Stuart Nathan
Features Editor
The UK must make greater efforts in developing the next generation of nuclear reactors if it is to succeed in a market which is to become increasingly competitive
Earlier this week, I attended a conference on small modular nuclear reactor technology as research for a feature I am writing for our upcoming issue. Small modular reactors (SMRs) are one of the hot topics in the nuclear sector at the moment, and the UK is active in developing several of them; readers will be able to learn more in the upcoming feature.
It is well-known that the UK lacks the supply chain and the intellectual property to build entire nuclear power stations; the IP issue dates back to the 1970s, with the government’s decision to abandon advanced gas-cooled reactors and instead opt for the pressurised water reactors (PWRs) that were then newly developed and now dominate the sector. The supply chain problem is in fact worldwide: there are very few facilities capable of making the enormous forgings needed for a gigawatt scale PWR, and every country that wants to build one has to wait in line for their forgings. This is one factor in what appears to be a growing belief – that the gigawatt PWR has had its day. There are many reasons that nuclear reactors have become so large and so complex over the years, ranging from economies of scale to reactions to nuclear accidents and natural disasters, but the upshot of these changes is that large reactors have now become so expensive, so complex and take so long to build that not even the biggest economies with the largest-available workforces now see them as a practical option. It is possible that Hinkley Point C may be one of the last of its generation.
But as a concept, nuclear is still attractive. It offers low-carbon electricity with relatively low running costs, and if the enormous cost of building the reactor and associated power station can be reduced, it would be even more attractive. Hence the interest in SMR technology, with its promise of reducing cost by cutting the size of the reactor components and by bringing in the efficiencies that manufacturing in a factory offers and which have been so successful in many industries. It is also a concept that would suit UK manufacturing capacity very well; while gigawatt scale components can’t be forged in the UK, smaller ones certainly could.
One important factor in developing SMRs is regaining the IP and skills lost to the sector over the years. The first generation of SMRs to be deployed are very likely to be ones which use established technology; in other words, they are scaled down PWR-type modules. A side effect of this is that the UK will never own the full IP. So in order to be sure of gaining the valuable advantage of being a prime mover in the field, we have to look to the next generation of reactors. These are known as Generation IV, and differ from PWRs in many important respects.
Most Generation IV technologies operate at high temperatures, using different construction materials and coolants from the current generation of reactors. The UK has experience in developing high-temperature reactors, and although this development did take place some decades ago, with those involved now around retirement age, that experience is still valuable and viable. There are several projects looking at developing this type of reactor in academia and industry in Britain. However, it is not alone in this, and research is also underway in the US, Canada, Russia, and China, among others. And they are all equally determined to access the potential benefits of these technologies
A recent report from the UK Nuclear Innovation and Research Advisory Board (NIRAB) identified Generation IV reactors is an important area for research, but there is a danger that because they are unlikely to be the first commercial SMRs they will be neglected in favour of those designs that can be sold and start recouping their development costs more quickly. This would be a mistake. One way to avoid it, and this is also a NIRAB recommendation, would be for the UK to become an active member of the Generation IV Foundation (GIF), a transnational body that supports collaboration in developing these reactors.
The UK was in fact a founder member of the GIF, but withdrew as an active member in 2005. Nuclear engineers have been telling The Engineer for more than a decade that this was a mistake, a science Minister of the coalition government told us that it was likely the UK would rejoin. We know the government is slow, and that the agenda has been comprehensively derailed by the upcoming Brexit negotiations and, in the nuclear field, by the accompanying withdrawal from Euratom. However, with Science Minister Jo Johnson’s announcement last week that alternative means were being sought to continue nuclear collaboration, a signal that the GIF would also be on the agenda would be valuable to the industry as a sign that the government understands the importance of looking to the future and longer term prospects.
It will not be easy for the UK to maximise the potential of SMRs, for many reasons related to geopolitics, macro economics, and the relationship between industrial capability and capacity. But developing technology and securing the IP would help the country reap some of the rewards independent of these factors. Rejoining GIF, as a signal that we are still willing to cooperate with other countries and access expertise across national boundaries, would be a valuable step.
