UK govt spurns the success of renewable energy, follows the dodgy chimera of “Small Nuclear reactors”

nuClearNews No 82 Feb 16 Progress on Small Modular Reactors as renewables head off the cliff , In response to a letter about energy policy in The Times on 26th January 2016, Energy and Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd listed the top 10 things the government is doing to secure investment in clean secure energy. Besides committing to Hinkley Point C, Rudd also mentioned spending £250m for nuclear innovation and Small Modular Reactors. (1) Oddly enough there was no mention of the rest of the 19GW of new reactors proposed – (up from 16GW now that Bradwell B has been added to the theoretical list)…….

UK Energy Secretary Amber Rudd told Parliament in November 2015 that SMRs have “excellent” potential and that the current government “is doing as much as it can” to support the technology. To that end it announced £250m funding over the next five years for nuclear research and development including a competition to identify the “best value small modular reactor design for the UK.” The UK is doubling funding for the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s (DECC’s) energy innovation program to £500m over five years, including research into SMRs. (3)

Both NuScale (part of Fluor) and Westinghouse are hoping to build their first-of-a-kind SMRs in the UK by 2025. But the real challenge will be to get enough orders so they can build factories to turn out SMRs on a cost effective production line basis. There isn’t enough of a market within the UK itself to generate these orders. Both firms see the UK as a launch pad to gain market share in Europe and the Middle East.

The UK wants to develop a major export market for SMRs. Everything depends on both NuScale and Westinghouse passing through the gauntlet of the UK’s notoriously complicated and expensive generic design review process to certify the safety of their reactors. Both firms have made optimistic estimates of how long this will take. In order to break ground by 2025 a new land speed record for bureaucratic action will have to be achieved.

NuScale plans to submit its 50-megawatt reactor design for approval by U.S. nuclear authorities towards the end of 2016. That would leave it well-placed to seek the U.K. equivalent, called Generic Design Assessment, in 2017. (4)

Meanwhile, Britain’s renewable energy industry is about to “fall off a cliff” just at the point it was coming into its own according to The Independent reveals. The dour forecast comes as the industry celebrated a record-breaking year in 2015, with billions of pounds poured into solar and wind energy and more homes powered by nature than ever before.

But experts have warned this is all about to grind to a halt as the Government abandons its commitment to green energy and instead invests in fracking and nuclear power. Figures from Bloomberg forecast that over the next five years the country will lose at least 1 gigawatt of renewable energy generation

– enough to power 660,000 homes. After 2020, the new renewables infrastructure will collapse to almost nothing because of a lack of investment and the blossoming industry could wither, the figures suggest. (5)

References:….http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/nuclearnews/NuClearNewsNo82.pdf