Britain's first small modular reactors to be built in Wales

The problem is, that renewables don't do the job. They cant be relied on for baseload They cant be relied on for peak following In fact they can'tbe relied on AT ALL.

What else is left?

Nuclear.

It doesn't matter what you *think*. The reality is, that the civilisation will go nuclear, or go altogether.

It seems to me that all the retired coal stations could be repurposed for SMRs. They have connections to the grid, and access to water. What am I missing? (obviously other than political ineptitude)

Unfortunately they seem to have been swiftly demolished and turned into houning, e.g.:

Drax is still burning biomass in its converted coal power station. It would be ideal for nuclear conversion.

The RR design is based on the RR PWR design, used in UK Nuclear Subs. PWR1 went critical in the mid 60s. As a vac student (late 70s) I worked ( at a low level) on PWR2, at least the electronics to control / monitor it, which was made by GEC-Elliott Automation in Lewisham. They did also control systems for civil reactors and a few related things - I recall a ‘reader’ for wristwatch like dosimeter for the military.

The PWR design has a long history as reactors go. It was chosen for is simplicity in terms of maintenance, you can’t just pop the lid off on a sub. They have a good safety record.

GEC-Elliott Automation vanished long ago - even before GEC was broken up / swallowed by BAe Systems and others. No idea who by or where the control systems etc are made now.

While I knew the history of US reactors better at the time, I still recall the outline.

The USN experimented with several reactor designs, including ones using liquid sodium, and using multiple manufacturers.

Eventually, they opted for a PWR based design and, as I recall, initially, two manufacturers Westinghouse and General Electric ( the US company, not our GEC).

The USSR, I think, used Bismuth but that is stretching my memory.

(On graduating I was offered a job at GEC Lewisham branch where I’d worked as a vac student but got a better offer from another part of the GEC - Marconi empire. )

In that it is PWR unlike ...

(Hitachi) GE (Vernova) is BWR.

The RR SMR Generic Site Description is for a coastal location.

BWR are pretty good BUT there is the problem that the water that goes through the reactor is the steam that goes through the turbines and so is slightly more intrinsically liable to leak radioactivity.

Personally I'd be happy with anything, but the public...

Bah!

Fiddlers Ferry location, too.

Stick the reactor(s) down in one of unused mines where no-one would be affected if anything went wrong. Probable issue with cooling though.

There are many coal and other mines which extend under the sea, in particular Ellington Colliery. It shouldn't be beyond civil engineering capability to use those mines for SMR cooling.

Mines had to be cooled, as temperature rises about 30 degrees C per km underground, plus the machinery heat. So while the gear to do it would have been removed, any mines which can be drained and re-used can also be cooled. Some mines will have collapsed already without maintenance and no doubt some are in use for commercial purposes.

Flood them with seawater?

Mmm. I think they would probably rather use custom built cooling pens like the other stations.

They are always having to shut down to clear the seaweed...:-)

But I like the idea of old brownfield sites in semi abandoned industrial heartlands.

More to the point, mines had to be pumped dry.

All the old mines will be full of filthy water

Even after some time, you'd probably still have to make provision to remove the heat from that seawater to keep up cooling efficiency.

Perhaps the problem is that those cooling pens are in seawater which is too shallow and allows light to get down and seaweed to grow. According to the Ellington wiki, at one time its mines extended 24 km out to sea and were 800m deep. I doubt there'd be any issue from seaweed that far off the coast, and that far out there would be less "local" heating.

I wonder if there would be any possibility of using the old pipes from decommissioned North Sea oil and gas wells to take pumped warmed seawater 100km+ out to sea.

Not sure that is really necessary. Coastal seawater is in general good enough...

If there are any deep mine workings which have _not_ collapsed yet, they are about to. Nature abhors a vacuum and a deep tunnel is close enough to a vacuum in this context.

P.S. It's hard enough to build and maintain a nuclear generator in a purpose-built building on the surface, to try and do this 800 foot down a mineshaft and along a narrow gallery... Let's think of something else.

What's the typical waste heat output of one of these SMRs?

nib