RR couldn't give a monkeys arse about the funding to build the reactors. They would happily build them for free.

This will provide a fucking MASSIVE 100+ year cleanup bonanza payhose - Guaranteed.

With the Rolls-Royce SMR technology, we have developed a clean energy solution...

And what about the decommissioning..?

Whilst I like the idea of nuclear power, the mess it leaves behind isn't very pleasant.

With one in every town I'd imagine we'd have trouble keeping them safe from mischievous people should we do something stupid like sell weapons to a slightly different side of a religion for err fun!

I suspect the Civil Nuclear Constabulary would work out how to do it, with perhaps a slight increase in its size.

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/civil-nuclear-constabulary/about

What? You think the Government of Austerity will ever fund such profligacy?

I don't think that's the point here.

SMRs should be built as a 'farm' of small reactors in a few fairly large facilities situated in places where you would normally site a nuclear reactor i.e. close to bodies of water.

That makes the sites easier to defend from bad people (because there are fewer of them, compared to 'one in every town'), and easier to decommission (because the reactors are smaller).

And because the reactors themselves are small, they can be taken offline for maintenance much more easily, they contain less fuel, they are easier, cheaper and faster to build (less chance of a tiny metallurgical imperfection ruining your whole pressure vessel as with Flamanville EPR), they are safer, they can be managed by automated systems instead of an army of homer simpsons with clipboards and boxes of doughnuts.

It's a problem. It's a pretty big problem, too.

However, the fact that my home town, which is 20km inland, is projected to be be a coastal town in a century or so, is also a big problem. An underwater town is gone just as much as an irradiated one.

So, I would very much like for us to explore every possible solution, even if they present big problems.

I would not like for us to only bet that we'll figure out how to really scale renewables. I've nothing against renewables, but it would be profoundly stupid to bet the future stability, if not the survival, of mankind, on just one horse. It's not like renewables don't have pretty big problems too.

I very definitely do not want for us to rely solely on solutions that I consider utterly and completely unfeasible, such as convincing everyone to stop eating meat and driving cars within the next 20 years.

Yes, the mess left behind by past endeavours is ... a bit of a mess. But these days, what to do with things at the end of life is considered during design.

Leaving aside some of the "less clever" ideas from the past, you also need to be aware that some of our waste problems are actually cased (in part) by demands from the anti-nuclear lobby. Things like dismantling reactors "hot" instead of allowing them to cool down (radioactivity wise), and treating what would in any other circumstance be "mostly fuel, just needs processing a bit" as waste that must be expensively disposed of.

"... some of our waste problems are actually cased (in part) by demands from the anti-nuclear lobby..."

Marginally, yes, and the cost of nuclear is also elevated by demanding far higher safety outcomes than any other type of plant.

But the real huge driver of nuclear waste is the military... most current reactors (based on 70s designs and built in the 80s - 90s) leave highly radioactive fissile material as waste by design since the military wanted plentiful material for nuclear weapons. Modern design reactors 'burn' far more of the fuel and leave far less as waste.

"far higher safety outcomes than any other type of plant."

IIRC, the "natural" radioactive emissions from coal plants into the environment was significantly higher than what was defined as "safe" for nuclear plants. Coal = safe, Nuclear = OMG DANGEROUS is part of why nuclear is vastly more expensive. As others have pointed out, newer technology can be a lot safer and a lot cheaper and I'd much prefer a nice, decent, reliable and constant base load. Wind and solar are not that. Cloudy calm days across almost the entire UK are not unheard off. And despite the promise of wave and tidal going back to the 1960's which the UK should be well ahead in, we really don't seem to be getting any further than a few very small scale prototypes, often, ironically, for environmental objections (remember the huge campaign against wind turbines lead by the RSPB "because kills birds" that seems to have gone away now?)

Most people who have open eyes about near-term needs and current limitations of alternatives agree that nuclear is still needed for at least decades... Even with the issues connected to storing the spent fuel. And indeed, smaller and more modulable seems like it makes sense from all points of view.

There are currently serious worries that countries have painted themselves into a corner by rejecting nuclear energy, and that there will be an energy crisis in the near future.

Needed for decades? It takes decade to build the stuff and by then we could have far more renewables than we need for similar build price.

