Analysis: Can SMRs cut nuclear costs and investment risks?

The troubled Hinkley Point C nuclear project was once again in the headlines last week, with EDF Energy chief executive Vincent de Rivaz assuring the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee it would go ahead.

However, he added that the long-awaited final investment decision on the £18 billion nuclear plant would be made only after an agreement on funding was reached with the French government.

The troubles of Hinkley highlight the problems of big nuclear projects and make small modular reactors (SMRs) look more attractive. The UK government is starting to back the nascent technology, although manufacturers and investors say they need more clarity – and stable regulation – to enable the sector to establish a foothold in the UK.

SMRs offer quicker construction times and “less capital investment before producing returns”, according to a 2014 National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) feasibility study. This has caught the government’s eye, especially because the country needs a low-carbon alternative to help fill the looming capacity gap as coal goes offline.

In November last year, chancellor George Osborne pledged to spend £250 million on nuclear research and development, including on a competition to find the best value SMR design for the UK.

The first phase of the competition has now been launched. This will seek to “gauge market interest among technology developers, utilities, potential investors and funders in developing, commercialising and financing SMRs in the UK”.

Industry figures have welcomed the competition, telling Utility Week the government is heading in the right direction. However, they said that to avoid past mistakes clarity will be needed when the government publishes a competition roadmap later this year.

NuScale Power has already announced that it will put forward its SMR design to the competition. Managing director for the UK and Europe Tom Mundy says the technology will be based on a design being developed and licensed in the US.

“We’re many hundreds of millions of dollars into it at this point,” he says, before adding that the SMR design would need to be adapted for the UK market.

“There will be a cost associated with that”, he says. “But we’re not talking about a substantial amount of money. It’s not like we’re redesigning the facility all over again … It’s just an adaptation of a base design we have already.” Mundy says that if a generic design assessment process was started in 2017, NuScale could first expect to deploy units in the UK in the mid-2020s.

Another company that will be entering the first phase of the competition is Westinghouse. Simon Marshall, key account director for Europe, the Middle East and Asia, says the company made an unsolicited offer to the government in October to form a partnership for the deployment of SMRs.

“Our offer was targeted at moving the UK from being a buyer of technology to being a provider to technology,” says Marshall. “So we would create a UK entity, and partner with government and UK industry to … complete the basic design, license it [and] complete the detailed design so it was ready for construction.”

Marshall says the potential for funding offered by the competition is “a step in the right direction”, after the government had previously said it was up to the private sector to finance the development of SMRs. “They have indicated there is some money for development, but it is not clear how much and for how long,” he notes.

He says state funding is essential because nowhere in the world is new nuclear technology being developed without it. Asked whether the £250 million pool for nuclear research is enough, he responds: “Bluntly, that on its own is probably not sufficient to get an SMR to market.”

So how much is needed? “It depends what the partnership between government, UK industry and Westinghouse would look like and what equity stakes those various partners may be willing to take,” he says.

The launch of the competition was also welcomed by Nuclear Industry Association chief executive Tom Greatrex: “I think, broadly speaking, the government is taking exactly the right approach and there are a number of essential SMR technologies and vendors that are interested.”

He adds: “I expect to see that quite a number of them will express an interest by the deadline of 6 May and start to engage in that dialogue with government to see what’s achievable, what’s practical, what’s possible and what suits the need of the UK in terms of our own needs.”

Greatrex says the announcement of further details and a roadmap for the competition are key. But he cautions: “There are some very obvious warning signs about unsuccessful competition processes in the past – and I’m thinking particularly of the carbon capture and storage one.”

The initial response to the competition seems promising, with companies planning to increase their investment in SMRs to tailor their offering to the UK market. The first rumblings are that the government appears to be heading in the right direction – and that the prospect of funding is welcome. If it wants a viable alternative to big, risky nuclear projects like Hinkley, it will now need to make sure it gets the roadmap right.