At last some common sense that could, once again, get the UK on a sensible nuclear footing instead of having to use foreign expertise and manufacturing to provide a utility vital to the country. Past governments’ lack of foresight, lack of interest and lack of support has been a disaster for this industry and I hope that they have the strength to withstand the onslaught of minority groups who will, no doubt, try to destroy any initiative.
I totally agree, except, alas, with the opposition to nuclear being described as “minority” groups. The only serious threat to the fossil-carbon-burning industry is nuclear, and they know it, however little the people who think themselves “environmentalists” do.
It seems entirely probable that the wild exaggerations of the “dangers” on nuclear power and the “intractability” of not-really-spent nuclear fuel (the USA had accumulated a whole 70,000 tons of that in 2013, since the 1950s) are encouraged by fossil carbon interests.
They know, as people like Mark Z. Jacobson, Amory Lovins, and Helen Caldicott do not, that wind turbines and sunshine devices are no threat to their business. Al Gore is right about his “inconvenient Truth” but he underestimates the threat.i
Great article on the possible re-emergence of the UK as a nuclear power plant builder and supplier worledwide. The decision to favour PWRs over AGRs was at best dubious, but occurred at a time when the UK had enough generating capacity not to really need new power stations. The decision was driven largely by the influence of Arnold Weinstock, and it led to a generation of nuclear retreat culminating in the French building Sizewell. The UK has no ability to build large power stations at this time and must import all of the main , reactors, boilers and turbines: a sorry state of affairs indeed.
As the UK desperately needs sensible new power generation to remove the wind-powered white elephants that litter our grid, an own build SMR is surely the best answer for UK plc. The most successful country regarding nuclear power plant supply at present seems to be Russia, but China is going to pass it soon.
Look forward to the article about Generation IV.
Good article Stuart – accurate & to the point. The U.K has a great opportunity with the PRISM reactor on offer for disposition of its SNF/PU stock. Any visibility on when progress on this can be expected from the NDA ?
Also the U.K has a high number of brownfield / ex nuke sites suitable for SMR deployment. Both the ETI & NNL have done excellent work on this.
Is there interest in looking at the Elysium Fast Chloride Molten Salt Reactor for consuming the Pu and SNF for startup, and continued feed-in of SNF through out life. The advantage of the MCSFR is there is no SNF separations work, nor fabrication of solid fuel like for the PRISM. We just strip the cladding and convert the U, Pu, MA, oxides and fission products to a chloride in one step. We put everything from the SNF into our reactor without any separating, thus maintaining the proliferation and safeguards of the mixed actinides and fission products. The actinides never leave the reactor, so no future reprocessing like for the PRISM, just removal of fission products and recycling even of the chlorine.
It is never very clear why decisions were made; it would be good to think that there were sound engineering decisions….
Economies of scale; I seem to remember this has been trotted out on many occasions too.
I thought that big forged pressure vessels were a requirement for PWRs – and that gas or liquid metal cooled ones would not have the same explosive possibilities – and, in the case, of liquid metals better heat transfer/coolant capabilities.
Also it is possible for gas reactors not to require enriched fuel (which should help retard nuclear proliferation ) – and they certainly do not have the same cooling issues as the reactors that have failed.
Stuart Nathan writes of “relatively low running costs”. Relative to what, exactly? Onshore wind, offshore wind, large scale solar and of course hydropower are all lower carbon than nuclear, considerably cheaper, and getting cheaper still by the month.
At this rate SMRs will have to deliver a power price under a quarter of current nuclear costs to be able to compete in the future renewables-dominated electricity marketplace 15-20 years hence.
But of course, the reason nuclear got so big in the first place was precisely to make it cheaper, on the basis that a doubling of reactor size comes at less than double the cost. So how come this logic has suddenly gone into reverse?
Compared to gas. Current nuclear is lower carbon than offshore wind, solar power, and some hydropower, and on a par with onshore wind. They also avoid the need for extensive backup which is inherent in intermittent power sources.
Current nuclear costs are only about £20-50/MWh (maybe you were thinking of Hinkley C which is not current). Gen IV reactors will be able to match that.
So why on earth are we building HPC? Of course claimed G4 costs are purely conjectural – and promises are cheap. Remember HPC was always promised as needing no subsidy!
