Small reactor design contest wins £250m

The government funding was announced as part of the Chancellor’s spending review

The government has announced £250 million of funding for a competition to determine the best small modular nuclear reactor design for building in the UK.

The announcement signals for the first time the government’s favourable attitude towards the nuclear technology, with the aim that that the first small modular reactor (SMR) should be built during the 2020s. 

Not a single SMR – civil nuclear reactors with an output of less than 300MW – has yet been built, but 40 different designs are being developed around the world. Proponents of SMR technology say their size would avoid the high capital costs of larger nuclear reactors, while keeping them inherently safer and more flexible.

The government funding, some of which will also be used for “wider” nuclear research over the next five years, was announced as part of the Chancellor’s spending review last month. The government said the money will “revive nuclear expertise and position the UK as a global leader in innovative technologies”.

The funding has been welcomed by the nuclear sector. Mike Middleton, strategy manager for nuclear at the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI), said: “We are enormously encouraged that the government is recognising the potential of SMRs and their potential to boost jobs. But it’s not perfectly clear yet how the competition will work.”

The government has said more detailed information on the SMR competition is expected early next year. 

The ETI is running three separate studies examining SMR technology, funded by £5 million from the Department of Energy and Climate Change. The largest, a techno-economic appraisal (TEA) due to conclude in April, will determine whether the value competition will go ahead and what it will consider, said Middleton. “The competition won’t happen as a matter of course, the TEA makes it happen,” he said. 

Middleton said that the TEA is looking at different types of technology, including high-temperature gas reactors and molten salt reactors. However it was most likely that the “near term light water integral reactors” would be the first to be built.