AAt first glance, Trawsfynydd looks like pure idyll. The village of 1,000 souls in the heart of the Gwynedd region in Wales is dominated by the rugged summit of Snowdonia, one of the oldest national parks in Great Britain. But in between there are two huge blocks of concrete on the horizon.
The windowless cuboids are the remains of a nuclear power plant that has been producing energy here since 1965, the only one in the country not located on the coast. The two Magnox reactors, a construction type of the first generation of nuclear reactors, achieved 470 megawatts (MW). After less than three decades it was over. In 1991 the model was obsolete and the reactors in Trawsfynydd were shut down. The dismantling, however, dragged on and should take an estimated 90 years.
The lengthy schedule had its advantages in the case of Trawsfynydd. For a few months now, the decommissioned Trawsfynydd power station has had a new nuclear future. Rolls-Royce has selected the site for one of its planned Small Modular Reactors (SMR), or small modular reactors, which are scheduled to go into operation at the beginning of the next decade.
Great Britain has big plans for small reactors. The drive technology specialist Rolls-Royce plans to build up to 16 of these across the country in the coming years. At the beginning of November he was able to secure financial support from the government for this. It has pledged £ 210 million (€ 247 million) for the next phase of development, design and technical review.
“Small Modular Reactors offer exciting opportunities to reduce costs and build faster. In this way we can ensure that we bring clean energy into households and further reduce the already declining use of fossil fuels, ”said Minister of Economic Affairs Kwasi Kwarteng when he announced the cooperation.
In addition, Rolls-Royce has convinced private investors to provide a total of £ 195 million. The financiers include Exelon Energy from the USA and the French BNF Resources, behind which the French oil dynasty Perrodo stands. Talks are ongoing with other interested parties.
The smaller reactors work like large systems with the principle of nuclear fission. Rolls-Royce estimates the capacity at around 470 MW. That is only a tenth of the world’s largest power plants today. The smaller versions can largely be assembled from centrally prefabricated components, which is intended to speed up construction considerably. “Our fundamentally new approach to offering nuclear power with the help of prefabricated components is unique, but the nuclear technology is proven,” said Tom Samson, CEO of the subsidiary Rolls-Royce SMR, with a view to possible safety concerns.
He also emphasized uncomplicated use in the field and a lower space requirement. For example, a power plant could be located near a large energy consumer and thus help decarbonise heavy industry. Just two soccer fields are enough as building site. By contrast, Hinkley Point C, a nuclear reactor on the Somerset coast that is currently under construction, covers 1.74 square kilometers.
The costs can be reduced significantly with the modular approach. Rolls-Royce is assuming 2.2 billion pounds for the first models, which could be reduced to 1.8 billion pounds in series production. Hinkley Point C, on the other hand, costs 23 billion pounds according to current forecasts. The two reactors there will deliver 3,200 megawatts when they go online in 2025.
Meiler are getting on in years
Unlike Germany, Great Britain has never turned away from nuclear power in its energy policy. The past few months have underscored the importance of the nuclear option in the country. Instead of generating electricity from coal – five years ago fossil fuels still supplied a quarter of the country’s electricity, in 2020 it was just 1.6 percent – wind energy has become increasingly important for years.
Gaps on calm days are mainly closed by gas-fired power plants. But not only was there a lull this summer, the price of gas also skyrocketed. Nuclear energy, on the other hand, would not upset the government’s climate promises, and the country would become less dependent on raw material prices.
“This is a golden opportunity for the UK to use more low-carbon energy than ever before and to become more energy-independent in the process,” said Kwarteng. The number of nuclear power plants contributed 16.5 percent to the electricity mix last year. But the existing kilns are getting on in years. Most of them have already decided to shut them down by 2030 at the latest. With Sizewell B in Suffolk, only one reactor will run longer.
Planned new construction projects, on the other hand, repeatedly fail due to financing issues. Three years ago, Toshiba and Hitachi withdrew from three power plants, some of which had already started. The construction of Hinkley C under the leadership of the French energy company EDF only started eight years ago after the government promised a fixed purchase price for the energy that is well above market prices for the first 35 years of operation. Two of the remaining projects are awaiting approval and are controversial because of the leading role played by the China Nuclear Power Group (CNG).
The Rolls-Royce initiative could not only remove such geopolitical question marks, but also help the UK back into the ranks of nuclear engineers, said Sue Ion of the Royal Academy of Engineering. “The innovative approach of the team, led by Rolls-Royce, gives the United Kingdom a real opportunity to regain a top international position in nuclear energy and to create a production site for pioneering technology in energy generation.” In addition, new jobs would be created with export potential considerable.
A number of other countries are also researching the technology. Russia is the most advanced. Since 2019, Rosatom has been operating the Akademik Lomonossow, a nuclear power plant on a barge in the port of Pevek in the Chukotka region in the north-east of the country, which supplies the remote region with energy.
In October, French President Emmanuel Macron also announced an offensive for small modular reactors. It is to develop the part-state EDF by 2030, which is already an important international player in nuclear power plants.
Macron has promised 1 billion euros in funding for this. NuScale from the United States announced at the COP26 climate conference that it had signed a contract for a modular reactor in Romania. China and South Korea are also working on the power plant types.
In most of these countries, nuclear power has been part of the established energy mix for years, and the high oil and gas prices have recently made it even more attractive. Nevertheless, questions of security are asked again and again.
In addition, however, the profitability of the model worries skeptics. The concept of modularization would require large, busy production to be profitable, warned Tom Burke of climate think tank E3G in the Financial Times.
But it is extremely doubtful whether the corresponding orders would come in for a concept that has not yet been proven. In the past, the nuclear industry has repeatedly held out the prospect of cheaper reactor solutions. So far she has not given evidence.
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