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Transportation

Britain To Start Approval Process for Rolls-Royce Mini Nuclear Reactor (reuters.com) 99

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
The British government has asked its nuclear regulator to start the process for approving Rolls-Royce's planned small- scale modular nuclear reactor, which policymakers hope will help cut dependence on fossil fuels and lower carbon emissions. From a report: Britain last year backed a $546 million funding round at the company to develop the country's first small modular nuclear reactor (SMR), part of its drive to reach net zero carbon emissions and promote new technology with export potential. Energy minister Kwasi Kwarteng has also said new nuclear projects will play an important part in Britain's efforts to reduce its reliance on expensive gas, which hit fresh record high prices on Monday amid the crisis in Ukraine. SMRs can be made in factories, with parts small enough to be transported on trucks and barges and assembled more quickly and cheaply than large-scale reactors. Each mini plant can power around one million homes and Rolls-Royce has forecast the SMR business could create up to 40,000 jobs based on British and export demand.
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Britain To Start Approval Process for Rolls-Royce Mini Nuclear Reactor More

Britain To Start Approval Process for Rolls-Royce Mini Nuclear Reactor

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    • fyi, desire for profits from trade frequently result in peace

    • Canada or Australia. with the latter having more uranium reserves than Kazakhstan and Russia put together.

      • Canada or Australia.

        Or even America for that matter, but it seems like America might be wising up and will lay claim to a lot of that soon [prnewswire.com] for the strategic uranium reserve....

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by martinX ( 672498 )

        Mate, we've got everything. Just lure the greenies away from your mine site with some jute tote bags and organic eco-bongs, dig the stuff up and away we go.

        • Mate, we've got everything. Just lure the greenies away from your mine site with some jute tote bags and organic eco-bongs, dig the stuff up and away we go.

          Yep. Strip mine everything, log everything, and those blasted Koalas just get in the way of progress. Dump the waste in the nearest river - plenty of water in Australia. Ignore the environmental laws, and if they catch you and give you a nasty $1 fine just apply for a 20-year exemption from pollution limits, renewable indefinitely. Load the ore on diesel trucks and take it to the diesel ships for transport. But it's been a hard year, and only 90% of the workers are oversears migrans on 30% of market ra

      • But Kazakhstan is much closer, which makes transportation a lot easier.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by necro81 ( 917438 )
      You jest, I suppose, but it wasn't actually all that long ago when there was a highly successful program to fuel reactors - even reactors in the US - with the material from decommissioned Soviet warheads. It was called Megatons to Megawatts [slashdot.org].
  • Still think nuclear is green? https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
    Bonus link: American Uranium Processing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
    (neither are my videos)

    • Oh and why don't you link to some lithium mining too, to argue that EVs aren't green? It would similarly ignore the fossil fuel release involved as well as the difference in scale of the mining required.

    • Nuclear energy (even considering construction, processing etc..) produces far less CO2, contributes far far less to global warming and spreads far far far less radiation than coal power AND produces large amounts of power at any time of day regardless of winds blowing or sun shining.

      So, take your green twaddle and shove it, you have already done enough to kill us already by opposing nuclear power and thereby green lighting fossil fuels that are causing global warming

      • Nuclear energy (even considering construction, processing etc..) produces far less CO2, contributes far far less to global warming and spreads far far far less radiation than coal power AND produces large amounts of power at any time of day regardless of winds blowing or sun shining.

        Why did you cut off half the popular saying? It goes:

        Nuclear power produces large amounts of power at any time of day regardless of winds blowing, sun shining, gravity working, the laws of thermodynamics being followed, lithium ions being attracted to a cathode or an anode and electrons flowing through wires.

        Because dams, geothermal energy, batteries and long distance power lines might all stop working for some reason.

    • Cool videos, but I prefer videos of coal mine and waste processing. It makes Uranium look like the small children's toy it is.

    • Nothing is green.

      Have you any idea how much coal and oil is required to make a wind turbine? Never mind the rare earths and copper.

      So...

