Cool! That'll make my Silver Ghost get up and go!
Posted on 11/09/2021 3:26:46 PM PST by BenLurkin
The creation of the Rolls-Royce Small Modular Reactor (SMR) business was announced following a £195m cash injection from private firms and a £210m grant from the government.
Small modular reactors are nuclear fission reactors but are smaller than conventional ones.
Rolls-Royce SMR said one of its power stations would occupy about one tenth of the size of a conventional nuclear plant - the equivalent footprint of two football pitches - and power approximately one million homes.
The firm said a plant would have the capacity to generate 470MW of power, which it added would be the same produced by more than 150 onshore wind turbines.
SMRs are thought to be less expensive to build than traditional nuclear power plants because of their smaller size. Due to the nature of Rolls-Royce's reactors, it is understood parts could be produced in factories and transported to sites by road, which would reduce construction time and costs.
At an expected cost of around £2bn each, SMRs would cost less than the £20bn each for the larger plant under construction at Hinkley Point and an anticipated, but not yet approved, sister plant at Sizewell in Suffolk.
If approved for use in the UK, it is understood Rolls-Royce SMR could build up to 16 reactors across the UK for electricity production.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
I’ve got to get me one of those.
Makes sense. I’ve been advocating this very strategy: SMRs to produce distributed energy, reliably and safely. Reduce and simplify the grid as well as increase efficiency.
Whatever happened to those Toshiba mini-nuke plants for remote locations?
Cool! That'll make my Silver Ghost get up and go!
Is this part of the belt and road initiative?
Along the theme of today’s ransom-ware that has plagued tens of thousands of companies’ computers worldwide...
I’m sure lots of Jokers out there will be trying to figure out how these units can be turned into a tool for their personal extortion/blackmail jackpot.
ONLY ONE BIG PROBLEM... They will still be HIGH PRESSURE VESSEL REACTORS, not MSR or IMSR which operate at 1 - 1.5 bar!
IMSR and MSR reactors can’t “melt down” the fuel is in the the liquid salt mix. If the salt mix gets too hot it looses reactivity and the reaction slows down then cools down then heats up again... They are SELF REGULATING which a high pressure reactors ARE NOT!
Doc Brown beat them to it.
Seemed like a good idea up until the point that I discovered Lucas Electrics was involved.
I want one of those neighborhood size jobs.
I want one of those neighborhood size jobs.
Lucas, “Prince of Darkness”!
Lucas, “Prince of Darkness”!
Hey, if they produce the nuclear version of a Merlin Engine, that’d be stupendous!
Now, THAT is a beautiful machine.
You’re conveniently ignoring the problem with MSR reactors - if you ever have to shut them down, you throw the whole thing away.
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