Britain gives Rolls-Royce the nod to sketch out its mini reactor future The British government has signed a deal with Rolls‑Royce to carry out the design work on small modular reactors (SMRs). Great British Energy – Nuclear (GBE-N), a government-owned company, said the Rolls‑Royce SMR contract formally starts technology design activities for what are intended to be the country's first SMRs. …
Military reactors are too small and have all kinds of complicated and expensive requirements associated with powering a warship for decades. Those features are not needed for civil power generation. It has never been the case that the idea was to use a military derived design.
The Rolls-Royce SMR looks a lot like a smaller version of an AP1000 or an EPR, and uses the same kind of fuel:
https://www.rolls-royce-smr.com/about-the-rolls-royce-smr
The boron-free design is one of the major innovations.
Indeed. RR have done nuclear stuff for a very long time (primarily for subs).
They have been wanting to profit from SMR for ages.
There's some of their "low level" (opinions vary on how low!) radioactive waste dumped a few miles away from me.
Although nominally secret I would bet that most of the people in Derbyshire know exactly where the RR nuclear R&D work goes on in the county.
I no longer have my RR contacts (all either retired or dead!) so not sure what tech they will use for their SMRs, but I would gamble they will be going on familiar processes based on their sub reactors, I doubt they will be gambling on taking the Thorium route.
That problem's easily solved: put a couple of squaddies* on the payroll et voila! you now have a military reactor.
Talking of military reactors, we have a bunch of them gathering dust in abandoned subs. Couldn't they be refurbed to keep the lights on?
* Or some of the navy's admirals that don't have ships to command.
From Wikipedia.
RR is preparing a small modular reactor (SMR) design called the UK SMR, a close-coupled three-loop pressurised water reactor (PWR) design.[31] Power output was initially designed to be 440 MWe, and subsequently increased to 470 MWe which is above the usual range considered to be a SMR.[3][32][31] It should be able to power a city the size of Sheffield.[10] The planning documents for the projects (by Rolls-Royce SMR co-owner ČEZ) for Temelín[33] and Tušimice[34] assume an output of 498 MWe.
The intended fuel is uranium dioxide (UO2).[35] A modular forced draft cooling tower will be used.[31] The design targets a 500-day construction time, on a 10 acres (4 ha) site.[35][36] Overall build time is expected to be four years, two years for site preparation and two years for construction and commissioning.[37]
I searched the web for "close-coupled three-loop pressurised water reactor", found various articles using the same phrase without explaining. So I'm not alone :)
I found the RR web page, very light on details. "Deliverable", but everything is deliverable. 5 years on-site construction time, which isn't bad if it happens, but no info on operating lifetime.
I adhere to the "all of the above" approach to expanding power generation, so if the UK can kickstart this industry for only 5 billion that's great. But the lack of details makes it look like all the other powerpoint pitches out there. Except that most SMR pitches try to propose something new. I'm underwhelmed.
Two minutes on t'internet reveals, "Most PWR designs make use of two to six steam generators, each associated with a coolant loop." and "In a close-coupled reactor design, the primary coolant circulation system is made as compact as possible to reduce the size of the reactor's containment."
Does anybody know what technical approach they propose? Based on a military reactor?
I'm pretty sure not. Or at least, only loosely based. We, and the US, fuel our modern submarine reactors once - for a 20-30 year lifespan. This is why they use highly enriched uranium, and only works because the sub spends most of its time docked - with the reactor on minimal power or shut off, and they spend quite a lot of their time at sea going as slow as possible and listening.- so on low power.
It took 7 years and half a billion to refit HMS Victorious, because it was designed to be able to replace the whole reactor core (if it needed life-extension / refuelling) - and we had to extend it to make up for the fact that the successor class were delayed. They may have to do the same with one or two of the Astutes, if we can't get the Aukus boats fast enough.
