Rolls-Royce’s revised reactor building design.
If anyone mentions nuclear waste, let’s remember the toxic waste from rare earth mining and from used batteries, wind turbines and solar panels.
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A Rolls-Royce design for a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) will likely receive UK regulatory approval by mid-2024 and be able to produce grid power by 2029, Paul Stein, chairman of Rolls-Royce Small Modular Reactors, told Reuters (via Euractiv).
The British government asked its nuclear regulator to start the approval process in March, having backed Rolls-Royce’s $546 million funding round in November to develop the country’s first SMR reactor.
Policymakers hope SMRs will help cut dependence on fossil fuels and lower carbon emissions.
Speaking to Reuters in an interview conducted virtually, Stein said the regulatory “process has been kicked off, and will likely be complete in the middle of 2024.
“We are trying to work with the UK Government, and others to get going now placing orders, so we can get power on grid by 2029.”
In the meantime, Rolls-Royce will start manufacturing parts of the design that are most unlikely to change, Stein added.
Each 470 megawatt (MW) SMR unit costs 1.8 billion pounds ($2.34 billion) and would be built on a 10-acre site, the size of around 10 football fields.
Unlike traditional reactors, SMRs are cheaper and quicker to build and can also be deployed on ships and aircraft. Their “modular” format means they can be shipped by container from the factory and installed relatively quickly on any proposed site.
Full article here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
At last. A bit of good news on the energy front. How can we accelerate this process?
[…] Rolls-Royce expecting UK approval for mini nuclear reactor by mid-2024 […]
‘will likely receive UK regulatory approval by mid-2024’ — around the likely time of the next general election 🤔
Yes, Oldbrew, – hadn’t we discussed all this some time ago: and if they “KNOW” ( expect ? ) approval by 2024, then why not just get on and build them NOW ( JIT ) what’s the problem ?
Hands up anyone who believes that these reactors will actually be built and connected to the Grid?
This is just the usual future promising of jam tomorrow….
Agreed. ‘Small’ and ‘modular’ don’t eliminate government constraints on construction.
I played golf a few times with a guy who worked on the now defunct Jenkensville nuke project. He was a licensed engineer. He said he was a welding inspector. He said he, and two other engineers, looked over the shoulder of a welder. Assuming the engineers were paid more than the welder, welding cost at least 6X normal. This is how a government regulator insures quality. It’s not how a manufacturing manager would insure quality.
‘1.8 billion pounds ($2.34 billion)’ is not a good deal. But in today’s regulatory environment, it’s expected.
Okay, another thing. RR says they will make 10 of these fine modular reactors over 15 years. That’s not enough volume to achieve any savings. Each unit will still be hand built. Using a similar design accomplishes nothing.
Is this a fixed price?
It seems to translate to around 3 times the cost of the equivalent capacity of a new coal-fired plant.
10 acres a pop. A new paradigm of “small modular”.
‘can also be deployed on ships and aircraft’
The 10 acres will have to shrink a lot.
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Saighdear says: ‘why not just get on and build them NOW ( JIT ) what’s the problem ?’
The problem is, they can’t sell any until the official approval arrives. Big outlay, no income.
This sounds like the cry that fusion power is only 10 years away which was first heard 30 odd years ago. This is a case of believe it if it happens.
Good news indeed – regarding these RR SMRs (actually kind of medium MRs – 470 MW is not that small) I take an optimistic view that this will really happen before 2030 and surprise a lot of people.
Some might say “been said before, nothing happened etc.” but historically, people have made a big mistake by inferring from the confusion, infighting and inefficiency of democratic countries like ours that such countries can do nothing in the face of a crisis but just roll over and accept their fate. I seem to remember some folks from Germany and Japan who made that assumption a century ago – and it didn’t work out well for them.
When push comes to shove – we can get things done – just watch this space for the next few years. Brexit has also shown us the need for self-dependence.
Previous nuclear ambitions have been defeated by the expectation of endless cheap natural gas. That’s gone. Plus the U.K. have tied themselves to an electrification schedule with cars and house boilers. That need won’t be met by wind and solar.
It’s time for nuclear since there’s nowhere to hide anymore from energy realities.
Sad reality: Uranium is a rare element and increasingly more expensive to mine!
peterandnen
“increasingly more” is redundant, “increasingly expensive to mine” is sufficient.
