Submarine reactor maker is among a consortium bidding to put the UK in the forefront of the race to commercialise a small modular nuclear reactor
A major programme to develop and commercialise small modular reactor (SMR) technology is about to begin, with the Sheffield-based Nuclear AMRC confirming that it is to join with Rolls-Royce, AMEC Foster Wheeler, Nuvia and Arup to bring a design proposed by Rolls-Royce to the market in the UK.
Last year, Rolls-Royce announced that it is proposing to develop a modular reactor capable of producing 220-440MWe depending on its configuration, designed specifically to be built and commissioned in factories, with a reactor module some 16 m high and 4 m in diameter – small enough to be transported on a truck, train or barge. Although it has made public no technical details of the reactor design, its publicity material identifies UK facilities involved in the project that are mostly part of its submarine operations, making it likely that the submarine reactor is the basis of the technology.
Because of its links to the Royal Navy submarine programme, Rolls-Royce is one of the only companies in the world to both build and operate nuclear reactors: it also operates its test reactor near Thurso in Scotland (near to the Dounreay nuclear complex).
Since the 1950s, Rolls-Royce has designed reactors for seven classes of submarine and two land-based prototype reactors. It is now on its third generation of reactor design, and led the development of the first integral reactor in the late 1980s (integral reactors have a reactor core, pressuriser, reactor coolant pumps and steam generators contained within a single pressure vessel, and were the first type of reactor to be designed as ‘passively safe’ systems that did not require power to be shut down).
According to Rolls-Royce, a UK SMR design could boost the British economy by up to a £100billion between 2030 and 2050, depending on how much of the supply chain is British. The National Nuclear Laboratory produced a report in 2014 that concluded the potential global market for SMRs would be 65 – 85GWe by 2035, with about 75GWe in the UK alone; there is an estimated potential for 40,000 high-value UK jobs and intellectual property.
Last year, the Nuclear AMRC issued a report stating that the UK had the necessary skills and advanced manufacturing capabilities to develop SMR technology; although a notable gap in UK capability is in steam turbine manufacture, where Rolls-Royce has stated that it is looking for an overseas partner (China holds a majority share in worldwide steam turbine manufacturing, with other manufacturers under Indian, German, Korean and Japanese ownership).
The first phase of the development project will see the nuclear AMRC carry out desktop studies on potential methods of manufacture for the Rolls-Royce design, and assess the capabilities of the existing UK supply chain to make the components to the required quality.
Manufacturing processes available include robotic machining, single-platform machining, cryogenic cooling, intelligent fixturing, on-machine inspection, advanced joining and near-net shape manufacturing processes such as electron beam welding, diode laser cladding, automated arc welding, bulk additive manufacturing and hot isostatic pressing: many of these are being developed at the nuclear AMRC, where machine tools and fabrication cells have been specified to a size capable of making full-scale prototype components.
In a statement, Rolls-Royce commented: “We share a common belief that a home-grown SMR program can play a key role in strengthening the UK’s energy mix and security, while creating valuable intellectual property, exports and jobs. We are working together to deliver a whole power plant which could be up and running in just over a decade and provide a boost for the UK’s industrial strategy.”
The government has signalled its commitment to developing SMR technology in last year’s budget, with the announcement of £30 million funding available for an SMR-enabling R&D programme to develop skills capacity and advanced manufacturing capability. US company NuScale last year announced that it was to collaborate with UK firms to develop its own SMR technology.
So 1 SMR develops the same output as about 60 wind turbines, and occupies about 1% of the land area. And the visual impact to the environment is minute. Bring it on.
Hi Steve,
I’ve made two attempts today to post my comment on the forum, but without success.
My comment was basically saying that I agree with your comment about the efficiency of nuclear reactors when compared with wind turbines.
I also made a remark about liking the idea of ‘lagoon-powered’ hydro-electric plants.
Finally, I suggested that Rolls-Royce now have a golden opportunity to look for their new overseas steam-turbine manufacturer in the US, now that Mr. Trump has given the thumbs up to a new trade deal with the UK.
I can only think that there is some aspect of my comment that the editorial finds unacceptable. but I’m at a loss to imagine what it could be.
Sorry Norm, comments made overnight have to wait until morning to be approved. Sorted now.
