Six Small Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) Selected For Evaluation in the UK.

[NNadir]

Although the UK, like Germany, can generally be assumed to hold contempt for climate change, there is a silver lining for the long term, interest in advanced nuclear reactors:

UK SMR selection contest: Six companies into next stage

Subtitle:

EDF, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy International LLC, Holtec Britain Limited, NuScale Power, Rolls Royce SMR and Westinghouse Electric Company UK Limited are now to be invited to bid for UK government contracts in the next stage of the process.

Excerpts from the article:

The UK government has plans to expand nuclear energy capacity to 24 GW by 2050, with a fleet of small modular reactors (SMRs) a key part of that strategy. Earlier this year the government, and the new Great British Nuclear (GBN) arms-length body set up to help deliver that extra capacity, began the selection process for which SMR technology to use.

There are more than 70 different designs of SMRs around the world at different stages of development, and it is not known how many of them put themselves forward for selection, which GBN said was judged on being "the most able to deliver operational SMRs by the mid-2030s". The aim is for a final investment decision to be taken in 2029...

...Rolls-Royce SMR CEO Chris Cholerton, said: "The Rolls-Royce SMR is a British solution to the global energy security and decarbonisation challenge. We welcome our shortlisting and are eager to build on this progress, moving quickly to the next stage where we can work to agree a contract and help the government reach its ambition to deliver up to 24 GW of nuclear power by 2050...

...Westinghouse Electric Company President and CEO Patrick Fragman said: "Congratulations to Great British Nuclear on their swift progress. We are proud to provide our proven, advanced AP300 SMR technology to build a more secure, cleaner energy future...

...NuScale's VOYGR SMR is the only one so far to have been certified by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and it says it is being considered in more than 10 countries around the world...

...Holtec's 160 MWe SMR is a pressurised light-water reactor using low-enriched uranium fuel. The design has completed the first phase of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's three-phase pre-licensing vendor design review and is undergoing pre-licensing activities with the US NRC...

Many of the SMR designs I've seen are of the "breed and burn" nature, meaning they are designed to run at close to 100% capacity utilization reliably. The "by 2050" plan for 24GW therefore suggests about 0.7 Exajoules of energy per year, about 1/10th of Britain's current energy demand. If the 24GW is GWe, and based on a Rankine cycle, it somewhat better, 2.1 EJ of primary energy.

This would have been too little too late at the turn of the last century, and is too little too late right now, but it is, of course, better than nothing.

Britain has the world's largest inventory of commercial plutonium, and I would hope that some of these designs are built around that factor. This said, I'm pulling for Holtec, despite their pure uranium design, since their corporate structure is in New Jersey, and I would love for my son to work for them after he gets his Ph.D. in nuclear materials.

[multigraincracker]

1. I might be wrong, but it seems the

small ones used in submarines have a pretty good safety record.

[NNadir]

2. Overall you're right. The first reactor to provide commercial power to the grid in the US...

...was basically a submarine reactor on land, the reactor at Shippenport, which had a remarkable history in the development of nuclear energy.

One small submarine reactor has failed, a Soviet reactor on K-19. It had an unusual lead coolant.

I'm actually quite in favor of lead coolants, generally as practiced LBE (lead bismuth eutectic) coolants, but neat lead would be OK with me, since some will be transmuted into less toxic bismuth in any case.

Obviously the material science at the time of K-19 reactor's design was not sufficient.