Rolls-Royce Wins Approval for Small Modular Reactors
Rolls-Royce, a company synonymous with quality manufacturing, has cleared one of the last major hurdles to begin construction of its first modular nuclear reactor in Britain.
Modular nuclear reactors are much cheaper to construct than conventional nuclear power stations, and can be constructed in a matter of years rather than decades. Because of these factors, many people consider that the future of nuclear power lies with small modular reactors.
Rolls-Royce is a company that has made its name as a manufacturer of luxury cars and jet engines. Its jet engines are the mainstay of the European Airbus aircraft, as well as Boeing’s Dreamliner.
Less well known is its provision of diesel and gas-turbine engines for naval vessels and a range of propellers for civil and naval purposes. Its customers include the U.S. Navy.
Relevant to this article, Rolls-Royce has, for the past 60 years, supplied the nuclear-power plants installed in all British nuclear-powered submarines.
Rolls-Royce says its nuclear submarines have clocked around 30 million kilometres at sea. To show the efficiency of its power plants, it says that “a small spoonful of uranium is all it takes to power a fully submerged submarine on a full circumnavigation of the world”.
Its technical expertise in delivering nuclear technology is second to none.
Indifference
For years, it has been trying to get British government approval to build small modular nuclear reactors, but has faced indifference from governments.
Last April, it announced that it was scaling back plans to build two new factories for its small modular reactor (SMR) program in Britain, following delays to a government design competition for SMRs which has been under way since 2015.
However, at the end of July, the company announced that it had received approval from the government’s Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to proceed to the final design stage for the construction of small modular reactors.
A summary assessment published by the ONR said it had “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”. The final stage of approval is expected in 2026.
Helena Perry, director of safety and regulatory affairs at Rolls-Royce SMR, told the Daily Telegraph that 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.”
Popular
The Rolls-Royce SMR design is a pressurised water reactor with an output of 470 megawatts, based on modularisation of Rolls-Royce’s reliable and proven technology.
In early August, the company announced that it was selling shares in its SMR business, and intended to raise hundreds of millions of pounds, a clear sign of the imminent expansion of its business. According to Nuclear Engineering International magazine, the parties that have approached Roll-Royce interested in investing include infrastructure investors, clean energy funds, hedge funds and other nuclear-power companies.
While Rolls-Royce is in the forefront of SMR technology and development in the Western world, work on SMRs is being undertaken in nearly 20 countries. (Russia and China already have SMRs in operation, but they are not subject to the same safety and regulatory environments that apply in the West.)
In the end, the deployment of small modular reactors will depend on the economics of generating electricity, its reliability, and how it compares with alternative energy sources.
One of the advantages of nuclear energy is that it provides continuous baseload power, while wind and solar are intermittent, depending on whether the wind is blowing and the sun is shining.
Apologists for renewable energy claim that wind and solar can be backed up by hydro and battery storage, and therefore baseload power is unnecessary. However, Australia has limited hydroelectric power, and even when Snowy 2.0 comes online, there is no political will to build new hydroelectric stations elsewhere in the country.
Battery power plays a role in stabilising the grid, but the cost of installing a solar battery for home use ranges from $900 to $2,100 per kilowatt, and they have limited storage capacity. Without government subsidies, they are uneconomic.
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Republished with thanks to News Weekly. Image courtesy of Rolls-Royce.
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