Could SMR’s be utilized to generate the steam to replace the gas boilers in existing local power stations?
Yes of course – If you want higher than 300C steam you have go to high temperature gas-cooled reactors instead of light water reactors.
Modular reactors that can be built on a factory floor and hauled to a site are the key to affordable nuclear reactors. If you need more power then one modular reactor can produce just daisy chain them till you get the output you need.
i think it would be best if these were liquid fueled reactors to cut down the pressure they operate at and also drastically reduce the nuclear waste they produce.
Bob, your response follows along the same lines I posted on another site- as RR and several others make Nuclear reactors for Subs and have never had the types of problems large reactors experience. Then the UK should mass produce these and as you say “Daisy-Chain” to generate the site power needed! Also the prices will be less as they will be mass produced on proven production lines. Even “NuScale” has a design which includes “Daisy-Chaining” and the whole reactor is submerged in a water pit for safety!
The push should be for this type of proven system and used for more than 40 years. The Government just needs to think outside the box and stop ploughing money into an unnecessary redesign of a reactor system and use the funds to boost the existing Naval Variety for “Daisy-Chaining”.
See this article by Gregg Butler for another take on this.
“…Also the prices will be less as they will be mass produced on proven production lines…”
I think if you research this you’ll find it’s a bit more expensive than a single GW(s) plant – but it will be possible to earn revenue from the first unit to pay something towards the second one and so on.
The promise of liquid fueled reactor is just that a promise. the reality is that I would want my fuel to be solid and to stay where I put it – in the core. such that a simple valve leak does not spill the molten core in the floor of the reactor. We know how to deal with high pressure steam, we do it every day around the world. Low pressure is a panacea you have to convert that low pressure to high pressure steam or any other working fluid to generate electricity or process heat anyway!
There’s an atmospheric pressure reactor on offer at Sellafield right now, for the disposition of our plutonium stockpile. It’s an Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) and could be built in its entirety in the UK, from ‘normal’ [nuclear grade] stainless steels. We have the expertise and manufacturing capacity.
Integral Fast Reactors [IFRs] can burn our most precious energy resource as fuel and we have enough of it to supply ALL of the UK’s energy needs for 500 years [or at least until fusion power takes over]. That’s unparalleled energy security for many future generations of our families. You do [and probably most people would] call this precious energy resource ‘nuclear waste’.
The minuscule waste stream from these reactors decays to the radioactivity levels of the ground beneath your feet in only 300 years – easily, cheaply and safely stored – the million-year storage problem disappears in exchange for low-carbon, 24/7 electricity.
Why not write to your MP and ask him to lobby the NDA to select the IFR option for the disposition of our plutonium stockpile [costing £80 million per year for storage and security] sooner rather than later?
I agree with Steve’s comment that employing these small nuclear reactors makes much more sense than constructing acres of low-efficiency wind turbines.
I also like the sound of the proposed ‘lagoon-powered’ hydro-electric plants.
And what a golden opportunity for Rolls-Royce to look for its new overseas steam-turbine manufacturing partner in the US, now that President-elect Trump has given the thumbs up to a new trade deal with the UK.
Why is this taking so long to occur?
This is the only new technology that can give the UK world-wide business even though we no longer make the large steam turbines in the UK. All the other so-called renewable technologies involve importing all the high tech parts, even though Siemens might make some blades in the UK sometime.
This technology is of real value unlike the massively hyped Swansea Bay project that provides energy when nature decrees not when man decides so cannot match demand profiles. When Germany come to their energy-senses even they will import this technology.
Where do the turbines come from for the new Dreadnaught subs. China??
They’re driving a prop shaft not a steam turbine, I think.
I hope this work spear headed by R-R with the support of other UK industries is the tip of an ice-berg in both common sense and UK led design and build. I believe refuelling is 24 months or there about which is a lot more reliable than wind and significant sunshine. Other designs such as U-Battery are already building a small SMR 7.5 to 10MWe. Lets not throw away this opportunity to give UK industry a shot of much needed design, build and supply to worlds need to reliable energy source.
Yeah and you could have one in your backyard – very clever..
What would you have us have in our backyards?