    • If you are genuinely concerned about mining, it makes no sense to single out nuclear, which is the single most resource efficient energy source. All of the world's energy could come from a fraction of the tailings of rare earth mining already being done. Rare earth mining is indeed a nasty affair, and a lot of it is being driven by renewables, which use them in great quantities.

      That being said, the conventional uranium fuel cycle is 0.5% efficient, and if we are to rapidly scale nuclear, we should develop m

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

        All of the world's energy could come from a fraction of the tailings of rare earth mining already being done.

        Not on an energy positive basis, no, as those tailings are insufficiently rich in uranium.

  • Rolls Royce? Sounds pricey.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How much for the Kia version?

    • My first impression of the headline had me thinking cars also, and the Mr. Fusion device from Back To The Future came to mind.

      Actually a prop replica can be purchased. [walmart.com] I'm tempted to get a used one, but my wife will consider it "yet more stupid geek shit". Opposites attract, and then bicker like hell...

      • my wife will consider it "yet more stupid geek shit".

        Do you have some kind of equivalency, so that whenever she purchases anything she likes just for the sake of liking it, you're allowed to similarly insult her for having purchased it?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
      I was wondering if you could get one in a Spitfire...
    • I'd prefer the Volvo version. I'm not looking for performance, I'm looking for safety.
    • I was thinking that British people with nuclear sounds terrifying. There are still a handful of smart people there, but the British tendency to reinvent everything, no matter how horrible of an idea it is makes me sweat when nuclear is involved.

      If you need an example, look to Symbian. Rather than fixing a linker, they hacked the executable files. Rather than adding features to the language, the hacked a cleanup stack. Rather than making a debugger, they hacked an in circuit emulator. Rather than programming

    • Rolls Royce don't make cars any more - "Rolls Royce" cars are made by BMW (and the factory at Crewe makes Bentley-branded cars for Volkswagen).

      Rolls Royce mainly make aeroplane engines these days.

    • Price is actually what bothers me, will you garden variety home prepper afford one? (Obviously, since cost is not an issue if it will make you feel safe and prepared for the future.) Will they get their hands on one? Probably. This future worries me a little. Not emotionally, but rationally.

  • SMR (Small Nuclear Reactor) (Score:3)

    by suss ( 158993 ) on Monday March 07, 2022 @05:53PM (#62334581)

    Some of my harddrives have SMR, but they don't seem to power themselves, it just makes them slower when you rewrite parts...

  • Rolls-Royce Mini Nuclear Reactor

    They had to go with a luxury model ... :-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by schwit1 ( 797399 )

      RR makes excellent jet engines. All of the B-52s are getting an 8 pack upgrade of RR F130s
      https://www.airforcemag.com/ro... [airforcemag.com]

      • I know that, but thanks for the interesting link. I was just poking fun at the consumer-level perception of the brand...

    • I will fully support the Rolls Royce mini nuclear reactors if they promise to put a Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament on every one.

      • I will fully support the Rolls Royce mini nuclear reactors if they promise to put a Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament on every one.

        I can get behind that ...

      • They should!

        I doubt they actually have the right to use it though. The car manufacturing side of the business was sold off decades ago, and I think the Spirit Of Ecstasy was part of that sale.

    • The marketing blurbs practically write themselves.

      The Rolls-Royce of Nuclear Reactors

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hoofie ( 201045 )

      Good try but Rolls Royce make all the Nuclear reactors for the Royal Navy's all-nuclear submarine fleet.

  • Thought there was a version where the process could be tuned to create more of the version that fueled the reactor. "Breeder" was the term I recall. I'm assuming they're less productive than the others, or have other issues...but I'd be curious for a summary from someone in the know.

    Yes, cost to assemble and manufacture plays a part in most things. I'd be curious why existing systems were designed to be so huge? Was this trying to limit the number of people who needed the skills to do maintain and opera

    • I think breeder reactor has something to do with a mommy reactor and daddy reactor who love each other very much ... :-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by spitzak ( 4019 )

      I believe the ability to cool off if all power is lost is one of the primary features of making a smaller reactor.

