Stuart Nathan reports that last year, Rolls-Royce announced that it is proposing to develop a SMR capable of producing 220 to 440 MWe depending on its configuration, designed specifically to be built and commissioned in factories, with a reactor module some 16 meters high and 4 meters in diameter, small enough to be transported on a truck, train or barge. Although it included no technical details of the reactor design, its publicity material identifies UK facilities involved in the project that are mostly part of its submarine operations, making it likely that the submarine reactor is the basis of the technology.
Because of its links to the Royal Navy submarine program, Rolls-Royce is one of the only companies in the world to both build and operate nuclear reactors. It also operates its test reactor near Thurso in Scotland (near to the Dounreay nuclear complex).
Since the 1950s, Rolls-Royce has designed reactors for seven classes of submarine and two land-based prototype reactors. It is now on its third generation of reactor design, and led the development of the first integral reactor in the late 1980s (integral reactors have a reactor core, pressuriser, reactor coolant pumps and steam generators contained within a single pressure vessel, and were the first type of reactor to be designed as passively safe systems that did not require power to be shut down).
According to Rolls-Royce, a UK SMR design could boost the British economy by up to a 100 billion pounds between 2030 and 2050, depending on how much of the supply chain is British. The National Nuclear Laboratory produced a report in 2014 that concluded the potential global market for SMRs would be 65 to 85 GWe by 2035, with about 75 GWe in the UK alone.There is an estimated potential for 40,000 high-value UK jobs and intellectual property.
Last year, the Nuclear AMRC issued a report stating that the UK had the necessary skills and advanced manufacturing capabilities to develop SMR technology.
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