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Rolls Royce ”small” nuclear reactors – not really small, not useful against climate change, but useful for military purposes

Answers to the energy and climate crises are needed NOW. These answers are available based on a comprehensive programme of developing renewable energy and energy conservation technologies.

Every pound wasted on nuclear power will be a pound taken away from faster and more effectivesolutions offered by renewable energy and energy conservation.

It is reported that the Tory government will restate its support on Monday, 18 October to buiding a fleet of modular nuclear reactors. The favoured reactor is the Rolls Royce SMR, namely ‘Small ModularReactor’. This term is very misleading as the Rolls Royce reactor would produce 450MW of electricity, which is more than the output of the old Magnox station at Trawsfynydd, and the same size as one of old big Magnox reactors at Wylfa.

It is known that Rolls Royce are asking for huge public subsidies to realise their nuclear ambitions. This movement towardsbuilding reactors to produce electricity is closely related to their wish to safeguard skills in the reactors they provide for submarines carrying nuclear weapons. Civil and military nuclear are two sides of the same coin. Rolls Royce claim they would like to build 18 SMRs.

How far will the government be prepared to go to fund a far from new technology and like larger nuclear reactors, is open to accidents and radioactive leaks, and produces poisonous and lethal radioactive waste.

Also mentioned is the possibility of Bechtel/Westinghouse trying to push the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor on the Johnson government to be developed at the Wylfa site.  This is the very reactor on the V.C.Summer site in South Carolina that
bankrupted Toshiba Westinghouse in 2017. That happened due to huge overspending and the project was abandoned 40% of the way into construction. It was therefore no surprise that the NUGen Consortium project to build three AP1000s at Moorside near Sellafield collapsed in 2018. Nobody was prepared to invest in it. Exactly the same fate as the Hitachi/Horizon plan at Wylfa. Johnson and his ministers in the Treasury and the Business,

Energy and Industrial Stratregy Department are missing the point entirely as they cling on to past imperial grandeur by blindly
promoting nuclear power. Nuclear power is dirty, dangerous, extortionately expensive, and a threat to environmental and human health. Nuclear power will do nothing to tackle the present energy crisis, nor will it effectively counteract the effects of climate change., and we certainly cannot afford to waste the fifteen years needed to build large new nuclear stations

Answers to the energy and climate crises are needed NOW. These answers are available based on a comprehensive programme of developing renewable energy and energy conservation technologies. Every pound wasted on nuclear power will be a pound taken away from faster and more effectivesolutions offered by renewable energy and energy conservation.

 People Against Wylfa B 18th Oct 2021

https://www.stop-wylfa.org/   

October 19, 2021 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK