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Rolls Royce plans UK class of mini-nuclear plants
- varispeed 6y agoThat's an excellent idea! I hope they will succeed and we will get cheaper and greener energy.
- Schiendelman 6y agoThese are much more expensive than renewable technology we already have.
- akvadrako 6y agoFYI: This is Rolls-Royce Holdings, not Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Holdings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Holdings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Motor_Cars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Motor_Cars
- retube 6y agoI had not realised that Rolls Royce the car manufacturer was now owned by BMW and not Rolls Royce
- ksec 6y agoMost, if not all British Car Brands / Manufacturers are not owned by the Brits anymore. May be Aston Martin ( Which was sold to Ford and resold to ProDrive and now gone public ), but that might be changing as they continue to lose money, soon to be owned by Canadian Billionaire Lawrence Stroll.. Not saying that is a bad thing since he actually cares about the brand.
- gsnedders 6y agoIt's way more complicated: Rolls-Royce Motors was split off from the (nationalised, bailed out) Rolls Royce Limited and sold to Vickers plc, who then sold the company to Volkswagen Group following a bidding war with BMW. However, to this day, the Rolls-Royce trademarks (name and logo) are owned by Rolls-Royce Plc, and had been licensed to Rolls-Royce Motors. The change of ownership meant that those trademarks had to be renegotiated, and it ended up with BMW getting the rights to those. Ultimately, the old Rolls-Royce Motors is what is now VW's Bentley division (Bentley having been the "entry level" marquee!), whereas BMW's modern Rolls-Royce company has no such heritage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Motor_Cars#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Motor_Cars#History has a bunch of history of the current VW/BMW split.
- bigbubba 6y agoIt's worth noting that Rolls-Royce has a lot of experience making small nuclear reactors, particularly those used in the UK's nuclear submarines.
- CodeGlitch 6y agoGreenpeace's comment is pretty disappointing. They refuse to back nuclear without offering any reasonable alternative (let's be honest if there was a good alternative we would already be using it). Hand-wavey stuff about hydrogen and turbines don't cut it I'm afraid. They have done good work in the past, but perhaps if they had backed nuclear a long time ago we wouldn't be in the mess we are in now? I've actually been pretty critical of them for years because of this stance they have. And before anyone comments about Chernobyl, my view is all energy production comes with risks. You have to weigh those up against global climate change IMHO.
- Mrdarknezz 6y agoWell they're not building an RBMK reactor so Chernobyl is not really relevant since they are totally different type of NPP
- dTal 6y agoIn any case, an RBMK would still be very safe. They're well tested and we know not to do the thing that makes them explode. Additionally, you could just not skip the containment dome like the builders of Chernobyl did.
- pulse7 6y ago"we know not to do the thing that makes them explode" This is not the core problem. The core problem is that explosion can still happen - even if we "know not to do the thing that makes them explode". It can happen because of a natural disaster, because of war and because of other unpredictable reason. To avoid the possible explosion and consequences altogether it is better to not have them in the first place!
- wrkronmiller 6y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, but isn't the way to avoid an explosion: "don't pull the control rods all the way out" It would take a very specific kind of war or natural disaster to pull out the control rods from a nuclear reactor, methinks.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago> Last year, it received £18m to begin the design effort for the SMR concept. I read this as implying this is a long way off...
- KuiN 6y agoThe article continues to talk about 6 out of 7 of the UK's nuclear plants going offline by 2030. Given how slow UK infx projects - especially nuclear projects - move, I'd be surprised if these were online by then.
- pfdietz 6y agoI'd be surprised if these were ever online.
- mhandley 6y agoIt's worth noting that Rolls Royce does have quite a bit of experience with operational small reactors in nuclear submarines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_PWR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_PWR
- sgt 6y agoNo man, let's build this thing rapidly using Kanban and the nodejs equivalent of nuclear energy technology. They'll have one whipped up in two months. Soon there'll he one of these hunks of metal in every neighborhood!
- codecamper 6y agoDalek sized?
