Small modular reactors
on fossil fuels – which currently makes up 35.8% of energy on the national grid – and will help the UK to live up to its promise of being net zero by 2050. Furthermore, not only are SMRs more efficient than other sources of clean energy, but they are also much less disruptive to local residents. One SMR would take up 21,500m, 5 similar to the size of 2 football pitches, which is considerably smaller than the space taken up by any other source of clean energy to generate a similar amount of power. They occupy one tenth of the space of a conventional nuclear site and generate roughly a half/ third of the power, making them more space economical than a conventional nuclear site. Being modular, they are constructed using 1500 modules which are manufactured and tested in factories and then moved to the site, reducing noise and traffic that would usually be caused by the construction of a conventional nuclear site. As Rolls-Royce put it ‘ Rolls-Royce SMR is a low-cost clean energy solution, using proven and commercially available technology to deliver a fully integrated, factory built nuclear power plant. ’ 6 The SMR will also contribute to the UK economy, not just to the promise to be net-zero by 2050. The SMR program is forecast to create 40,000 jobs regional to the UK by 2050 and also generate £52 billion in economic benefit for the UK. In an interview with at the Westminster energy forum, Paul Stein, who is the chief technology officer at Rolls-Royce, outlined the other uses for SMRs, aside from a means for the UK to meet its 2050 net-zero goal. Each SMR will cost £1.8 billion to build over 4 years and operation cost will be roughly £40 per megawatt hour (MWh) over the course of 60 years, which is similar to the megawatt hour of offshore wind generation, but SMRs will have a much cheaper upfront cost and shorter development time. As the price for each reactor is relatively low at £1.8 billion, it is possible for private equity to purchase and run an SMR, in a way that hasn’t been previously feasible, allowing the SMRs to expand into an export product for the UK generating a possible £250 billion. Rolls- Royce’s main goal with the SMR was to make it as cheap as possible, due to cost often being a major flaw of nuclear energy. Paul Stein states ‘ Everything in this power station is about reducing cost, so it's about “ freezing the physics ” of the reactor and then looking at every aspect of the design, working out how the cost can be driven down .’ 7 The key to reducing the cost of the SMR is lowering the cost of production, and the main way Rolls-Royce did this was by making them modular, which reduces both cost and risk. However, they did employ other methods which reduced costs as well. For example, they used advanced joining and shape manufacturing processes, such as electron beam welding and diode laser cladding, which save cost and time. The largest criticism of previous SMR designs is that they produce more nuclear waste than generic nuclear reactors. A study at Stanford University compared data from three different SMR technologies, made by NuScale Power, and compared them to a conventional 1.1-gigawatt reactor. They found that SMRs produced up to 35 times more low and intermediate level waste – waste that doesn’t significantly result in an increase in temperature because of its radioactivity – when looking at waste per unit of energy produced. The reason for this increased waste is because NuScale Power’s design is naturally less efficient than a generic reactor, due to an increased leakage of neutrons out of the core of the reactor, resulting in a shorter self-sustaining reaction and an increase in the amount and complexity of
5 See note 2. 6 https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactors.aspx#/. 7 https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rolls-Royce-on-track-for-2030-delivery-of-UK- SMR#:~:text=the%20grid%20market.%22-,Cost,60%2FMWh%20over%2060%20years.
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