Nuclear Advanced technologies
innovation Advancing nuclear through
How can nuclear move forward? With ongoing innovation, says Andrew Storer at Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (Nuclear AMRC)
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he biggest challenge facing the nuclear industry is making nuclear cost competitive against other low-carbon generation. To make nuclear new build affordable, the financing and development cycle needs to improve. There are three main factors behind the cost of new nuclear: the cost of finance, inevitably high for extremely complex multi-billion pound projects; the cost of the long development cycle of 10 years or more; and the cost of the plant itself. For the 3.2GW Hinkley Point C project, that all added up to an agreed strike price of £92.50/MWh to provide a return for EDF Energy and its partners. That price does not look attractive when compared with £57.50 for the latest offshore wind projects, even if you consider the additional grid and back-up costs associated with intermittent renewables.
Push and pull of innovation There is a great deal of attention being given to new advanced reactor designs, which aim to reduce the costs and risks of new nuclear plant by building larger fleets with a faster return on investment from shorter build timescales. However, it is hard to push innovation without a pull from the market. There is a host of exciting technologies from
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Nuclear sector deal The £200m nuclear sector deal is part of the government’s industrial strategy to boost productivity, employment, innovation and skills across the country. The sector deal includes a £32m boost from government and industry to kick-start a new advanced manufacturing programme, including R&D investment to develop potential worldleading nuclear technologies such as advanced modular reactors. There is also up to £30m for a new national supply chain programme. To support the development of advanced reactors, there is up to £44m for R&D into new designs, up to £12m to help regulators prepare for these new technologies and £40m for a new thermal hydraulic testing facility in north Wales. It also includes £86m to create the National Fusion Technology Platform in Oxfordshire. In return, the nuclear industry is committing to achieve a 30% reduction in the cost of new build projects by 2030, and a 20% reduction in decommissioning costs. The deal also includes a commitment to gender diversity, with a target of increasing the amount of women working in the nuclear sector to 40% by 2030. The deal was developed by the Nuclear Industry Council, an advisory group drawn from industry, government and regulators, including the Nuclear AMRC. Part of the national High Value Manufacturing Catapult, and based at the University of Sheffield, the Nuclear AMRC is dedicated to helping UK manufacturers win work in the sector.
40%
The nuclear sector deal aims to increase the amount of women working in the nuclear sector to 40% by 2030
reactor developers, but little sign of appetite from the utilities that invest in plant and sell electricity. Recent years have seen a lot of talk about small modular reactors (SMRs); these are based on similar Generation III+ technology to that used in current gigawatt-scale reactors, but only produce up to 300MWe. Making individual reactors smaller reduces the upfront capital requirements and helps reduce costs by exploiting proven techniques of highervolume production. Making them modular means you can reduce project risks by doing more in the factory, rather than on-site. There is also an increasing push from developers of Generation IV advanced modular reactors (AMRs), a term that covers a range of technologies, including hightemperature gas-cooled, molten salt, fast-breeder and fast-neutron reactors. As well as reducing the cost of generation, AMRs promise to be more flexible in the way they deliver electricity to the grid (including load following to balance intermittent renewables generation) and could be used in combined heat and power generation for domestic and industrial users. SMRs and AMRs offer an opportunity to reduce the cost of plant through game-changing technologies such as electron beam welding, diode laser cladding, bulk additive manufacturing and advanced machining techniques. In many cases, these technologies are used in other industries but are not yet accepted by the ASME and RCC-M nuclear codes. Again, technology push requires an industry pull. Reactor developers will
2030