      Though I think the real big deal is that if you have a lot of small reactors it is a lot more reliable power, because they are not going to all break at once. Downtime for modern nuclear reactors is pretty abysmal, a fact that is often ignored when comparing them to other power sources, but this is entirely due to scale. A giant gas-fired power plant with exactly one huge boiler would also fail

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

        I believe the ability to cool off if all power is lost is one of the primary features of making a smaller reactor.

        Though I think the real big deal is that if you have a lot of small reactors it is a lot more reliable power, because they are not going to all break at once.

        Ideally, you'd want several designs and manufacturers to avoid any systemic of manufacturing issue meaning the need to stop all of them.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by spitzak ( 4019 )

          That's probably a good idea, though I would expect a single installation to just have a large number of the same design to make maintenance easier. But perhaps other installations could be encouraged to use a different vendor.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
            Yes, for a single installation, the same design. Across an entire county, different ones.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

      I'd be curious why existing systems were designed to be so huge?

      Thermal efficiency and thus commercial viability.

  • They say it's prohibitively expensive & it takes too long to build regular sized nuclear reactors. How much does it cost & how long does is take to build a nuclear reactor factory & how many reactors does it have to make to break even & how long would that take, assuming everything happened on time & under budget?
    • Assembly line production has over a century of credit to cost reductions. It takes decades to build a power plant using our existing methods. Some of that is bureaucracy and a lot of it is how specialized every component is. There's only a few dozen facilities in the world building nuclear plants at any given time, if you're a specialized manufacturer for the components you pretty much can't take advantage of scaling at all and almost every component is special ordered for only 1 client potentially ever. 10

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
      Smaller reactors are overall less thermally efficient and less efficient in terms of operating costs, which is why large facilities are the norm. Small, modular isn't exactly new - military forces have been using them since the 1950s, but they haven't been commercially viable. If they had been then nuclear power generation would already be using them, not least because it would make overall financing of a site much easier and scalable.

    • One of the 'long poles' in reactor manufacturing is the pressure vessel. These have to be made from thick steel, and have to be made perfectly. Only a few steelworks on the planet can produce these giant forgings, and their production capacity basically limits how many nuclear plants you can build.

      Go to a smaller reactor, and the pressure vessel becomes easier to build, with more locations that can fabricate them.

    • Easy: Sufficient donations to the Conservative Party ensures "success".

      Budgets and timescales don't matter so long as the buyer is happy with the delivery - and they will be if greased with a few thousand in donations here and there.

      • The Tories aren't particularly well-known for their ability to uphold deals & follow through on promises. They mostly tend to make grand announcements & then hope that when it all turns to shit & the sponsors/donors have got rich off of it & moved on to the next project, everyone's forgotten & nobody notices. The trouble is, Private-Eye does keep track & does notice.
  • The Rolls Royce Uranium Ghost ...

  • THIS is the future I read about, envisioned and want. Now, if I can find a source for the family atomics, Arrakis will be mine...

  • capable of powering 10 million homes.
    Just like we did with nuclear energy in the 60's.

  • Sorry for being a downer, but this will not work. If it would work, it would have long since been put out on the market. After all, this technology has been productified since the 1980s in atomic submarines; twenty years ago, before Fukushima, this would've dominated the energy market. Now, when Solar, Wind and storage has become cheap, SMRs are a dead end.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      Nuclear submarine reactors work great and they are not particularly expensive. However, they run on weapons-grade enriched uranium. Apart from the obvious security implications, enriching uranium to that level is very energy intensive and therefore expensive.

      That is why submarine reactors aren't dominating the energy market.

      There is considerable interest in running submarines on low enriched uranium. Some say that the Rolls Royce SMR project is mostly a civilian front for that military effort.

  • great but how about moltex? (Score:3)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Monday March 07, 2022 @11:09PM (#62335311) Journal
    Moltex is an SMR that can use 'spent fuel'. That is what is needed.
  • The French figured out years ago that they could have safe nuclear power, so at least one other European country has figured that out. Maybe they can eventually free themselves from Russian oil.

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