Ukraine Building FOUR Nuclear Reactors

KYIV, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Ukraine expects to start construction work on four new nuclear power reactors this summer or autumn, Energy Minister German Galushchenko told Reuters on Thursday, as the country seeks to compensate for lost energy capacity due to the war with Russia.

Two of the units - which include reactors and related equipment - will be based on Russian-made equipment that Ukraine wants to import from Bulgaria, while the other two will use Western technology from power equipment maker Westinghouse.   READ MORE...

Rolls Royce and the Nuclear Reactor Business

First, let’s clear up the car thing: Rolls-Royce the car company is now owned by BMW, which acquired the name and licensing rights from Rolls Royce Holdings in the late 1990s. In other words, the company making an all-electric Spectre that will retail for around $400,000 isn’t dabbling in baby nukes. 

But given that Rolls-Royce Holdings makes stuff like engines for airplanes, and has worked on nuclear reactors aboard British submarines since the early 1950s, producing nuclear reactors isn’t too much of a step outside the mega company’s wheelhouse. It is, though, a well-financed leap into a new area of energy for the company. For its part, Rolls-Royce said international interest in small modular reactors was “unprecedented.”

Some of the money for this new nuclear venture comes from a big U.S. company: Exelon, the largest electric utility in the U.S. and a major producer of nuclear power, which will be partnering with French company BNF Resources to give $260 million to fund the venture over the next three years. 

Much of the rest of the cash will come from the UK government, which is giving $280 million as part of its plan to jumpstart green investment. Rolls-Royce itself will kick in the remaining $70 million or so. The company also said that it will keep looking for investment in the venture.

According to a press release issued by Rolls-Royce, one of the 16 reactors it’s planning to build will take up the space of two football fields—about a tenth of the size of a conventional reactor—while providing enough power for 1 million homes. 

Per the press release, the business will now move on to the preliminary stages of starting production, including identifying factories where it could possibly produce modules for the on-site assembly of the reactors.  READ MORE...

Bill Gates' Nuclear Plants

Companies owned by billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are planning to launch the first so-called Natrium nuclear reactor project. Many experts see the project as a misguided attempt to hit CO2 reduction targets.

   Will smaller, modular reactors soon coexist with big ones like this here in Jenkinsville, South Carolina?

  
Bill Gates' nuclear energy firm TerraPower and power company PacifiCorp — owned by Warren Buffett's holding company Berkshire Hathaway — teamed up in September 2020 to launch the Natrium project. It's about a small modular reactor they say will be commercially viable by 2030.

Many countries are weighing smaller, so-called modular, nuclear reactors as a way backing up low emission energy production during the transition from fossil fuel dependence to one based on renewable energy sources.

The reactor, to be built by Bechtel, will be in Wyoming, the United States top coal-producing state, Gates said. "We think Natrium will be a game-changer for the energy industry," he said.

The US Department of Energy has awarded TerraPower $80 million (€70 million) to develop its ideas.

TerraPower says the plant will cost $1 billion, including engineering, procurement and construction costs, and is expected to take seven years to build. In the US, the cost of building a conventional nuclear power plant is around $25 billion and can take far longer to build.

"Smaller, advanced reactors like those being developed under the funding from Bill Gates and others offer novel applications, approaches, and opportunities for one of the world’s largest sources of noncarbon emitting energy, nuclear energy," Brett Rampal, director of nuclear innovation at nonprofit Clean Air Task Force, told DW.

"They aren’t that small, this is 345 MW," Antony Froggatt, a research fellow at Chatham House, told DW. "While much smaller than existing reactors (1,000 MW), they are still large and may not be as modular as intended and this undermines the argument that they can be built in factories and then shipped out, which is how they are supposed to be cheaper," he warned.

But "the next generation of advanced reactors will make more efficient use of materials, be easier to site, and offer a great balance to increased reliance on renewables in the form of always available clean energy," Rampal insisted. "The Natrium concept also incorporates a thermal salt storage system which allows for the power plant to operate more flexibly and boost power output for portions of each day without having to make significant adjustments in the actual operation of the reactor," Rampal said.  READ MORE...