- Mrdarknezz 6y agoFantastic
- plumeria 6y agoWhat I don’t understand is why they need to be placed so close to a water body?
- Kliment 6y agoThey're water-cooled.
- DrBazza 6y agoFree cooling. And it needs to be a sea, and not a river. France's nuclear power stations have had problems during the recent hot European summers because the river water warms up too much.
- mytailorisrich 6y agoNote that the problem was that there are legal limits on how much a nuclear plant can warm up the river. The nuclear plants themselves had no issue and could have continued to operate.
- _Microft 6y agoThese legal limits are not 'the problem' but there for exactly this reason: operating the plant at full power would start killing aquatic creatures living downstream by excessively increasing water temperature.
- mytailorisrich 6y agoMy point is that this is not a problem for the nuclear plants. The recent heatwaves did not create a technical problem for the nuclear plants (well for cooling droughts may have but the high temperatures did not).
- redisman 6y agoJust because the nuclear plants didn't plan for extreme temperatures they should be allowed to kill off life in the river? That's absurd.
- ainiriand 6y agoNuclear should do a big comeback. It is time to develop a better fission energy and more efficient reactors. I understand that we were traumatized by what happened in Chernobyl but that was almost 40 years ago, we should unlock investments and the science to bring this technology to the future. At least if we want to go zero emissions and save the planet, that is.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Schiendelman 6y agoIf we want to go zero emissions and save the planet, we need to spend our money efficiently. Almost every renewable source is now far cheaper than nuclear, and politically easier too. Emissions reduction has almost nothing to do with technology advancement. If this were really a priority we’d get rid of low density zoning in cities and let the market reduce power usage for us.
- marakv2 6y agoWhile I agree with your ideals, I disagree on your argument. Money is plentiful, we need to stop hiding the fact that switching will cost us some money. Who cares, if we have a livable planet. I argue that it's time for some politicians with a back bone and start enforcing laws and charging carbon taxes. Those taxes will help (a lot) to pay for the myriad of green tech we need.
- Schiendelman 6y agoPoliticians can only do what their constituents won’t vote them out for. Don’t look to them - organize constituencies.
- inetsee 6y agoSaying that nuclear power plants are zero emissions ignores that fact that nuclear power plants produce nuclear waste that will have to be dealt with.
- bildung 6y agoI doubt these will actually be built. With a projected price point of $78/MWh [0] these are already way more expensive than existing offshore wind, even if they'd actually get built without budget overruns. [0] = https://newatlas.com/energy/rolls-royce-plans-mini-nuclear-reactors-in-britain/ https://newatlas.com/energy/rolls-royce-plans-mini-nuclear-r...
- rfrey 6y agoThe 2018 worldwide levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for offshore wind was $134/MWh (https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2019/Oct/IRENA_Future_of_wind_2019.pdf https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication...).
- Schiendelman 6y agoThat number isn’t useful for comparing options for new construction.
- rfrey 6y agoLCOE is the best number for comparing new construction options. What alternative do you propose?
- Schiendelman 6y agoYou used a 2018 number when the 2020 number is vastly lower. You have to use up to date information - and you have to pay attention to trends, since nuclear takes a decade or more to install.
- bildung 6y agoYou're correct, I misread Norways wind LCoE of 44€/MWh as offshore, though it was onshore. The publication you linked projects a 44% cost reduction until 2025, though. Given UK's listed offshore LCoE of $125 in 2018, that would be $70/MWh for the UK. The trend looks linear, but if we conservatively assume it only falls at half the rate after 2025, it will be at $51/MWh once the first Rolls-Royce plants come online in ten years.
- wdb 6y agoIn the past in The Netherlands there were ideas to have small mini nuclear plants per neighbourhood of a city which would power all the electricity needs.
- fiftyacorn 6y agoI expect them to be based in Scotland, Wales and constituencies in England without conservative mps
- Keloran 6y agoThis makes sense now on why this tarring for import exists https://www.trade-tariff.service.gov.uk/headings/8401 https://www.trade-tariff.service.gov.uk/headings/8401 Tarrif on Nuclear Reactors
- yabones 6y agoHow does this compare to NuScale?
