Molten Salt Reactors vs RR SMR31 Oct 2021 20:24
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/10/31/britain-needs-latest-21st-century-mini-nukes-not-just-revamped/
Britain needs two horses in the global race for small modular reactors, the frontier technology intended to slash costs and rescue the nuclear industry from obsolescence.
The Government is betting on the UK SMR consortium, a blue-chip project spearheaded by Rolls-Royce to build a fleet of compact reactors by the early 2030s. It will get the lion’s share of the £505m package unveiled in July for new energy technologies.
The Rolls-Royce reactor will be a miniaturised version of light water variants already in use, enticing because it relies on established know-how and nuclear supply chains, and can be cranked up fast enough to meet the UK’s breakneck net-zero goals as old reactors are shut down.
“It’s a near-term technology and means we can decarbonise much earlier,” said Dr Fiona Rayment, science and technology director at the National Nuclear Laboratory.
“It gives us our own design and our own intellectual property using Rolls-Royce skills. There is an export market and that is absolutely part of the plan.”
The consortium is eyeing £250bn of overseas sales by 2050. Turkey and the Czech Republic have already signed memoranda.
The project has much going for it but may be leapfrogged within a decade by “generation IV” mini-reactors using molten salt and other moonshot designs.
These are potentially cheaper, cleaner and safer, operating at atmospheric pressure with less need for giant protective domes. Some are “dispatchable”, able to respond fast to ups and downs in renewables and therefore a better fit for the UK’s parallel dash for 40 gigawatts of offshore wind.
...but molten salt reactor technology is years away. If they can invent some material to hold the lava.
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