And of course nuclear is not load-following (and even if was fuel cost savings would be tiny) meaning that it’s no better than renewables at matching demand. You still need ‘smart grid’, batteries, responsive demand etc.
For instance: Moltex SSR would have both less CO2 emissions and cost less over its lifetime than gas, coal, wind, solar, and hydro. Oliver should stop ignoring the intermittency of renewable energies and concurrent extra costs resulting from that.
Let’s hope UK can wake up soon and start giving advanced, next generation nuclear power the support it needs to power the world.
Owing to the distributed nature of wind and solar there is very little ‘intermittency’ at a system level. Yes there are costs arising because the power supply from wind and solar does not match demand, but the same goes for nuclear, which generates away all night when no one wants it, and is unable to ramp up to meet demand peaks. As for your projected carbon emissions from SMRs, you have references for that? Evidence to date all tells us that nuclear power is much higher in emissions than wind, solar or hydro.
When all the other costs they impose on the system for backup, for transmission, for voltage control, for frequency management and all the subsidies are taken into account wind and solar do not compete with conventional generation. Absent subsidies, the technologies would not exist and we would all be better off.
What nuclear really needs is a unified campaign to point out that low levels of radiation are not at all dangerous compared with all the risks we run every day of our life. It amazes me that people who violently oppose nuclear power because of claimed radiation dangers will happily undergo radiation treatment if they get cancer. If their whole body was exposed to the levels aimed at the tumour they would be dead in a few minutes. They don’t seem to notice that the tissues just outside the region of really intense radiation do not later succumb to radiation induced cancer.
As for carbon dioxide, its major effect on the environment is to promote plant growth and the increased levels of carbon dioxide have brought a huge agricultural benefit to the world. The fact that the world has not warmed measurably over the last 18 years proves that man-made carbon dioxide does not cause dangerous global warming.
Never mind the asserted low carbon of wind turbines, let alone the absurdity of solar in Britain. The inescapable fact of weather dependent “renewables” is that they are utterly non-dispatchable, and worse, the power being generated at any minute is not necessarily to be relied upon in the next.
In the years 2000 and 2001, California was hit by inadequate precipitation and especially snowpack, in the catchment areas of the dams supplying hydroelectric power. Companies running gas turbines proceeded to charge ransom level prices for “spinning reserve”, where burning just enough gas for a 300 MW gas turbine spinning on ‘idle’ like a vehicle at a stop light. is a near-instantaneous guarantee of up to 300 MW of dispatchable electric power. It is the exact opposite of the capricious power that wind provides, and it was worth far more than the actual consumers would have paid for it. But I use the term “ransom level prices” because for the distribution network, failure to meet an increase in demand slows down the turbines, and not all by the same amount. If two generators are out of phase by half a cycle (1/120th second) their voltages cancel out, short circuits, and _*crash*_.
One of the problems is that you cannot build a reactor without going through the GDA process, which takes about 40 months, costs about £40 million (plus your own expenses), and for which there is a waiting list. You can only justify that expense for an operational reactor.
Therefore any developer needs to go direct from CAD based designs to a full operating reactor, without prototyping. If the UK can’t prototype, it can’t lead on the technology development.
There may be a need for a “prototype design accreditation”. If this could take 3 months, cost £1 million, and allow a prototype reactor to be operated under ONR supervision, we could see a lot of innovation coming to the UK. (One point to note is that new reactors are much safer than operating reactors as they haven’t had time to build up an inventory of fission products and plutonium).
The current SMR competition has about 14 serious designs, including near-Gen IV molten salt reactors and sodium cooled fast reactors. How these proceed – or rather where – is yet to be determined. However NuScale is focusing on the USA, whilst Terrestrial and Britain’s Moltex are now more focused on Canada.
I take Alex’s point regarding the accreditation time and cost that almost immediately constrain any development of new nuclear plant. However, with the will right this could be overcome – especially if the UK were to want to start engineering power plant again. The SMR seems to be a unique opportunity to kick-off something that would have world-wide application.
Regarding Oliver’s comments about wind etc. being low cost: that is only so if subsidies are ignored and back-up not costed as is the present case. None of these white-elephants would ever be built without enormous subsidies and of course no penalty applied to their back-up requirements: they will be looked-back as this generation’s “follies”.