You risk going down the road of the failed “peak oil” predictions.
With more incentive and more exploration, plenty more uranium will appear.
To say nothing of even greater reserves of thorium out there…
And fast-breeders can use all the 238U too.
Uranium costs half what it did 15 years ago.
“Uranium is a rare element and increasingly more expensive to mine!”
You TRYING to be funny?
Uranium can be extracted from seawater if the cost can be kept bearable.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2298993-material-inspired-by-blood-vessels-can-extract-uranium-from-seawater/
Uranium can be extracted from seawater
Indeed deposited uranium salts in marine sediments are used in palaeo-climate reconstructions to assess oxygenation of deep ocean water in past times:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-63628-x
Hey! Don’t shoot the messenger! Uranium is a more expensive fuel to use compared to hydrocarbons. If Rolls Royce mini nuke power plants were the future, why did they chose diesel and gas turbines for our navy’s pride and joy – Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier? And for those who still think the abundance of an element is all it takes to keep on the lights just remember hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe but it’s not a practical economic fuel source in our world!
“Uranium is a more expensive fuel to use compared to hydrocarbons.”
Perhaps that is true. But, if so, that is 100% government’s fault. It doesn’t need to be. The extreme cost of nuclear reactors is from government regulation. And that’s the reactors, not the fuel. The cost of the fuel is less than 20% of the cost of nuke electricity.
Yes Phil Salmon, there is lots of Uranium in the world. The World Nuclear Association states that Australia has 23% of the worlds known reserves. That is those that are operating (3 mines) and those deposits which geologists have proved in the past to become mines if the demand is there (during the 1970’s there was much activity because of the oil crisis). However I would suggest that Australia has at least 3 times those reserves in unexplored areas and in undrilled areas surrounding the existing deposits. No one spends money when is there no market and return on investment. Finely, Thorium reactors have been proved to work in the past and many compaies are now doing research particularly in India and China. India has huge deposits of thorium and so has Australia. I think you will find there are also large deposits in Africa.(I have invested a few dollars in an Australia company that that has plans with the Government of an East African country to open a large mineral sands deposit which contains Thorium.)
peterandnen
why did they chose diesel and gas turbines for our navy’s pride and joy – Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier?
Because this is the U.K., the “aircraft carrier’s” main function is a giant cruise ship or yacht, and it’s inhabitants don’t want to miss from their itinerary all the nice tropical locations that are submissively antinuclear, as well as New Zealand etc. Politics, nothing technical.
“Thorium reactors have been proved to work in the past”
[citation needed]
You TRYING to be funny, too?
OK my view is different but who is right? We agree the objective is cheap energy for the masses.
I see three paths to the future.
1 Keep prospecting the Earth’s mantle for pockets of stored energy.
2 Drill below the mantle and tap the heat source below.
3. Place a blanket on the lawn and lie on it. At night you’ll see billions of energy sources twinkling above. By day you’ll see the nearest energy source: Sol, which appears to have given several billion years of stable output and is expected continue similar output for another billion years. Planet Earth receives about 2 billionth of Sol’s output. Today, we congratulate ourselves on tapping into less than a billionth of incoming insolation (using solar panels and silly windmills).
I see a different future for satisfying energy needs of mankind: There will eventually be space solar energy collectors beaming down as much energy as we need.
So I ask you: Should our top engineers be working on option 1, option 2 or option 3?
Yes, I should have said crust instead of mantle in the above post. I had been trying to find an estimate of the total available energy in the mantle. My guess is it’s huge (thousands of years of mankind’s needs). I read somewhere geothermal power generation was in 2010 ahead of solar and wind but is now falling behind. Why? Is this the reality of our crazy world of political nonsense decision making. For the UK, geothermal energy is probably uneconomic but the hydrocarbons beneath our feet are more than we need for the next few hundred years. CO2 warming the planet? Well, it might work (I doubt it) and will it stop the slide into the next ice age? So, for those who are still convinced these mini nuke plants are the future bear in mind the French nuclear authority concluded human error cannot never be ruled out in nuclear plant operation and then read Chernobyl disaster reports (Wikipedia). You just have to accept these 10 mini nuke stations in the UK are never going to happen!