Rolls-Royce One Step Closer To SMRs – Watts Up With That?

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.