If this is small and modulable, it could hopefully be built much faster... And renewables don't currently look as if they scale all the way up to what we need, even in countries that have massively bet on it.

I have to ask (as a fan of nuclear), what is the UK's solution for the waste?

Ship it to Loch Ness to create a real Nessy?

I can imagine a smaller reactor would create more waste (per unit energy) due to inefficiencies, so this is not a silly question ot be asking...

Short term - above ground storage (the volumes are actually really quite small).

Longer term - still working through options for very long term underground storage.

The above both assume no development of technology that allows waste to be re-used as fuel (which I've seen discussed, but have no idea if is actually practical)

The above both assume no development of technology that allows waste to be re-used as fuel (which I've seen discussed, but have no idea if is actually practical)

There are two things you can do:

1. Process part-used fuel and extract the unused fuel from the fission products to make new fuel (i.e. concentrate it). This is a good thing and a bit of a no-brainer ... but some of those byproducts are toxic, dangerous to handle, and require careful (and costly) storage and disposal.

2. Incorporate some isotope in the fuel that turns into (maybe another sort of) fuel as the reactor runs (as 238 U is added to Uranium fuel in a fast breeder reactor so that as the 235 U is used up to generate power the 238 U turns into 239 Pu (which is also a fissile material and so can be used as a nuclear fuel)).

The trouble with this is that Plutonium and its decay byproducts are rather more dangerous than Uranium and its byproducts. When the nuclear industry was young the production of Plutonium was seen as a good thing because it could be used as a fuel and in the manufacture of atomic bombs. Nowadays ... not so much.

Isn't there a (theoretical) design for a fast breeder variant that will "burn" the plutonium in a second stage? I'm pretty sure I read about one.

Fourth generation epithermal neutron reactors are supposed to be able to burn waste by converting it to useful fissile elements. It still needs research to see whether it's technically and economically feasible. If it is we probably have several centuries of power available from the current waste pile.

There's also the idea of the [1]Rubbia energy amplifier . Sadly he didn't get the funding to try building one with the old magnets available from the LHC upgrade.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_amplifier

"1. Process part-used fuel and extract the unused fuel from the fission products to make new fuel (i.e. concentrate it). This is a good thing and a bit of a no-brainer ... but some of those byproducts are toxic, dangerous to handle, and require careful (and costly) storage and disposal."

Isn't that what the now defunct [1]THORPE at Sellafield was for? IIRC, much of the world was sending stuff there to be re-processed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_Oxide_Reprocessing_Plant

I'm broadly in favour of the whole small, modular reactor idea, but it does at this point feel rather like something we should have started doing 25 years ago. I'm glad they're doing it at all, I suppose - there's always going to be the need to do rapid-ramp-up generation to fill in the gaps caused by inconsistent sources like wind and solar, so I'm struggling to imagine a world where we won't need these at all... but we'd be in a damn sight better place if we'd started building them before replacing all the existing infrastructure had become something of an emergency.

A big difference is that the technology is mostly already there, AND you don't get to have decades of civils needed.

The reactor itself will be a factory built unit that gets put on a lorry and delivered to site already fuelled and ready to go. Slot it into the support systems built on site and away it goes. As the article mentions, the idea is that there will be many of the same design (like the French more or less go to with their big reactors) rather than lots of different and bespoke system like we were daft enough to do.

But a massive part of the cost saving will be down to the support and safety systems. Our current big reactors need lots of safety kit to keep them working and safe - we saw from Fukashima what can happen if you take away those support system while there's a lot of decay heat still in the core. Other than the Westinghouse AP1000 design which incorporates truly passive cooling for a day or two while you get some support restored, they all need these systems which are very expensive - and hence drive the push for ever bigger plants.

With the SMRs, they are intrinsically or inherently safe - basically they are designed in such a way that you could remove all the support systems, the reactor will shut down, and passive systems will cool it enough to prevent a meltdown or nuclear material release. The reactor may or may not be useable afterwards, but there won't be contamination, or exclusion zones, or hydrogen explosions (which made for good, but innacurate, TV at Fukashima). Just lift the reactor out and ship it back to the factory, fix the problems, pop a new reactor in the slot.

