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Yes, because Hinkley Point C was such an unmitigated success.

It will be interesting to see how the UK actually plans on executing this.

The only plausible way forward would be to duplicate Hinkley Point C basically (the 2nd phase has come in much cheaper than the first as they were able to reuse design and gained knowledge), but that would mean the UK energy industry is run by the Chinese and the French.

I’m not sure if Global Britain is actually prepared for that.

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As an advocate for nuclear power, it amazed me that the UK gave EDF the go-ahead for Hinkley C given the Finnish experience (11 billion euros, about 3x the original budget and getting on for 10 years late) with the same reactor design. At least Olkiluto is sort-of producing power now.

Oh, and EDF in the UK really are the pits. Why anyone pays over the odds to use them is beyond me (it may be different for industrial users, but for consumers it's hard to imagine there's a worse choice). At least they won't go bust [0] being goverment backed.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/edf-restructuring-eu-idUSL1N...

OL3 is not yet producing power, apparently turbines didn't like spending a decade waiting for use and need some maintenance. Current estimation is that reactor will be started in January 2022 and regular electricity production will start in March.

The UK didn't put all their nuclear eggs in the EDF basket, it's just that the other companies offering to build new nuclear plants were even more of a disaster than EDF. At least they managed to actually complete a reactor build recently; if I remember rightly the other candidates went bankrupt.

It is regrettable that industry could not do better. But I can see some sense from the government perspective. Ultimately you get a big investment in British industry. And eventually a very reliable baseload generator. And people will blame the electricity companies for high prices not the government. And ideally the next build is at a lower strike price. Offshore wind was also very expensive in the early days but now has much lower strike prices. Ultimately the biggest hurdle to development is commercial risk and electricy prices need to match with that risk. Better to pay a lot than pretend that nuclear is super cheap. The UK energy sector is never going to be cheap! But it maybe can get less risky and cheaper.

I'm sure Boris Johnson has a plan for scaling up nuclear every bit as thorough and well-conceived as the plan for Brexit.

Oh, this needs to be made into a caricature: "After the completing the Brexit plan without any meltdown, I pledge to solve the climate challenge in the same way!"

They did it with offshore wind, solar and now battery storage. These kind of agreements are an area where politicians can actually be successful.

> but that would mean the UK energy industry is run by the Chinese and the French.

Traditionally, the UK has had no qualms about letting foreign companies run key industries. As long as they get run cheaply, the government and the consumers are happy.

The UK should build dozens of Rolls Royce SMRs each year, and setup a factory line for them with multiple in simultaneous construction. If we value our civilization, we would be building hundreds of units a year for use across the Western world.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/15/uk-poised-t...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_small_modular_reactor_...

https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

470MW per unit, 2 years to build, 2 years to install. 1.8 billion pounds each. With just 64 units, combined with some renewables and storage (ideally allowing EVs to smart charge/discharge based on grid conditions), the UK would be completely energy secure for 115billion pounds.

I’m really keen to see how that plays out.

As someone pointed out before on HN, various NATO countries, US especially, churn out small reactors for their navies, apparently with great success. These reactors are built on time, roughly in budget, work, and aren’t failing all over the place.

That’s a fair few data points showing that SMRs ought to be very viable. Just... not here yet :)

The navies also use fuel enriched up to the level of a nuclear weapon, supposedly about 97% for the US navy [0] making more energy dense designs possible. Weapons-grade are usually said to be above 90%. Wouldn't want those reactors placed in unstable regions.

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20070209223424/http://www.nti.or...

Does the higher enrichment make them somehow easier to build, or safer?

If not, my point stands, I’m not suggesting to copy the designs, rather that mass produced reactors can be viable.

It supports designs that are very safe, but most reactors for commercial power don't need to be able to safely collide with underwater mountains.

Interesting, are there any articles you could point an amateur nuclear enthusiast at?

The Wikipedia article is worth a read for some considerations [0]. If you haven't read section 3 of the Navy's Applied Engineering Principles manual [1], that's a good place to start thinking about what highly enriched uranium buys you in your core design. To my knowledge, you can't really read about the many safety systems attached to and around the Navy reactors.

0.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_naval_reactors

1. (https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.navsea.navy.mil/Por...)

It seems more and more likely they'll do this as part of the same announcement

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/15/uk-poised-t...

_If_ this works, it would be great. How many of them have been built so far?

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