With all the regulatory and safety costs of nuclear, it doesn't really make sense to build them and not use them at full power most of the time. Though you might want to have them running at half power to give you some slack in the system, given they're supposed to be throttleable. But you're certainly not going to have them turned to minimum power most of the time, like a nuclear sub. So it'll need to be designed to be refuelled and using a less concentrated and so less radioactive fuel - which suggests the design will be quite different.
Not that I'm a nuclear physicist, so what do I know. I suspect the real secret sauce is having the thing small enough to build in a factory, so it's a lot less complex and expensive to build on site - it will just need assembly - you can more easily use robot welders in a factory, for example. Then its just like assembling flat pack furniture...
I suspect the real secret sauce is having the thing small enough to build in a factory
Yes, that is exactly it. Having every new nuclear plant essentially be a custom design that needs its own regulatory approvals etc. is why it takes forever to build one and bring it online. If you have a standardized design that's already approved so just ship them out to the site and install however many you need based on the power output you want you can build a new nuclear plant in a fraction of the time it used to take.
The reason they didn't do this in the first place is because reactors are more efficient if they're bigger. But loss of efficiency for "SMR" scale sized reactors isn't all that great, and is more than made up for by all the billions of dollars/pounds you don't spend in regulatory fees and years of additional interest on your bonds while waiting to get the bigger one online.
Thanks. Embarrassing indeed, now I want a summary!
OK 5% enrichment, solid core, fuel rods, refuelling every 18 months, classic PWR design.
Can't find the pressure vessel dimensions. The reactor pressure vessel for Hinkley point C was "delivered", just saying...
By some measures there's enough uranium 235 for another 100 years of these reactors. So its a bit pointless building reactors with a probable lifetime of 100 years (like the EDF's EPR), and the more we build the less time we'll have. So its OK if this RR SMR only has a 40-year lifespan, hopefully by that time will have breeder reactors that work...
Come on, be optimistic... A viable fusion reactor is obviously now only 20-30 years away, and having been so for about the last 70 years the law of averages says that SURELY it must show up at some point before the turn of the next millenium, probably just a few years after a working Quantum computer...
Highly enriched bullshit and massive bills for HM taxpayer - like it's always been for the nuclear "electricity that's too cheap to meter" industry.
The 'too cheap to meter' thing isn't the fault of the nuclear industry - it's the past 50 years of Government and their inability to have a coherent energy policy that means the price per unit (whatever the source) is pegged at the level of the most expensive cost in order to appease the energy producers..
After all, power produced by wind/solar is produced for peanuts compared to oil/coal/gas plants but we still get charged the same.
The 'too cheap to meter' lie started with the earliest Magnox reactors in the 1950s. This was back in the days when electricity generation and policy was controlled by the state-owned CEGB.
The policy(?) of pegging the cost of electricity to the spot price for gas came along decades later, several years after privatisation.
'Civilian nuclear power' has always been a massive marketing scam. Yes 'it works' i.e. it does (eventually) produce substantial quantities of usable electricity, but only through massive costs in time, 'energy', and money, much of which gets hidden away, out of public sight, in order to give the appearance of being a 'cost-effective' means of electricity generation. And still politicians struggle to have the courage to admit the whole thing is a sham, an exercise in technological willy-waving, and a magnificent ongoing boondoggle for all the suppliers. So the politicos keep on ponying-up taxpayer's cash rather than face the backlash of being the ones to pull down the curtain and reveal shameful the truth. Mind you a lot of military (and other government) spending runs on similar principles, so really it's just 'business as usual' just on a larger scale.
So the politicos keep on ponying-up taxpayer's cash rather than face the backlash of being the ones to pull down the curtain and reveal shameful the truth.
Massive marketing scam, you say? But you're right. They're getting harder to hide given news like this-
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2026/04/14/cfds-continue-to-pay-out-subsidies-despite-rising-cost-of-gas/
During March, renewable subsidies paid under CfDs totalled £258 million, based on 3.5 TWh, giving an average subsidy of £74/MWh.
Along with NESO warning about what will happen if Millibrain gets his way and we add a lot more solar. Spain already found that one out. Hence why the penny may have finally dropped and we're building nuclear generation again.
