From World Nuclear News:
Rolls-Royce elaborates on its SMR plans
Rolls-Royce's director of technology and engineering, John Molyneux gave more details on Rolls-Royce's new reactor design and the next steps in its development when speaking to the European Young Nuclear Generation Forum event in Manchester, organised by the European Nuclear Society and the UK Nuclear Institute.
Still without a publicised name, Rolls-Royce's design is a pressurized water reactor in a close-coupled four-loop configuration. A team of about 150 people have been working on it for around two years. The first months were taken with major design decisions including the use of a light-water as coolant and moderator and to select the close-coupled arrangement of steam generators as opposed to integrating them into the reactor vessel, or adopting a more spread out design similar to today's large reactors. At 450 MWe the output is higher than other innovative designs, and actually outside the usual range considered to define the SMR market of up to 300 MWe.
Molyneux said, "I do not believe light water reactors have got to the end of their evolution" and it is not necessary to move beyond them to find improvements. "It's easy to get swept away with technology, and as an engineer I'd love to. But as an industry we have to look at economics. The challenge for the industry is how you get a 40% cut in the levelised cost of electricity, to get down to what gas is at."
Because they are small and modular, the reactors can be carried to the site on a flatbed truck. Refueling is a matter of swapping out the old core and swapping in a new one. Like I said, this is not Thorium but it is a good move away from the huge reactors that are so expensive to build and operate.
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