The Future of Energy: Rolls-Royce SMR Industry Talk 

What is the point?????? The world will burn more fossil fuels. The world CO2 is killing the climate. A huge spend on expanding the national power grid ×3 fold. A huge spend on ×3 fold new nuclear power stations. A huge spend on new EV vehicles. Just go on a holiday, forget about it.

Thank you

Some nuclear subs sank and the reactors have never been recovered. A good advert for this tech. Hey, let's have one underground right next to where we live. What could possibly go wrong???

@@grahambennett8151 don't be an idiot

HEU reactors are a different design than SMR

About the decarbonisation - it can never happen because reactors are fuelled, the fuel cycle is energy intensive all the way through, and in the real world energy-intensive still means fossil-fuel-intensive. Pollution and decarbonisation are world issues. It's no use arguing that nuclear is low-CO2 in the immediate vicinity of the plant, and the exhaust stack of the plant releases radioactive gases and particulates all the time the nuclear plant generates - and even more during fuel changes. No problem with the Rolls Royce Atoms for War programme. We still need that, but I doubt Rolls Royce reactor will me much good for peace when renewables are cheaper, safer and cleaner.

I'm constantly adding to my Rolls Royce Holdings plc shareholding whenever the share price drops. Definitely a good long term investment.

@@dominiclondesborough3222 : So you've lost a lot of money. Perhaps SMR's will turn that around ?

Nobody does the numbers. ×3 to ×5 fold increase in power plants, national power grid, Poles and wires to the streets and homes and businesses There is an answer and it is not central nuclear power plants.

no one wanna sit on time bomb 😂

@@sithukyaw9019, hahahaha!

@@sithukyaw9019 : Or a lithium fire bomb.

What I can tell you is that there are many different designs, and all the most viable - or should I say, the least wacky SMRs are old-school but smaller fission/water cooled, and the Nuscale reactors do have cooling pools, that like all cooling pools will spontaneously ignite if the zirconium rods are exposed to the air, e.g. in a terrorist/wartime attack or earthquake, or in the event that cooling power to the pool is lost. As for capital savings, the word I have is that the scale economies of larger plants is well-tried, and that these scale economies are lost when you produce less power per plant. The nuclear lobbyists are already asking for concessions on existing safety standards to make the whole thing work, with hugely reduced disaster planning zones, thinner containments and so on. With, say, up to 12 modular reactors on one site, you have 12 chances for a mishap, and if one goes tits-up, and the site becomes highly radioactive how do we protect the other reactors? What worries me about the motives of the nuclear industry is that this calculation is never mentioned. It's a fair-weather sales pitch loaded with confirmation bias. They argue that they are safer because the reactors are, say, only a third or one tenth the size of today's reactors, but one third, or one tenth of a nuclear accident, say, a mile or two or ten miles from my house don't sound all that good to me. Modularisation and mass production? What do we do if there is a recall? That would be fun, now, wouldn't it?

None of these can be operating before 2030. But if nuclear eats all the money pies we wont be able to install enough renewables and mass energy storage by then and so will continue to be energy vulnerable. Nuclear is not a solution. Its a tech looking for a use.

Yes every country in the world should have a nuclear industry. No more CO2, no more climate destabilisation..

It is easier to contain small fire compared to huge flame.

You don't need to take it offline for 1 month out of 12 to refuel. That's one big advantage.

I havent seen a fluid-fueled design yet that doesn't produce waste. Fission is fission, there will always be fission products. you may get the hot stuff down to 300 years or so but there will still be trace amounts of that.

@@usp211816 So you don't seem to know whats done at Oak Ridge lab. in 1950-60? They stoped the project, that reator did not produce Plutonium....

Fuel waste is reduced 90% in breeder reactors.

Yes every country in the world should have a nuclear industry. No more CO2, no more climate destabilisation.

Australia has 25GW of installed fossil fueled power plants. And would need 80 SMR nuclear reactors to replace them. The difficulty is that the Australian AEMO has said Australia will have 5fold bigger electric demand which means 5fold increase in power plants, 400 SMR nuclear power reactors. Also 5fold bigger national grid. The existing grid is $TRILLIONS and decades of work, so a 5fold increase in its capacity maybe an horrendous financial burden. Power plants plus power grid doubles the nuclear plant cost. So for an electric Australia x2 x5 x 80 = 800 times the cost of one RR SMR nuclear power reactor. And the decades and decades and decades to build. Nobody does the maths.

@@stephenbrickwood1602 Ten years till we see SMR prototypes, probably another ten to do design revisions before any sort of regular production starts. Mass production economies will not really commence until many hundreds if not thousands of units have already been made. So yeah, SMRs will not be cheap any time soon. Of course, SMRs have intrinsically lower efficiency and hence more waste per unit of energy produced. Take note of the sort of agreements RR is seeking. They basically are not spending any of their own money except on this promotional binge. They want a huge cash injection from the government first. Supposedly they will match that from their own investors. I suspect that the government money will be spent first and if it's not looking like a winner they will pull out rather than commit any of their own money.

easy solution would be small solar plants installed locally.

@@sithukyaw9019 honestly if every Australian home put a $3,600, 6.6kw rooftop solar PV system on their roof when they bought their first EV with it's huge battery 100kwh then only existing grid maintenance is needed. 32m2 on roofs upto 200m2 gives 33kwh every day. And if every other 10million buildings put rooftop solar PV system and fed excess into the grid and grid big batteries Australia would not need its 25GW fossil fueled power plants. The panels would shade the hottest part of the roof, cost $12 to $18 m2, less than a new roof, and only a small part of a roof. Air-conditioning energy savings $ for decades.

@@stephenbrickwood1602 : Yeah and charge their EV overnight.

@@buildmotosykletist1987 relax, The grid and EV batteries and dispersed renewables will be a main part of the future. Self parking EV will nuzzle up and onto a low mounted wall power point and trade electric energy and stability with the grid everywhere. Self docking like a computer. Daily drives are 7kwh, very small for a 100kwh battery. The EV battery will be 93% full every day. Empty fossil fuel tanks was the old, grid topped up and full EV batteries will be the normal in the future 😀

@@stephenbrickwood1602 : Nope. EV's will always require a hardwire charge.

but Britain is broke and it is only held in place by kindness of strangers or foreign investors

@@sithukyaw9019 not at all mate

A 60 history of building and running nuclear power 0lants for nuclear submarines. Did you not watch the video?!