That's where most of the savings will come from, by not needing the massively engineered safety systems, and huge crowds of very highly paid people to look after it.

"huge crowds of very highly paid people to look after it."

Surely just 1 is enough...

https://ep00.epimg.net/elpais/imagenes/2014/03/07/icon/1394189087_693162_1394189181_noticia_normal.jpg

"something we should have started doing 25 years ago"

More than that. The technology was there once the 1st generation of nuclear subs & aircraft carriers were built. By now we should have been several generations in.

And presumably all we had to do was park a sub/aircraft carrier at the dockside and run a couple of cables...

This is stage two; don't bother with the maritime hardware. With the added bonus that if people decide they don't like it where you've put it, you can pick it up (with care!) and put it somewhere else.

" it does at this point feel rather like something we should have started doing 25 years ago"

To paraphrase/mangle an old (Chinese?) proverb... the best time to start this was 25 years ago. The next best time is now.

"but it does at this point feel rather like something we should have started doing 25 years ago."

IIRC, it's been talked about for at least that long, but no one seems to have bothered so far. I suspect it's more about sweating assets, known tech and the incumbents only changing when being forced to do so. Likewise, as part of all of that, industry doesn't like to invest until it become urgent and they can say they need government grants to get started. The tech for small nuclear reactors has been around since the first nuclear powered submarines were launched.

" based on nuclear submarine technology "

" the size of two football pitches "

Can anyone explain how these two statements tie up?

Whilst the reactor may be small, the equipment to control it, storage, turbines/generators, heat-pumps (it's not in the sea, so it may have to blow away the excess heat into the atmosphere (see Little Barford)), transformers and transmission lines all need space; as do the security fences, flood defences, staff canteen, et cetera.

Retired coal/gas fired stations aren't small - so these could form "plug replacements"?

Whilst in favour of a backup to renewables - which can be a bit weather dependent - disposal of the mess is a problem..., IF ONLY they could get Fusion to work...

i guess they will spread out a bit (because they can) but there will be some extra bits and pieces such as cooling systems (towers or river/sea feeds) and transformers - neither of which the sub needs(*). Also we might want a few fences and a bit of space to keep miscreants at bay - neither of which an armed, stealthy military vessel needs. Given the power output I would imagine these units will also be a fair bit bigger (as they are _based_ on subs rather than copying) but still nowhere near as big as e.g. Sizewell C

(*) well the sea-water cooling is considerably closer for the sub.

It'll definitely be spread out a bit! with no space restrictions it'll be possible to create a far more efficient (and maintainable) layout than one that fits into a 10m diameter tube and no requirement for using small premium cost components.

>Can anyone explain how these two statements tie up?

"Based on" is doing some very heavy lifting there. A submarine reactor is likely to be in the region of 200MWth, so something in the region of 70-80MWe. These SMRs are being pitched at 300+MWe, so right out of the gates they're on the order of three times the power output of the submarine reactors they're "based on".

The rest of the size difference will be convenience and cost - if you dont need to squeeze everything into a submarine-sized footprint you probably don't want to. But I also suspect people don't quite clock just how big the current-gen UK submarines actually are - you don't get that much spare change in space difference between HMS Astute and a football pitch!

" you don't get that much spare change in space difference between HMS Astute and a football pitch!"

So, $(football manager of choice) won't be bringing on a sub ?

It's the lead lined one, thanks -->

It would be nice to see SMR installations in large town/cities integrated into a district heating system, along with local waste incinerators. It would be a handy way to get rid of in-house heating solutions (like gas boilers), as well as heating schools, shops, businesses, in/outdoor pools, et al. I may go further and add loops in the roads and pavements for defrosting in the winter - thus saving the spread of tonnes of salt. The road loops could also be used in the summer to heat water in homes / local pools.

Of course, none of the above will ever happen due to cost and everything being built in isolation.

But it is nice to dream...

The challenge with district heating isn't the heating, it's the district bit. We haven't got a snowball's chance of retrofitting district heating systems to our existing housing stock. We should be building them into new housing projects, but given how much money housing developers shovel at the current crop of ministers that also won't happen without political change.