So saddened to read that my own country, which (Parsons!) invented and introduced the steam turbine to the world…now no longer makes any. Making an analogy that perhaps our betters might understand (they are of course so much better educated than us, having studied Greek, Latin and the mythology of those ancient times)-its as though the ancients built and introduced beautiful temples and palaces to their then known world and then put to death all the sculpters and masons on which such depended. [Is that an analogy, or a simile, or even a metaphor?]
Are you telling me that all those detailed calculations, all those exam questions answered, all that strength of materials, all those ‘cycle’ [Rankine et al] studies were all for nothing. How grateful I should be to live in a society so well managed and directed and controlled from the Centre, and from the Right! (the left appear to not get a look in: of course they represent those terrible ‘oiks’ who actually might have the abilities to design, build, run and control mechanisms.`
That one’s an analogy, Mike.
R-R fly the flag pretty well in a free market system, with their gas turbine products:
http://www.rolls-royce.com/about/our-technology/gas-turbine-technology.aspx
I would think that RR or one of their associated companies could build steam turbines out of their “bits boxes”.
I say again, use the turbines that exist already!
Where do I start? This is a fantastic opportunity for Rolls-Royce and UK design and manufacturing as a whole, lots of jobs too, we have some great engineers out there so I’m sure we could make a success of this, in theory.
However, I suspect poor management will get in the way of success, on time and on budget delivery. On the back of Brexit, I suspect no matter how late or over budget this project could/will be, the government will be forced to support it because it is ‘British’ and it will create many jobs (around 40,000 it has been claimed – although I’m not sure where all of the relevant skills will actually come from all of a sudden?)….
As for the design, it does not look like any SMR I have seen before (e.g. NuScale, SMR-160, BWXT mPower– it’s certainly not integral, although this might not be required as I’m unsure as to what the formal definition of an ‘SMR’ is? Can anyone advise? However, if Rolls-Royce led the design of an integral reactor in the late 1980s, why not do that now for their SMR? It looks difficult to modularise their concept power plant, although not impossible.
I find it odd that Steam Turbines are brought out as a capability gap, from a company whom essentially design turbines (there must be some technology/design read across from a jet engine or gas turbine?) – if it is a gap, would Siemens not likely be an obvious candidate for support?
“…its publicity material identifies UK facilities involved in the project that are mostly part of its submarine operations, making it likely that the submarine reactor is the basis of the technology.” – This I find very concerning, I’d like to think that nothing to do with our UK nuclear submarine/defence programme is leaked into the civil nuclear world for all of China, Russia and North Korea to see, especially if they plan to export the SMR and some of its component manufacturing. If so, this would effectively enable the design efforts for foreign nuclear and submarine programmes to catch up on around 50 years of UK defence nuclear technology development. What competitive edge would we have, or lose, if we did put those designs/technologies out there for all to see? If I was the Navy/MoD I’d be very concerned and investigate this further.
That said, I assume the pictures shown don’t actually represent the actual plant or site design – if it does, it looks like a blatant copy of various other civil reactor designs that already exist, seemingly unwittingly constrained themselves on height, inducing potential stresses that could be avoided on the system, hardly innovative. And where is the infrastructure required on site – e.g. water, transformer stations and pylons etc? It seems a bit like a caricature to me, to sell something to the government that most likely won’t deliver – “up and running in just over a decade”!?? This seems like a massive underestimation of the work involved in designing a new/novel nuclear power plant and going through the necessary regulatory steps. For this opportunity to be successful, this project will need to be well managed at both government and Rolls-Royce levels.
At last! I have been saying this for years. So concerned about our energy security this is something we could lead the world in once again. I also like it because it’s distributed and therefore we less vulnerable to attack.
I am a big supporter of this Small Modular Reactor program for all the reasons previously mentioned.
I was also looking at Ministry of Defence activity on laser weapons development and the energy required.
Accordingly I thought there might be an opportunity to join a few dots;
Fixed UK military bases might be brilliant sites to locate first U.K. SMRs. Builds energy resiliency to base, provides power for laser defence to protect base, connects back to grid and MoD can resell excess capacity and generate income as well as capability, plenty of site security by definition and lots of bases near the coast.
Military supports early take off of UK industrial strategy kind of joined up thinking!
Yes, Rolls Royce should be a #lead partner in developing a commercial system which is fit for BOTH Naval and Commercial capability Nuclear Steam Generators but FUNDED BY GOVERNMENT GRANT for the research and development to build the first working Prototype.