Now that takes the biscuit! When you write “None of these white-elephants would ever be built without enormous subsidies and of course no penalty applied to their back-up requirements: they will be looked-back as this generation’s “follies”” that would be entirely accurate if you were writing about nuclear power which receives the most extraordinary array of subsidies direct and indirect, open and covert. The entire UK nuclear enterprise would collapse without them in months – if it even had to pay its third party insurance at market rates!
The French enjoyed the lowest cost biscuits in Europe for many years because of their fleet of nuclear power stations. Hope that you enjoy your biscuits too: probably 30% made using low-cost power from nuclear stations
It is very clear Julian, its about money and profitability and always is, if there is not a substantial cost and substantial profit then industry isn’t interested.
Two questions:
1: Can you back up your claim that ‘intermittency’ is not a problem at system level? Night falls over a large area at the same time. Winter high pressure zones tend to cover large areas reducing wind power to near zero.
2: What evidence do you have that the lifecycle emissions of nuclear are higher than wind, solar and hydro? The concrete and steel requirements for wind turbines are not easy to find. The data I have been able to find shows that for an equivalent output more concrete and excavation is required to build wind turbines than is required to build Hinkley Point C. HPC is planned for a 60 year life span, wind turbines 20-25 years.
Various studies suggest that solar installed in northern latitudes (north of Spain) especially on rooftops offers a low to zero Energy Return On Energy Invested (EROEI).
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516301379
Best regards
Roger
Nuclear power plants were so far projected as 20 years building, 20 years operating, 20 years properly dismantling and disposal.
But you are right, as long as the safe disposal of wind turbines is not solved, it makes no sense to build wind turbines. After all, nuclear already got billions of government subsidies. No need to throw away that expertise.
‘Intermittency’ means stopping and starting over short time frames. That is not a problem for the reasons given. Clearly a solution is needed to the fact that, for example, solar PV does not deliver power at night. This can be solved by using a range of renewable technologies, with medium term storage and supply-responsive demand.
Thank you for your response.
In electricity supply terms Intermittent is the opposite of Despatchable i.e available on demand. Even with your interpretation the renewables are certainly not despatchable. Have you looked at the financial and environmental costs of your solutions? What other renewable technologies? Certainly not biomass. Medium term storage will considerably increase the carbon footprint of solar PV and wind and supply responsive demand is limited. You can’t just shut down the smelters/foundries etc. required to build this infrastructure because the wind isn’t blowing. There is a reason for building aluminium plants near to hydro or nuclear power plants.
The article is quite interesting showing a very wide spread in the LCAs (similar to EROEI) for nuclear and renewables. The author has carried out a lot of filtering of the papers to get the stated result which I will accept on the reasons stated. The result however is only valid for current uranium fuelled PWRs and BWRs that are using a single pass process. The article assigns a significant part of the energy input to the process to the recovery of uranium from its ores and subsequent enrichment. It is correctly stated that as the quality of the ore decreases the energy used will increase. As soon as you look at Generation IV plants using breeding or thorium this argument disappears. Reprocessing the current stock of used nuclear fuel (burn up on current NPPs is quite low) would also significantly reduce the energy requirements. The problem is currently that uranium is too cheap to justify reprocessing.
The comparison paper on LCA of wind and solar PV is unfortunately behind a paywall so I cannot see the assumptions made. The abstract does not state that the analysis incudes the ‘medium term storage’ that you mention above so I would have to consider that it is not included. Therefore the author of the article is not comparing like with like and it would appear that nuclear is still a good viable option when compared to the renewables.
Best regards
Roger
For review of nuclear power’s carbon costs see http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2736691/false_solution_nuclear_power_is_not_low_carbon.html
And the disposal works now entirely without subsidies by the taxpayer? Disposal of Wind after it leaves the wind turbine is easy.
Catching up on things
I had not quite thought of it like S Martins comment:-
“It is very clear Julian, its about money and profitability and always is, if there is not a substantial cost and substantial profit then industry isn’t interested.”