I'm not so sure about that. I do believe there is one going in, in Stoke on Trent. I also wonder if you could combine heat pumps with district "warm water" systems (or maybe that's how these things work anyway) to minimise all that outdoor heat exchanger contraption. It's about time the pavements were dug up again anyway, for something more useful than yet another fibre optic duct!

We have district heating here in our little village near Potsdam. A man came to change the measurement unit this week, and I was impressed with the insulation on the pipes - until I realised that heat radiating from the incoming pipework would heat the house directly, and not actually be measured! Can't have that, of course...

The device itself is delightfully simple; a couple of loops straight from the high-temperature water to the radiators, and hot water on the drinking water supply via a heat exchanger about a foot by four inches square.

Looks like the measurement is a temperature difference between input and output and a flow measurement. Multiply one by the other to get a direct energy usage.

>I'm not so sure about that. I do believe there is one going in, in Stoke on Trent....

There is indeed. Work started on it in 2014. It's three years behind schedule and counting because everyone involved grossly underestimated the cost and complexity of laying a new piping network into a century-old town centre. £50-something million of public money spent to deliver district heating to something like 1,000 homes and a handful of businesses. Unless someone comes up with a _much_ cleverer way to do things, we'll all be much better off with heat pumps.

300MW / 1000000 = 300W per home in my estimation.

Putting on the kettle is 2.2kW, in a ad break at half time of _whatever_ will overload it.

Then we are supposed to be moving to heat pumps, that's 4kW per home continuous, minus the 100 homes closest to the reactor who'll be heated by gamma rays and neutrons :-)

A typical kettle runs for 60-90 seconds and heat pumps do not run continuously. The average UK home uses about 10kWh of electricity on a given day. Hence 300MW over 24 hours gets you 7.2GWh, or something in the region of 720,000 homes. You can shave about 30% off that figure if everyone's using a heat pump and another, smaller, chunk for electric cars. But that only improves the value proposition, because both heat pumps and electric cars can function as the equivalent of grid-scale storage by working overnight.

I think the OP's point, however, is that demand can be subject to short peaks. It would need some form of short term storage to cover those. 1% of that million homes homes having an electric kettle switched on at the same time will take up a substantial percentage of the total output.

That's what facilities like Dinorwig are for. You can even [1]read El Reg's article about it .

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2016/05/16/geeks_guide_electric_mountain/

"That's what facilities like Dinorwig are for."

You might need a few more of those if the articles numbers are used as the basis for future planning. You have to plan for peak usage, not just average daily usage.

Your kettle may be 2 to 3 kW - but it's only on for a short time. The average, across many houses, is actually quite low. At a local level I believe the DNOs work on around 1kW/house for sizing the local network.

On a national level, the total load tends to be in the order of 30GW, rising in winter. So with something in the order of 30M homes, that would work out at 1kW/home if you ignore all the industrial users.

But as you say, with the drive to electrify everything, that average will be going up considerably.

Unfortunately as we all want to cook and heat our homes at about the same times during the day, the grid supply needs to cater for maximum usage not the average. We'll need dozens of these but on the upside quite a few can be built in parallel.

Unfortunately as we all want to cook and heat our homes at about the same times during the day,

I don't think anyone is suggesting that these will be the only source of electricity generation and a million homes will depend on one. The number quoted, a nice round million probably is the average use of a house compared to the energy output, but there will be Sizewells and Hinckley Point and all the big fans , hydro and solar farms to back them up when demand is peak.

One thing I think many of the replies, both here and to Mike 137 above, are missing, is that what they mean by 'a SMR power station … the size of two football pitches' might mean a power station with an arbitrary number of these modules on site. That's kind of the point of the talk of scalability and 'deploying incrementally'. But certainly, from what's quoted here at least, it isn't clear whether they're talking about a single module or a conglomerate station.

Given this country's track record with large scale infrastructure projects, I fear such an endeavour will overrun on both time and budget and end up leaving us with something built for, but not with, SMRs.

That's a feeble kettle for the UK, sounds like a Euro-spec kettle without the almighty power of the 32 Amp ring main.

Windscale - graphite fire

Three Mile Island - plain meltdown (?)

Chernobyl - graphite fire

Fukushima - hydrogen explosion

"One design, the Toshiba 4S, a micro-sodium-cooled reactor, is supposed to require little supervision."

??? - sodium fire

Bring it on!