- jabl 6y agoIt's quite a lot bigger, and more conservative in the sense it has separate steam generators rather than steam generators integrated into the reactor pressure vessel like nuscale.
- yabones 6y agoVery interesting, thanks. Which approach is 'better' for modular reactors? I would imagine that having the steam generator inside the pressure vessel makes it safer (at least in terms of leaks) since the primary/secondary loop never leaves the containment area.
- jabl 6y agoI guess 'it depends'. Integrated steam generators might be safer, as you say, as the primary loop never leaves the pressure vessel, and thus less pipe joints etc. that might fail. OTOH the pressure vessel becomes a lot bigger, which limits how big you can make the entire power plant. Making big pressure vessels if fairly tricky, and there's only a few forges in the world capable of making current large reactor pressure vessels. I think this is one of the reasons why the Nuscale reactor is so small (60 MWe IIRC), which might make it hard to get the economics to work out.
- LatteLazy 6y agoAll the issues of big nuclear but none of the economies of scale.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoThat's not fair. They have nearly none of the big-nuclear issues. And they have a different scaling pattern - they can be spot-built to shore up infrastructure. Remote locations, issues with reliable power, economic realities could make them quite desirable at the right place and time.
- Schiendelman 6y agoThe big nuclear issue is cost. These are much more expensive than renewables, and that delta is just rising.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoNo reason why these shouldn't get cheaper too. And the reliability area is where these could shine. There are situations where modular nuclear is a clear win.
- Schiendelman 6y ago“No reason why” - there are many reasons, and it’s why they have become more expensive. It’s not clear that nuclear is more reliable than any other similar monetary investment. People like to compare “wind that only blows 40% of the time” with nuclear, but you can build three or more farms for the cost of your single nuclear plant, so it’s not that hard to end up ahead. There’s a great comparison of that in one of the top level comments on this post.
- JumpCrisscross 6y agoPublic support for nuclear energy hasn’t recovered from its 2010 high of net positive 29 [1]. (Though 2016 somehow caused twice the damage.) Is anyone aware of age-based polling on this issue? [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/248048/years-three-mile-island-americans-split-nuclear-power.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/248048/years-three-mile-island-...
- pfdietz 6y agoBetween 2010 and 2016, natural gas prices collapsed and Westinghouse was in big trouble. Also the price of renewables (especially solar) and batteries fell dramatically. We went from a situation where nuclear would save on expensive natural gas, and would likely be needed eventually, to a situation where nuclear was not competitive with gas CC even with fairly high CO2 taxes, and where it would need to pull an inside straight to not become obsolete.
- matthewmacleod 6y agoI know it seems kind of dismissive, but there is approximately zero chance that these will be built. Even if the underlying idea has merit—which I think it could in some circumstances—the combination of reduction in renewable prices, a complex political environment, and the UK’s inability to commit to infrastructure projects means that this project will be a money sink that will never deliver. Maybe if we had taken this kind of approach 30 years ago, there’d have been a decent possibility of it working out, but it seems too late now.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoThey are small, quick to build and useful for quick infrastructure upgrades. I imagine they would have a different place in economics and politics than the grand old billion-dollar plants of the past. It doesn't take much commitment to build one of these. That's the entire idea.
- Schiendelman 6y agoThese are 440MW reactors. They are not ‘small’, and they’ll still take about the same time to build, because the modular efficiencies here only apply to a small part of the construction timeline. They’re also $2.7B (might be £). These are not anything like a “different place in economics and politics”.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoThat is really pretty small. Modern big plants are 30-40GW, 100 times larger. That makes these 'toy' nuclear plants. And they cost a linear increment of what one grand plant would cost. Around 10%. Making them definitely a 'different place in economics and politics'. This is all clear from the article. Just being contrary isn't adding to the conversation. How about discussing the potential to build scalable plants, with room to grow as demand grows? Things like that, which should guide the future of nuclear.
