The Rolls-Royce SMR, also known as the UK SMR, is a

small modular reactor The small modular reactor (SMR) is a class of small nuclear fission reactor, designed to be built in a factory, shipped to operational sites for installation, and then used to power buildings or other commercial operations. The term SMR refers t ...

(SMR) design being developed by the

Rolls-Royce Rolls-Royce (always hyphenated) may refer to: * Rolls-Royce Limited, a British manufacturer of cars and later aero engines, founded in 1906, now defunct Automobiles * Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the current car manufacturing company incorporated in ...

(RR) company in the United Kingdom. The company has been given financial support by the UK Government to develop its design. In 2019 it was estimated that the 470MWe units would cost around £1.8billion, or £3.3 billion per GW, once in full production. By comparison, the planned 3,200MWe Sizewell C is projected to cost £35 billion, or £10.3 billion per GW. Construction time and site size needed would also be lower.

History

RR began design work on the SMR with a team of about 150 people, with decisions made near the start of the project to use light water as both coolant and moderator. In 2016, it was reported that the

UK Government His Majesty's Government, abbreviated to HM Government or otherwise UK Government, is the central government, central executive authority of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

was assessing Welsh SMR sites - including the former Trawsfynydd nuclear power station - and on the site of former nuclear or

coal-fired power station A coal-fired power station or coal power plant is a thermal power station which burns coal to generate electricity. Worldwide there are about 2,500 coal-fired power stations, on average capable of generating a gigawatt each. They generate ...

s in

Northern England Northern England, or the North of England, refers to the northern part of England and mainly corresponds to the Historic counties of England, historic counties of Cheshire, Cumberland, County Durham, Durham, Lancashire, Northumberland, Westmo ...

. Existing nuclear sites including Bradwell,

Hartlepool Hartlepool ( ) is a seaside resort, seaside and port town in County Durham, England. It is governed by a unitary authority borough Borough of Hartlepool, named after the town. The borough is part of the devolved Tees Valley area with an estimat ...

Heysham Heysham ( ) is a coastal village in the Lancaster district of Lancashire, England, overlooking Morecambe Bay. It is a ferry port, with services to the Isle of Man and Ireland, and the site of two nuclear power stations. History Of historic ...

, Oldbury,

Sizewell Sizewell is an English fishing hamlet in the East Suffolk district of Suffolk, England. It belongs to the civil parish of Leiston and lies on the North Sea coast just north of the larger holiday village of Thorpeness, between the coastal tow ...

Sellafield Sellafield, formerly known as Windscale, is a large multi-function nuclear site close to Seascale on the coast of Cumbria, England. As of August 2022, primary activities are nuclear waste storage, nuclear waste processing and storage and nucle ...

and Wylfa were stated to be possibilities. In 2017, the consortium headed by RR needed to seek UK government finance to support further development. In December 2017 The UK government provided funding of up to £56million over three years to support SMR research and development. In 2018, the UK SMR industry sought billions of pounds of government support to finance their putative First of a Kind projects. The Expert Finance Working Group on Small Reactors produced a report stating that there was "a current market failure in supporting nuclear projects generally" and identifying options for government to support SMR development in the UK. In 2019, the government committed a further £18million to the development from its Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, to begin designing the modular system. In November 2021, the UK government provided funding of £210million to further develop the design, partly matched by £195million of investment by Rolls-Royce Group, BNF Resources UK Limited and Exelon Generation Limited. At that point they expected the first unit would be completed in the early 2030s. In 2022, the CEO stated that the Rolls-Royce SMR investment business case was based on selling many hundreds of SMRs by 2050. On 1 April 2022, the regulatory Generic Design Assessment (GDA) of the Rolls-Royce SMR started. The assessment will begin once the timescales and resources have been agreed. The assessment is likely to take about 4 years, and be complete by 2026. In October 2022, Rolls-Royce announced that it was exploring eight possible sites in the UK to build the first of three expected factories for parts of the SMR. In November 2022, four sites were identified suitable for multiple SMR units:

Trawsfynydd Trawsfynydd (; Welsh language, Welsh for ) is a linear village in Gwynedd, Wales, near Llyn Trawsfynydd reservoir, and adjacent to the A470 road, A470 north of Bronaber and Dolgellau and 10 km (6 miles) south of Blaenau Ffestiniog. It als ...

