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 ...
This should have been done 30 years ago.
Talk to a Navy submariner who has lived in close proximity to a nuclear reactor for months on end with no problems.
The technology is far advanced from Chernobyl and TMI. Use it!!
The 7 designs of MSR/IMSR I have seen all have external heating coils to warm up the reactors for initital startup or to restart after a shut down. Here is how the heat blanket works:
“... Heaters and thermal insulation are provided...” http://moltensalt.org/references/static/downloads/pdf/FFR_chap15.pdf
“...15-4 . SYSTEM HEATING
Molten-salt systems must be heated to prevent thermal shock during
filling and to prevent freezing of the salt when the reactor is not operating
to produce power. Straight pipe sections are normally heated by an electric tube-furnace type of heater formed of exposed Nichrome V wire in a
ceramic shell (clamshell heaters) . A similar type of heater with the Nichrome V wire installed in flat ceramic blocks can be used to heat flat
surfaces or large components, such as dump tanks, etc . In general, these
heaters are satisfactory for continuous operation at 1800 ° F...” Pages 668 and 669
Yes, those have been proposed, but actual deployed MSR reactors in the past had similar provisions and they didn’t work. See the Alfa submarine for just one example.
I’d like the house sized one.
The only functioning MSR-E in Oak Ridge had a basic unit and exterior heating elements that worked. It ran for a couple of years, was shut down and started again about a year later. I know the blankets worked, a friend of mine (he built the graphite modulator) was there.
Today’s designs are roughly based on Oak Ridge but greatly refined. All designs I have seen are modular units that are “loaded” at at the factory installed then heated to start the reaction. The units can be drained below the critical volume needed to support a reaction. They can be reheated and the liquid salt mix can be pumped back into the reactor pot when repairs are completed. Please look at what Dr. David LeBlanc and CEO Simon Irish are doing at Terrestrial Energy. https://www.terrestrialenergy.com/
Terrestrial is signing contracts for a GEN IV IMSR. https://www.terrestrialenergy.com/updates/
They will have three operating modes: on, off and intermittent.
one of its power stations would ... power approximately one million homes ... would have the capacity to generate 470MW of power
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