The Hinckley Point C power plant in Somerset is massive. The 176-hectare (435-acre) plant will provide 3.2 gigawatts of power, enough to power 6 million homes. It’s not just the huge project: there’s the cost, too. with a price tag A report ballooned to £48bnAnd delayed by at least five years, it has become a symbol of nuclear power’s demise.
But a clutch of companies argue they have a faster, cheaper alternative to large Hinckley-sized plants in the form of small modular reactors (SMRs), which can be built in a factory and then slotted together on site.
Britain’s Rolls-Roycewhich makes reactors for submarines in Derby, is competing with three North American competitors for the order from the UK government.
Stephen Lovegrove, Chair for the last year of the Rolls-Royce SMRIn an interview at the FTSE 100 company’s London headquarters, the joint-venture operation claimed the company was 18 months ahead of its rivals.
However, Lovegrove, formerly the top civil servant at the government’s energy department and the Ministry of Defence, expressed his frustration at a further year’s delay in a UK government tender which pushed Rolls-Royce’s first date for a new reactor beyond 2032 or 2033. which is a goal Already slipped from 2029 Until 2031.
Rolls-Royce is sticking with it, despite group chief executive Tufan Erginbilgik shutting down other speculative initiatives in his turnaround plan.
Yet Rolls-Royce SMR, which is led by day-to-day chief executive Chris Collerton, has already blamed the government delay on the decision to source key pressure vessels from outside the UK. “Every day that goes by without a decision increases the risk of the UK falling behind its rivals,” Lovegrove said. “It’s definitely holding us back domestically and internationally.”
Lovegrove said the UK had “missed a trick” by failing to build turbines for him. The wind power revolution Over the past decade, including leading the Department of Energy under Conservative governments.
“It was a time, frankly, of austerity, and it required certain kinds of investment decisions,” Lovegrove said.
The government shortlisted Rolls-Royce SMR plus American-owned rivals Holtec and GE Hitachi and Canadian-owned Westinghouse in November. The two are expected to be chosen at Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ spring statement.
The decision to proceed with the SMR will represent a significant milestone in the history of Britain’s nuclear production. UK nuclear power Peak 12.7 gigawatts (GW) in 1994or 17% of installed generating capacity. Since then the industry’s fortunes have declined with a lack of new projects to replace the aging fleet of reactors.
Since Sizewell B opened in 1995, only Hinkley Point B has been approved Hinckley’s sister project, Sizewell Sea, is awaiting approval But the expected cost has also risen to around £40bn.
Lovegrove said the first 470-megawatt Rolls-Royce SMR would be in Britain, followed by the Czech Republic a year or so later, after utility Čez Group joined as a joint venture partner this year. Another unnamed European country will follow by 2034, he said. The US and Gulf countries will also be targeted- Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund Among investors who have put in £280m, plus £210m in UK grant funding.
Regardless of the wait, various SMR contenders in the UK and other countries believe they have won with nuclear power because renewable energy breaks when the wind is still or clouds cover the sun. But another, more recent development is the burgeoning clean energy demand for artificial intelligence generating big tech.
Microsoft signed an agreement last year Revive the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant In Pennsylvania. Google has an SMR agreement with it America’s Kairos Power. Rolls-Royce will respond to calls for a nuclear project by Facebook owner Meta, Lovegrove said. In the UK, the government said on Monday that the SMR would support the growth of AI.
Lovegrove, 58, joined the civil service in 2004 after working at investment bank Morgan Grenfell and Deutsche Bank. He rose through the ranks, including a seven-year stint on the board of the London 2012 Olympic Games, before becoming permanent secretary, the highest civil service rank in the Department of Energy, in 2013.
Since leaving government, he has returned to banking as an advisor to Lazard, as well as attending Columbia University as a distinguished visiting fellow.
There’s a reason the interview is taking place in an office building (coincidentally, shared with The Guardian) rather than a factory: there are no SMRs anywhere in the world, with the exception of test reactors in China and Russia.
Doug Parr, policy director at environmental campaigner Greenpeace UK, says SMR advocates are very optimistic. This money would be better spent on renewables and energy storage, he said.
“Despite relentless publicity, a closer look at the progress of SMRs shows that they do not seem to be solving any of the problems suffered by larger reactors,” he said. He cites the experience of Nuskel in America, which A project is abandonedIn Idaho, after costs soared. SMRs “will be much more expensive than renewables, and they are slow to bring online, which makes them very slow to use to decarbonize the grid”, Parr said.
“The only significant difference from larger reactors is that SMRs offer the opportunity to spread nuclear power problems over a wider geographic area,” he said.
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Rolls-Royce, Holtec, Westinghouse and other rivals such as Nuscale and Russia’s Rosatom all use pressurized water reactors (PWR), variations of the standard technology, but smaller. Rolls-Royce’s reactor building will cover about two hectares, while others are smaller. But the key change for SMRs is the “modular” aspect: the reactors will be built in lorry-sized parts at the factory, before being assembled into one. toutedFrom Cumbria to the Isle of Anglesey or Inis Mon in North Wales.
This contrasts with the approach to complex, stick-built projects such as Hinckley or Sizewell, where large sites need to be covered from the rain.
Lovegrove said the modular approach would “very, very, very significantly” de-risk the building of a nuclear power plant, spreading the cost over multiple reactors and building two a year. Asked if the SMR process carries Hinckley’s scars, he said: “SMR is specifically designed as an industrial process to deal with the causes of those scars.”
If the UK and the Czech Republic go ahead with the mandate, “it’s a viable business”, Lovegrove said. UK procurement implies a £10bn budget for the three SMRs.
Lovegrove says the Rolls-Royce sticks to one 2022 submission At 2012 prices its energy would cost “around £50/60 per megawatt hour”. It will be half Hinckley and competitive with prices for air between £54 and £59 guaranteed by the UK government. Last auction in September.
“It’s not that nuclear energy is a more expensive technology than renewable energy over the life of various projects,” Lovegrove said, referring to the added cost of storing and moving renewable energy.
This is an opportune time for nuclear supporters, even with unproven technology. Lovegrove was Boris Johnson’s national security adviser in February 2022 when Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered a global energy crisis, with Europe scrambling to replace Russian gas.
“Most German policymakers would now recognize that so much reliance on Russian gas was a strategic weakness,” Lovegrove said. Russia-threatened Baltic states like Estonia and Latvia are most interested in Rolls-Royce’s technology, he said.
Lovegrove is working on another aspect of the UK’s response to the rise of the authoritarian state: he is conducting an official review of Acus, a Australia operates nuclear submarine alliance From the UK, with the blessing of the US. The alliance will benefit Rolls-Royce by providing more demand for submarine reactors. Lovegrove said there was no conflict of interest because the SMR company was an independently run joint venture, and Acus would never involve civilian nuclear power.
“Aukus is the most important defense and defense industry collaboration entered into anywhere in the world in more than 60 years,” he said.
It is unclear whether the alliance signed by Joe Biden will survive Donald Trump’s second term in the White House. However, Lovegrove argued that Trump should be given “full support” because “security in the Indo-Pacific region … will be enhanced”.
Rolls-Royce hopes that the UK government’s quest for energy security will favor a British-made technology.
“We have the opportunity to be a leader in the small modular reactor and its supply chain,” he said. “And I really hope we get it.”