I have seen this within industry; a large budget was a reason for a person to feel important; reducing the cost of something means reduced profit…
Perhaps it also explains vanity projects – rather than any smaller useful projects (HS2 anyone?)
Also still the question (with SMR) of now being cheaper when the argument used to be the other way around – but of course if one requires huge expensive forgings (PWR) perhaps so….which suggests that not using expensive forgings would be what is required? (Anyone for logical thinking?).
And disposal; if burning up waste (is this recycling ?) then disposal is not such an issue; admittedly there are historic problems – but I think that was more from a point of view of military rather than civil)
Delighted to read a debate, based upon the views of Engineers who relish a good argument, but do so from positions based upon their knowledge and skills (in this field, I have none -except helping to create the protective ‘suits’ and masks that might be necessary if something gets out of hand!)
thank you for adding to my knowledge. Can I imagine our leaders and apparent betters doing the same. Not based upon what we have all seen over the past 12 months. Unfit-for purpose. I should say so!
A refreshingly astute overview of where we are with Nuclear … having been taken down the wrong (Boiling/Pressurised) Water path with its open solid fuel cycle requiring very complex U235 fuel processing technology for so long now that the ‘trophy’ technology has ended up almost obliterating the evidence of the only real competing Molten Salt Reactor technology as a more viable alternative. Alvin Weinberg had run an experimental Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) that was based on much more civil minded and efficient closed fluid fuel cycle – followed by a prototype which run many thousands of hours at ORNL in the late 60’s/early 70’s, some of these hours with U233. The reports and supporting documentation all but lost until what remained was made public by Kirk Sorensen & Bruce Patton, working for NASA at the time, in early 2000’s.
It is sad to see such a promising industry flounder from political decisions made in the Nixon era to abandon the much more civil minded MSR technology … and at the same time continue on a path that with each new accident inevitably tightens the noose & constricts itself evermore through regulation that its squeezed out of the market altogether.
If Elon Musk was into Nuclear he would immediately point out how dumb it was to continue the PWR technology path that only serves those few incumbents with a short term gain for maintaining their wealth through nuclear fuel processing … while the rest of the planet suffers!
To help the public differentiate between the implementation for current nuclear technology that we now readily associate with TMI, Chernobyl … and now Fukushima – we should draw a clear line in the sand to demark the MSR as something fundamentally different to the current technologies (e.g. PWR).
PWR > Fuel: solid U235 pellets stacked in Rod assemblies, Coolant: Water (High Pressure – requiring appropriately stringent fabrication of pipework/containment), Safety: Very costly from inherent meltdown risks which will then cause contaminated aerosols to render large areas beyond the Reactor out-of-bounds.
MSR > Fuel: U233 dissolved within the coolant salt, Coolant: Salt (normal pressure), Safety: cheap ‘walk-away’ safe with no risk of aerosols when shut down as the coolant fuel/salt mix solidifies.
Also significant is that working with U233 (derived from Thorium) is the efficiency of Burnup with a fraction of the waste at a much more manageable limited span of 300 years – rather than U235 (Uranium) with a waste span of 100s of 1000s of years cannot be over emphasised. Another key feature of the MSR is running at ~700DegC it lends itself to the Brayton cycle which can make use of Jet Engine Technology to produce electrical energy at very much improved efficiencies (while providing another business stream for those Jet Engine manufacturers).
MSR should therefore NOT be lumped in with the current Nuclear 1.0 technologies … it should be given a separate Nuclear 2.0 technology category. Talking about MSR in the context of Nuclear 1.0 as Generation sub-categories just doesn’t do it justice & will only confuse and blur the differences. A small minor gripe is the use of the term SMR … as it may again cause confusion. This is NOT a technology per say – but an implementation.
Horrifyingly enough, the Fast Neutron “rival” to the MSR that got past Nixon, and clearly demonstrated ITS immunity to meltdown three weeks before even Chernobyl, by actual deliberate test, in April 1986, was abandoned by Clinton at the behest of “environmentalist” ignorance from the Sierra Club and others.
That was the Integral Fast Reactor’s (IFR) EBR-2, upon whinch GE/Hitachi’s PRISM, and Advanced Reactor Concepts (http://arcnuclear.com) ARC-100 are based.