Are you seriously suggesting that nuclear is a better overall option than effectively managed renewables? We're only just getting started with those. We've been at it with fission for over fifty years and still can't get it to add up—including cleaning up afterwards!
During March, renewable subsidies paid under CfDs totalled £258 million
The US is spending hundreds of billions in a pointless war in the Middle East, a region which we would be able to ignore if oil was no longer needed. Nuclear has huge inbuilt subsidies based on the fact that no insurer will touch it, so governments become the defacto insurer of last resort. And the problem of nuclear waste is still totally unsolved, without even an attempt to solve in the UK. The US tried with Yucca, but NIMBY killed it.
If you add up all that the subsidies for renewables are chickenfeed. And in the US those have been taken away by Trump, but much to his frustration utilities keep announcing new solar and wind deployments, because it is cheaper even than natural gas turbines and way way cheaper than Trump's "clean beautiful coal" that no one wants even when he tries to force it on us by e.g. making the military buy coal power. Yes it has problems with intermittency but batteries solve a lot of that so while renewables can't handle 100% of the load today, someday they will and first fossil fuel generation then nuclear will fall by the wayside. By the time fusion becomes real it probably won't be able to compete on price with solar + storage...
The US is spending hundreds of billions in a pointless war in the Middle East, a region which we would be able to ignore if oil was no longer needed.
Oil will always be needed because there are many, many things we rely on oil to produce. Plus we rely on gas because our energy 'policy' relies on unreliable 'renewables'. The US understands this, hence why it's trying to place a stranglehold on oil & gas.
And the problem of nuclear waste is still totally unsolved, without even an attempt to solve in the UK.
Nope, the problem of nuclear waste was solved decades ago. Bury it, reprocess it, or burn it in modern reactor designs. But NIMBY's kill most of the proposals because they can't figure out how to put warning signs on waste repositories. Plus of course failing to understand physics, and stuff that has a half-life of thousands of years is much less dangerous than stuff with a short half-life. But then even that isn't necessarily dangerous because we feed that to patients for medical diagnostics and radiotherapy.
If you add up all that the subsidies for renewables are chickenfeed.
I wouldn't call £258m or £74/MWh chickenfeed. I'd call those the reasons why the UK has the highest cost electricity in the world, and why inflation is forecast to also be world leading. I'd also call them unecessary given windmills are very ancient and mature technology. But the problem should be obvious. The more we're forced to 'invest' in 'renewables', the more expensive our energy. If the 'renewables' industry were to be believed, then surely our energy costs should be falling, not rising..
Yes it has problems with intermittency but batteries solve a lot of that so while renewables can't handle 100% of the load today, someday they will and first fossil fuel generation then nuclear will fall by the wayside.
It really is bizarre the way supposedly intelligent people can't understand basic physics and engineering. Batteries don't generate energy, all they can do is time-shift it, at enormous additional cost. But such is the power of propaganda, convincing useful idiots that batteries can somehow solve the problems 'renewables' have created. But then idiots abound. So yesterday, Ursula announced her final solution to the European energy crisis. Save money on energy by not using it! Slow clap. Of course Germany's already learning this with their de-industrialisation, factories closing down and jobs lost.
But 'renewables' will never be able to solve the intermittency problems because they're fundamental. Sometimes wind speeds drop for days, and ever day (ok, night) solar stops working. Meanwhile, nuclear just keeps steaming ahead. And even though this RR pilot project isn't especially large, it'll still produce more electricity than our entire investment into 'renewables' at night on a cold, windless day.
I still don't get this desperate need for 'nuclear' to be 'the answer', when it is only 'the answer' for societies willing (and able) to spend huge amounts of time, effort, know-how, and money on a fragile 'hi-tech' solution that falls over as soon as you don't have 'huge amounts of time, effort, know-how, and money', leaving behind a poisonous legacy for generations.
Renewables aren't without their own 'fragilities', but an order of magnitude less than the nuclear option, i.e. sustainable and obtainable by a far greater proportion of people on the planet. And we've only just begun exploring their potential.