, near Wylfa, and near Oldbury. In March 2023, Rolls-Royce stated that the current programme funding of £500 million will run out by the end of 2024, and requested negotiations with the UK government to find fresh investment. Hiring of new staff was stopped. About 600 staff work on the programme in Derby, Warrington and Manchester. At the end of March 2023, the CEO and finance officer of the SMR unit were replaced by the newly appointed CEO of Rolls-Royce. In July 2023, Energy Secretary

Grant Shapps Sir Grant Shapps (born 14 September 1968) is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for Defence from August 2023 to July 2024. Shapps previously served in various Cabinet of the United Kingdom, cabinet posts, including Chairman of ...

said he was launching an international competition to select up to four different SMR technologies "to go through to the final design stage", supported by up to £157 million of finance. He said the final investment decision will be taken by the next parliament, and UK SMRs might start operating by the 2030s. In November 2023, Rolls-Royce owned 76% of Rolls-Royce SMR Limited, with minority investments by the Perrodo family 11%,

Qatar Qatar, officially the State of Qatar, is a country in West Asia. It occupies the Geography of Qatar, Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it shares Qatar–Saudi Arabia border, its sole land b ...

10% and Constellation Energy 3%. In April 2024, Rolls-Royce announced it had dropped plans to build a SMR

pressure vessel A pressure vessel is a container designed to hold gases or liquids at a pressure substantially different from the ambient pressure. Construction methods and materials may be chosen to suit the pressure application, and will depend on the size o ...

factory, instead buying them from a third party supplier, with Sheffield Forgemasters in the UK being a possible supplier. In 2024, the cost of each SMR was expected to be between £2billion and £3billion. In August 2024, Rolls-Royce SMR stated it was seeking further investment, for a stake in the subsidiary, to finance the company in 2025. In October 2024, The

ČEZ Group ČEZ Group ( České Energetické Závody) is a conglomerate of 96 companies (including the parent company ČEZ, a.s.), 72 of them in the Czech Republic. Its core business is the generation, distribution, trade in, and sales of electricity and ...

took a 20% stake in Rolls-Royce SMR at a cost of "several hundred million pounds"; ČEZ plan to deploy up to 3 GWe of SMR generation capacity in the 2030s in the Czech Republic.

Design

RR is preparing a

(SMR) design called the UK SMR, a close-coupled three-loop

pressurized water reactor A pressurized water reactor (PWR) is a type of light-water nuclear reactor. PWRs constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants (with notable exceptions being the UK, Japan, India and Canada). In a PWR, water is used both as ...

(PWR) design. Power output was initially designed to be 440MWe, and subsequently increased to 470MWe which is above the usual range considered to be a SMR. It should be able to power a city the size of

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, situated south of Leeds and east of Manchester. The city is the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire and some of its so ...

. The intended fuel is

uranium dioxide Uranium dioxide or uranium(IV) oxide (), also known as urania or uranous oxide, is an oxide of uranium, and is a black, radioactive, crystalline powder that naturally occurs in the mineral uraninite. It is used in nuclear fuel rods in nuclear reac ...

(). A modular forced draft

cooling tower A cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream, to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove heat and cool the ...

will be used. The design targets a 500 day construction time, on a site. Overall build time is expected to be four years, two years for site preparation and two years for construction and commissioning. In 2020 the original target cost for a 470MWe Rolls-Royce SMR unit was £1.8billion for the fifth unit built, or around £3.8million per MWe. As a comparison the estimated cost for the full-size 3.3GWe Sizewell C nuclear power station was £22billion, or around £6.7million per MWe. In 2024, the SMR cost was expected to be between £2billion and £3billion.

References

Notes

Footnotes

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