Last month China’s President Xi was feted in a
State Visit, including a banquet with
Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace and meeting at 10 Downing Street with Prime
Minister David Cameron, as part of finalizing a major industrial partnership
deal, which involved several deals on
inward nuclear investment in the UK, including a £6 billion ( $ 9bn) investment (about a third of the project cost) (‘Britain to Grant China a Large Stake in Nuclear Industry’, New York Times, October.
22, 2015; http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/business/international/hinkley-point-nuclear-plant.html) in EDF Energy’s GW-size Hinkley C nuclear
plant, by the Chinese-state owned China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN).
(https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/joint-press-conference-david-cameron-and-president-xi-jinping; https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/statement-of-cooperation-in-the-field-of-civil-nuclear-energy-2015)
Meanwhile,
eastwards across London over 130 nuclear company representatives, R&D
specialists and innovators, along with some and key policy players, met in the
shadow of The Tower of London for NEI’s two-day Small Modular Reactor (SMR) UK summit.
Westinghouse’s
roving global chief, Jeff Benjamin, vice president for new plants and major
projects, chose the Summit to unveil his company’s plans to offer the UK
government a partnership in the
deployment of small modular reactor (SMR) technology, “a move that would
advance the UK from being a buyer to a global provider of the latest nuclear
energy technology, According to a Westinghouse statement. The proposal is
intended to complement the current Phase 2 SMR study that the UK government has recently
commenced.
As proposed, the partnership would be structured as a UK-based
enterprise jointly owned by Westinghouse, the UK government and UK industry, in
which Benjamin revealed to the Summit it would be expected the British
government would take an equity stake, which could be reduced as the risk
profile reduces.
In
an outspoken in presentation, Benjamin, who asserted he was not a big corporate
profit –driver, said for Westinghouse “nuclear was not a be all-end all
technology,” and conceded that despite Westinghouse planning to base its SMR
operations at its UK base in Springfields nuclear fuel plant near Manchester,
some of the Westinghouse SMR equipment may be covered by restrictive US export
controls.
In
early 2014 the popular US science monthly, Scientific
American, carried an article on SMRs entitled ‘Is There a New Nuclear Kid on the Block?’
It quoted the World
Nuclear Association's most optimistic estimate that there could be as many as
96 SMRs up and running by 2030, suggesting some 20 designs at various stages of
development were already underway. The SMRUK summit is in many ways the next
corporate stepping stone in the SMR evaluation process.
British opportunities
On 26 February this
year the British Government's published its response to the House of Commons
Energy Committee report on Small Nuclear Reactors, which was released on 17
December last year. The response stated the UK Government recognises the long-term potential of SMRs as an additional
source of generation, which is why it commissioned the SMR feasibility study …published
by the [UK ] National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL)in December 2014, [which] provided
an initial evidence base for SMRs and whether there is a role for SMRs in the
UK.”
It recommended a more in-depth analysis to establish the
robust evidence base needed to enable a policy decision on SMRs and help
Government decide whether it wants to pursue a UK SMR programme. This second
phase of work is now underway.
The Summit
heard from three key British contributors to this work. Mike Middleton,
strategy manager for nuclear at the Public-private Energy Technologies
Institute, which published its own interesting scoping study on The role for nuclear within a low carbon
energy system (http://www.eti.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/3511-ETI-Nuclear-Insights-Lores-AW.pdf) in early October.
And
also from Dame Professor Sue Ian, former executive director of technology for
British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) and now a chair of the UK Nuclear Innovation and
Research Advisory Board (NIRAB) (http://www.nirab.org.uk/about-us/about-nirab/) and several times
from Dr Gordon Waddington, a 35-year veteran of Rolls Royce, ending up as
President for Civil nuclear research, who is also a
past Chairman of the Industrial Advisory Board Imperial College (London), and who drafted the 64-page UK feasibility
study on SMRs, released by the UK NNL in
early December last year (http://www.nnl.co.uk/media/1627/smr-feasibility-study-december-2014.pdf). He chaired the
Summit with good humor and expertise.
Waddington
claimed as “it was always going to be difficult for the UK” to be directly involved in the large (GW)
reactors development – as there are
several major global (ie non –British) players-
SMRs are “an option for the UK to enter the reactor market.” But, he
stressed, the economic climate has to be right.