- pfdietz 6y ago
- Devils-Avocado 6y agoIf these can be demonstrated safe it seems reasonable to place them close to cities - providing electricity and district heating. The air pollution problems of Poland could be resolved a year after these were built, for example, by connecting them into and expanding existing district heating systems - meaning no one would need to burn coal or trash in ancient home chimneys.
- Schiendelman 6y agoIf you had the money to build one of these in Poland you could get twice the impact out of insulating houses and building wind farms and geothermal. And since it takes a decade to build a nuclear power plant, you could do it all ten times as fast by just spending on existing solutions.
- tuatoru 6y ago> you could get twice the impact out of insulating ... Yes, the concept of "negawatts" which was popularized by the Rocky Mountain Institute, and Amory Lovins in particular in the 1980s, seems to have vanished from the discourse. Insulate properly and improve efficiency of usage, and suddenly your energy supply problems are a lot smaller--plants, transmission, distribution, raw materials, waste: all of them. Time to bring back negawatts. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negawatt_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negawatt_market
- Schiendelman 6y agoThank you for reminding me of them! I remember reading about RMI like 15 years ago. I’ll try to use the term negawatt. :)
- derriz 6y agoDescribing these as mini-plants gave me the impression that they're talking about say a container sized "unit". While they would be considered small at 440MW, they are still full nuclear plants - the novelty seems to be that as much of the structure as possible will be assembled from prefabricated modules constructed off-site. I can't figure out the economics here. They project $2.7B to construct each 440MW plant. This is presumably an optimistic estimate since they haven't even designed it. Then you have high running and security costs and subsequent decommissioning costs. You need security infrastructure for storage and transport of fuel and waste. And I guess it's envisioned it will take a least 10 years to get the first one operational given they've just started on design work? In contrast, you can build 2GW of on-shore wind capacity for that money and have it delivering electricity in a year or less. The plant will require almost no personal at all to run, and maintenance can be done one or two part-time engineers. Operating costs are effectively zero. Sure, depending on location 10% of the time you'll dip below 1/3 operating capacity but that will still exceed the output from one of these plants. Even if the peak 2GW cannot be utilised efficiently immediately, advancements in storage and increases in BEV sales will make the excess valuable. I think there little future role for fusion for electricity generation - it's just too complex and expensive. The collapse in price for wind/solar in the last decade have changed all the numbers. Prices are so cheap that you can basically over-provision wind/solar by a factor of 3 to minimise effect of fluctuations. Add in cheap efficient combined-cycle gas peaker plants to provide smoothing in production and you can get to 80% carbon-free relatively easily and economically.
- Schiendelman 6y agoYep. These projects continue to be military-industrial at worst, and corporate handouts at best.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoIndeed. This government has made it absolutely clear that its Prime Directive is handing public money to cronies and party donors. So this fits perfectly. And these are not small reactors, and there's nothing "mini" about them. They're comparable in power output to the first generation of UK reactors which operated from the 50s/60s to the 90s/00s.
- Schiendelman 6y agoWhile I appreciate that Rolls Royce isn’t going to pivot to insulating old houses anytime soon, there are far cheaper ways to solve energy supply/demand problems. Given that a large portion of this almost always ends up funded by a government, though, I wish the UK government would spend efficiently instead of on megaprojects. Emissions could be so much lower right now.
- throwanem 6y ago"The parts falling out of this pressure vessel are of the finest British manufacture."
- mhh__ 6y agoEngineering is one of the few things we do well as a nation, ever seen a formula 1 car?
- throwanem 6y agoIt's a take on a very old joke, I believe originally about Rolls Royces. Unfortunately, I don't have a good reference to it; I haven't heard it since childhood, and all I can find via search is people selling bumper stickers with variations on it.
- znkynz 6y agoever seen an Austin Princess?
- mhh__ 6y agoSadly yes, bit before my time though
- happywolf 6y agoSaw an article on using iron powder as energy source. Seems interesting but unfortunately I can't find the link anymore.
