, nuclear or fossil fuel.
From the above article:
“It is intended to deliver the government’s long-term nuclear programme and support the government’s ambition to deliver up to 24GW of nuclear power in the UK by 2050.”
Errr . . . do the Brits consider a 26-year interval to bring “SMRs” online as fast paced? Or perhaps that’s just what one gets with a “generic design”.
According to the above 24GW of nuclear power by 2050, using SMRs alone would require at least 48 SMRs, allowing for some being offline, or at least 4 additional Hinkley C size nuclear power stations (although on the Hinkley time scale we are fast running out of time to build sufficient new large power stations by 2050).
The assumption that solving lots of smaller , not necessarily the same, problems is somehow easier, or somehow cheaper, than few larger ones is contrary to the lessons learned from the original industrial revolution.
Certainly in the case of security and waste management proliferation would seem to be a problem multiplier.
The issue of power generation is falling into the groupthink trap with SMRs being brought up as the solution when those who do so have obviously not researched the problem , nor thought it through fully.
For example, a search shows that as recently as 2022 only 3 civilian SMRs were in operation worldwide.