![]() Romania and Bulgaria recently signed agreements with US SMR developers that could pave the way for Europe’s first SMRs towards the end of this decade. While France is committed to reducing the share of nuclear in its energy mix, in the past year its government has ramped up interest in SMRs. The other is growing international interest in the technology. One is the private sector is putting in significant amounts of money for development. He thinks there are two reasons the Rolls-Royce SMR vision may become reality. “What SMRs are providing is complementing renewables really well,” says Howard. ![]() Secondly, he notes SMRs should be more flexible – able to dial up and down their output as needed – compared with large nuclear plants, which are usually always on. For one, the expected subsidy cost for Rolls-Royce SMR is significantly lower than obvious alternative ways of providing a continuous supply of low-carbon power: large-scale nuclear and gas plants fitted with carbon capture and storage. “I think it’s got quite a lot of potential,” says Richard Howard of analysts Aurora Energy Research. That may seem cheap compared to Hinkley, but an offshore wind farm with twice the capacity costs about £1 billion today, and that figure will be even lower in a decade’s time. Later versions may fall to £1.8 billion, he claims. Later down the line, the SMRs could be exported around the world too.Įvans says the first SMR would cost about £2.3 billion and could be operational by 2031. Ultimately it wants a fleet of 16 , enough to replace the amount of nuclear capacity expected to be lost in the UK this decade as ageing atomic plants retire. The consortium hopes to initially build four plants on existing nuclear sites around the UK. Each would have 470 megawatts of capacity, a good deal bigger than the 300 MW usually seen as the ceiling for an SMR. Despite being billed as small, the new reactor design is fairly large. The reactors that Rolls-Royce SMR wants to build have been six years in development, with their roots in ones the company previously built for nuclear submarines. “These are not large scale nuclear projects, we are not building the world’s biggest steam turbine, the world’s biggest crane, Europe’s biggest construction site.” What exactly is planned? “The big push here is pace,” says Alastair Evans at Rolls-Royce SMR. Moreover, they say the technology will be more flexible, an important quality in energy systems increasingly dominated by the variable nature of renewables. And the huge upfront costs – around £23 billion in Hinkley’s case – means it can take a long time to get a final investment decision on new plants, as shown by the slow progress in green-lighting one on the other side of the UK.Īdvocates for SMRs argue they solve these problems, because building them in a factory and assembling them on-site will be faster and cheaper. Assuming Olkiluoto 3 achieves full power next year as planned, it will be 13 years late. Large new nuclear plants, such as Olkiluoto 3 in Finland and Hinkley Point C in the UK, are infamous for running over schedule and over-budget. Why should this technology succeed where large nuclear plants have failed to take off in recent years, beyond China? If they are small, will they make a sizeable enough dent in emissions? And will they arrive in time to make a difference to a rapidly warming world? Read on. More private investment is expected soon. During COP26 the consortium received £210 million from the UK government. A UK consortium led by Rolls-Royce wants to build a fleet in the country to export around the world as a low carbon complement to renewables. One new technology popped up a few times: small modular reactors (SMRs), mini nuclear plants that would be built in a factory and transported to a site for assembly.
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