Yes there is other stuff you get from oil - but you don't have to. Nearly all of it can be easily made from agricultural products. Oil benefits from economies of scale when used to make gasoline and diesel, but if you stopped using it for cars and trucks it might not be. All that corn going to ethanol production (fully 1/3 of the US corn crop) could be used to make other "oil based" products. Though more likely you'd use other crops that work better for plastics production, so all the corn farmers will do anything they can to stand in the way of EVs. Ditto the soybean farmers whose crops are used to produce biodiesel, though it hasn't taken over a huge chunk of the crop the way ethanol has corn.
At any rate the loss of transportation as a market for oil (which is already occurring, despite right wingers doing their best to handicap EVs with doom and gloom scenarios about "where will we get the electricity" which they conveniently forgot when AI needed far more electricity over a shorter period of time than a 2040 EV mandate would) means the Middle East would become a whole lot less important and the US wouldn't have to care about it. That would mean we wouldn't need to have bases there, muck around in their governments, bomb them, etc. which would take the target off our backs for terrorism. Because like it or not the reason things like 9/11 occurred isn't because "they hate our freedom" like Bush laughably claimed, it is because they hate our bases on their land being used for take off and landing of our planes that drop bombs and kill their people. No bases, no bombing, no more worries about another 9/11.
Though more likely you'd use other crops that work better for plastics production, so all the corn farmers will do anything they can to stand in the way of EVs. Ditto the soybean farmers whose crops are used to produce biodiesel, though it hasn't taken over a huge chunk of the crop the way ethanol has corn.
Ah. Green economics at their finest. The EU did this once before. It convinced farmers to plant crops we could burn instead of eat. To the suprise of nobody, except perhaps Nick Stern, taking agricultural land away from food production promptly lead to food price increases and shortages. But if there were scaleable, viable bio alternatives to oil-based products, farmers would plant those crops.. With the same resulting food shortages. Especially given shutting down the petrochemicals industry would also mean a lot less fertilisers, reducing yields yet again. Or other fun stuff, like no tarmac. So we could pave roads with concrete, except concrete production needs a lot of energy. But I guess we could go back to the neo-Luddite death cult's idyllic pre-Industrial pastoral age and have dirt roads, horses and carts to go with our windmills.
And I'm curious what you'd plant to produce helium. One of those rather useful petrochemical byproducts
At any rate the loss of transportation as a market for oil (which is already occurring, despite right wingers doing their best to handicap EVs with doom and gloom scenarios about "where will we get the electricity" which they conveniently forgot when AI needed far more electricity over a shorter period of time than a 2040 EV mandate would)
The EV revolution is going much the same way it did the last time when Henrietta Ford drove one. ICE vehicles and the support infrastructure for fuel distribution & 'charging' is just a lot cheaper and more efficent than it is for electricity and batteries. Again it's just one of those things where the neo-Luddites attempt to reinvent the wheel and discover engineering realities smacking them in the face with a clue by four. But such is politics. There isn't a 'need' for GWs of 'AI' capacity, and given a lot of bids are entirely speculative, there isn't a demand either. Especially when insanity like 'Net Zero' also wants to decarbonise heating, transportation, cooking etc at the same time. But increase demand, reduce supply, increase supply costs and wonder why there's massive inflation.
25 years and a billion quid for the planning.
The rest of the build is easy.
For those that don't understand how fucking stupid English planning is, feel free to search for Lower Thames Crossing planning costs. Hint, the paperwork is longer than the actual tunnel.
Don't even get me started on the HS2
>” Don't even get me started on the HS2”
“Derailed: The story of HS2” is an excellent set of podcasts, from memory the problems HS2 encountered weren’t so much “The Planning Systrm”, but the politicians attempts to circumvent public engagement and the planning system, plus their desire to gold plate whilst expecting it to be delivered at bargain basement prices…
About the only saving grace is what is actually being built is high quality engineering.