Dame
Sue, who chaired a closed UK-only workshop convened by the UK Department of
Energy and Climate Change (DECC) - which led to the 2014 UKNNL SMR feasibility
study- made a strong appeal for Government investment in new nuclear research
including for SMR R,D&D, especially
when the DECC internal techno-economic assessment (TEA) study is complete.
Warning
that the UK regulator needs serious technology to assess – “stuff not fluff “
as she dubbed it- she said NIRAB has made a bid for substantial resource
support from the Treasury (finance ministry) in the UK Government in the UK Comprehensive Spending Review that will
be published late in November.
The ETI
is arguing the UK could accommodate up to 75 GW of new nuclear in the UK to
help decarbonize the UK power generation sector. Using a model developed by ETI
(Energy System Modelling Environment, ESME), Middleton said SMRs could provide
some 63 GW of this new capacity, especially if they were developed in
conjunction with a planned national heat
grid program for domestic district heating and industrial process heat, to
enhance the SMRs’ economic competitiveness.
It
became clear from Summit discussions that many considered there would be considerable
siting problems for so much capacity especially if greenfield sites beyond
Government-owned locations, such as surplus defense department land, and
existing nuclear installation locations , were sought.
Professor
Andrew Sherry, chief science and technology officer for UK NNL, in a presentation
on public perceptions of new nuclear, flagged up several key new siting and public perception issues
with which promoters of SMRs will have to engage. These include:
SMRs
will have new designs and concepts; prototypes will provide essential learning
tools; the costs are at present unknown, but they will come down with modular
production; they could have a dual power and heat production purpose; their
siting will demand different engagement with communities than GW size plants,
as many SMRs will inevitably be built
much closer to centres of concentrated populationa.
He pointed out that DECC’s Public
Attitudes Tracker survey of energy technologies, that
“support
for the use of nuclear energy has dropped to its lowest level so far during the
tracker. At ‘wave 14’ one third (33%) supported this, whilst around a quarter
(24%) were opposed. However, although support was higher at this point in
previous years - 36% in June 2014, 37% in June 2013.”
Meanwhile, the UK Nuclear Industry Council (https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/nuclear-industry-council ) - on which
Professor Sherry sits - is on the verge
of publishing a new report “Nuclear Energy and Society’. Professor Sherry give
a sneak preview of “this concordat on public engagement” to the Summit, which
he emphasized recognizes the need to take the public concerns about the nuclear
industry seriously. To this end, the NIC report will ensure that its engagement
with the public will be characterised by best practice including:
•Dialogue:
We value two-way communication and will listen to the public voice.;
•Trust:
We seek to build public trust by showing respect and being open and transparent
about the challenges we face and the actions we are taking to address them.
•Clarity:
We ensure that public engagement is characterised by clear, consistent and
concise information written or spoken in plain language.
•Consultation: We listen to
communities and actively consult with them, particularly when our activities
impact on daily life.
Two Summit
speakers on prospective investment in SMRs - Dominic Holt of PWC and Anurag
Gupta of KPMG - indicated they
considered investors would be more likely
to provide support if SMRs made sense in their own power generation terms, and were not complicated by attachment
to DH systems, Additionally contributors wondered whether projected SMR costs
would be believed in light of huge cost escalations in the currently under
construction GW reactors at Olkiluoto in
Finland and Flamanville in France
Ron
Cameron of UK Trade and Investment observed some of the cost history of [GW
nuclear stations] has been “disappointing
to put it mildly. First of a kind (foak) reactors have many difficulties:- SMRs will too.” He
stressed the big challenge was getting factory modularization to greater than
50% of the total.
Technology showcase
Several would-be suppliers of
SMRs presented status reports on designs and development of their own SMR prototypes.
Westinghouse’s
NuScale’s executive vice
president for program development, Tom Mundy, argued that SMRs are part of the
energy mix, and should not be regarded
as alternatives to big GW reactors. NuScale has to date gained backing of $217 million from the US
Department of Energy for reactor development, based on an early conceptual
design by on eof NuScale’s founderswhen he worked at Oregon State University a decade ago
Each NuScale
Power ModuleTM is a self-contained module that operates
independently of the other modules in a multi-module configuration. All modules
are managed from a single control room. The reactor measures 65 feet tall x 9
feet in diameter, and sits within a
containment vessel. Design certification Is expected by end of 2016. He pointed
out the NNL SMR feasibility study last December described the NuScale Module
concept as “credible” and deployable within 10 years
He claimed that
the levelized cost of power from the NuScale Module would be $100 MWh,
considerably cheaper than the projected cost of the Hinkley C GW reactor,
although he did not provide details for the basis of such claims. He also
erroneously claimed nuclear power produces carbon-free electricity, which I
sonly true if the front and back –end industrial emissions are ignored.