- spenrose 6y ago"Each plant would produce 440 megawatts of electricity - roughly enough to power Sheffield - and the hope is that, once the first few have been made, they will cost around £2bn each. The consortium says the first of these modular plants could be up and running in 10 years, after that it will be able to build and install two a year." The hope is to deploy 880MW of electricity a year, starting in 2030—call it 9GW in the 2030s. Meanwhile we are adding (50GW * ~0.50 capacity factor) ~= 25GW of wind capacity every year. By the time these new systems are planned to deliver their first GW in 2030, we'll have 500GW (nameplate) of wind delivering between 50 and 500GW round the clock, augmented with utility-scale storage that currently runs about $200M/GWh and will be at least 2x cheaper by 2030. [2], [3] Then there is geothermal, and solar plus li-ion storage (or better), and solar/wind augmented with hydrogen electrolysis. I'm glad we're developing new nuclear power, I really am. But the competitive landscape it faces is daunting. [1] https://www.iea.org/reports/renewable-energy-market-update/technology-summaries https://www.iea.org/reports/renewable-energy-market-update/t... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/nov/05/victoria-plans-300mw-tesla-battery-to-help-stabilise-grid-as-renewables-increase https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/nov/05/victo... [3] https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/victoria-to-build-one-of-the-world-s-biggest-batteries-near-geelong-20201105-p56brg.html https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/victoria-to-buil...
- mindfulplay 6y agoWind is not consistent and the scaling of the plants is non-uniform/sublinear... Wind is also supplementary because of its inconsistencies and so will not directly power grids.
- lkbm 6y agoThey mentioned this: > augmented with utility-scale storage that currently runs about $200M/GWh and will be at least 2x cheaper by 2030 So storage is a cost, but seems like a relatively small cost, especially if the stated trends continue.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
- stuaxo 6y agoComes across as a bit of a puff piece at times.
- sandworm101 6y ago>>And, because so few new nuclear power stations are built, there are very few opportunities to learn from mistakes. That is a horrible turn of phrase for nuclear power. In the real world, having very few nuclear mistakes from which to learn is a good thing. I'm all for nuclear power, but it doesn't help the cause for the BBC to imply that building more plants will allow for more learning from more mistakes. A better wording: The economies of scale will allow lessons learned during construction of early units to be quickly integrated during production of subsequent units.
- boogies 6y agoWell, Three Mile Island seems to be regarded as a massive mistake despite never exposing people to more radiation than an X-ray, so it could be a good learning opportunity if people could see it as something other then some catastrophe that justifies never learning from new nuclear experiences again.
- stkdump 6y agoWhy should the BBC mince words to help the cause? This is referring to construction, not operation. But a critical mind will obviously come to the conclusion that a higher number of reactors in operation will also increase the risk of failures during operation, unless the risk per reactor is reduced at the same time. And since all big accidents were 'exceptional' in some sense anyway, more 'moving parts' mean more chance for exceptional circumstances. There is no need to hide that fact. The reason small reactors are in fashion is that (like renewables) they decrease the risk for investors, not the population at large.
- usrusr 6y agoIf it's so much better to build n smaller plants instead of one bigger it would still be much better to build them all in one location instead of distributed over n locations. Electricity transmission over long distances is not free, but it's surely not so expensive/inefficient that you need those plants to be distributed over 16 independent sites for the UK. All those claimed learning benefits also apply to operation/maintenance and benefits of experience will transmit much better inside of a big facility than from one site to another. You only need to make sure that you don't take advantage of economies of scale that should better not be taken advantage of.
- niffydroid 6y agoWe do need these, simply just to help provide a base. Only the other day the National Grid was worried we didn't have enough power for peak times because wind wasn't generating enough due to not enough wind. https://www.ft.com/content/f5e8995f-00c8-4c74-8738-55b47a871633 https://www.ft.com/content/f5e8995f-00c8-4c74-8738-55b47a871...
- gandalfian 6y agoCoincidentally the Cruachan Scottish pumped storage loch also generates 440mw. Stores 7gwh of electricity. Obviously doesn't make any energy itself but has outlasted the nuclear plant it was built for by several decades. Built in 1965 for 500 million pounds in today's money. Sometimes it seems like these things were solved in the past but somehow we forgot them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station