Britain to get its first SMR

 

From the BBC

A first-of-its-kind nuclear power station is to be built on Anglesey, bringing up to 3,000 jobs and billions of pounds of investment.

The plant at Wylfa, on the Welsh island's northern coast, will have the UK's first three small modular reactors (SMR), although the site could potentially hold up to eight.

Work is due to start next year with the aim of generating power by the mid 2030s.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said Britain was once a world leader in nuclear power but "years of neglect and inertia has meant places like Anglesey have been let down and left behind. Today, that changes."

The project, which could power about three million homes, will be built by publicly owned Great British Energy-Nuclear and is backed by a £2.5bn investment from the UK government.

SMRs work similarly to large reactors, using a nuclear reaction to generate heat that produces electricity - but are a fraction of the size, with about a third of the generating output.

Prof Simon Middleburgh, director of the Nuclear Futures Institute at Bangor University, said the SMRs would be "built in a modular manner in factories and shipped to the site to be put together a bit like an Ikea chair".

There were "a few more hurdles to go through", he cautioned - from securing regulatory approval, building the factories required to construct the SMRs and training the workforce that will run them.

Opponents of the project point to the fact that a long-term storage facility for the UK's nuclear waste is yet to be agreed upon and say investment in renewable energy schemes - wind, wave and tidal - is what Anglesey needs.

The government sees them as a secure, reliable, affordable and low carbon energy system and is convinced that, with investment, SMRs will create thousands of jobs and boost manufacturing.

Wylfa beat competition from a site at Oldbury in Gloucestershire, with the reactors designed by Rolls-Royce, subject to final contracts, which are expected later this year.

The argument for SMRs, as opposed to the giant nuclear reactors that have been built so far, is that if they can be produced on an assembly line, they will be much cheaper, because they will avoid the cost overruns (and the lengthy delays) associated with big project bloat.  After all, wind and solar farms tend not to have huge cost overruns, because almost everything is "off the shelf".   But SMRs' success also depends on mass production, which requires (just like solar panels and wind turbines) volume.   Except solar panels and wind turbines are already high volume, and buyers can take advantage of that fact.  I suspect SMRs will only be a thing when China starts to produce them at volume.   Which isn't happening because wind + solar + batteries is so cheap.

 Notice how no indication of cost is given,   Notice also that the new SMRs will only start producing power in 10 years' time--and that's the optimistic scenario.  I remain sceptical.  Still, Hungary has signed an order for 10 SMRs, and they are also planned for Czechia.