Perhaps the
most novel reactor type discusses the Summit was the micro-SMR from British
company U-Batteries (www.u-bat.com), with
an output of only 4MWe. The concept design suggests a single generation hall
for the U-Battery – which would use
The company
hopes to have the demonstration U-Battery operating by 2023 at the URENCO site
at Capenhurst, close to Manchester. A market scoping study by CollinsonGrant
released in April 2014 suggested that there could be a world market for this micro-SMR
of 280 by 2035, including 41 in the UK,
U-Battery
presenter, Dr Paul Harding, a former URENCO MD, was the only SMR promoter to mention security and proliferation concerns
with the prospective deployment of thousands of new reactors worldwide, which is a significant
omission from the other presentations As
with ETI’s Mike Middleton, he stressed the importance of securing UK IP for
SMRs concepts.
Other concepts
were presented by the UK’s Rolls Royce, Bruce Power and Hatch from Canada and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC)’s
New Energy Company (www.cnnc.com.cn) .
The latter
would be competing with its big brother GW Plants, as CNNC looks for global
market expansion. Its ACP-100 design, which has been under development since
the Fukushima accident in Japan in March 2011, would be multifunctional for
co-generation,
In China, it
would require a much shrunk emergency planning zone as ACP-100s would be built
close to urban areas.
Senior CNNC
engineer, Dr Song Danrong, said CNNC wants to co-ooerate with the UK nuclear
sector to promote innovation and overcome technical challenges. And to build a
FOAK, to overcome economic challenges
In a special lunchtime presentation, Dr Danrong stressed that
the benefits of SMRs is that “with lower power, lower residual
heating, suitable for passive safety facilities application.” Included in its
applications is a floating reactor ship, that could provide off shore power,
and desalination support.
CNNC says the technical characteristics of ACP100 comprise:
Innovative SMR ACP100 is a self-reliance NPP design of CNNCIntegrated layout
of reactorForced coolant circulationSteam pressurizerinternal OTSGCanned primary
pumpsIntegrated head packagePassive safety systemsDigital I&C
box
SMR Design
Concept Families
Water-cooled
SMRs
•CAREM-25(Argentina)
ACP100(China) Flexblue(France) AHWR300(India) IRIS(International) DMS(Japan)
IMR(Japan) SMART(S Korea) KLT-40S(Russia) VBER-300(Russia) ABV-6M(Russia )
RITM-200(Russia) VVER300(Russia) VK-300(Russia) UNITHERM(Russia)
RUTA-70(Russia) mPower(US) NuScale(US) Westinghouse SMR(US) SMR-160(US)
Elena(Russia) SHELF(Russia)
High
Temperature Gas-cooled SMRs
•HTR-PM(China)
GTHTR300(Japan) GT-MHR(Russia) MHR-T(Russia) MHR-100(Russia) PBMR-400(SA)
HTMR-100(SA) EM2(US) SC-HTGR(US) Xe-100(US) U-Battery (UK)
Liquid-metal
cooled Fast SMRs
•CEFR(China)
PFBR-500(India) 4S(Japan) SVBR-100(Russia) BREST-300(Russia) PRISM(US) Gen4
Module(US) Astrid (France)
Molten-salt
cooled SMRs
•Terrestrial
En (Canada) Seaborg Tech (Den) Fuji (Japan) LFTR (China) Moltex (UK) EVOL
(EU) Flibe Energy (US) WAMSR Transatom (US)
Source:
Presentation by Professor Tony Roulstone, University of Cambridge
Regulating SMRs: a new challenge
Perhaps
the most provocative presentation came from Dr Kristiina Soderholm, the
engaging head of research development for Finish power generator, Fortum. (www.fortum.com). She opened her
presentation on radical regulation revision with a photograph of her skydiving
–highly appropriate for a presentation on risk regulation- , and went on to
challenge the audience to think outside the box, as she argue f or
international standards for generic licensing for core sections of SMRs; to make
national regulation more streamlined. Her challenging ideas provoked lively
debate among Summit attendees.
One
really surprising omission from every single presentation was consideration of
the long term management of radioactive waste arisings from such a huge
projected increase in nuclear capacity, especially a sit is recognized the greatest public concern over nuclear
surrounds radioactive waste. Next year’s SMR summit surely needs to correct
this.
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