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Two steps forward for U.K. advanced nuclear
This week, two significant announcements have emerged from the United Kingdom’s advanced reactor sector.
On June 14, Rolls-Royce, the United Kingdom National Nuclear Laboratory, and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency announced that they had signed two trilateral memorandums of cooperation to collaborate on “advanced modular reactor (AMR) technology, specifically high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGR), and the coated particle fuel these reactors will use.”
Separately, on June 16, Bellevue, Wash.–based TerraPower announced that its Natrium reactor design has been formally submitted for U.K. regulatory review. The company also announced the formation of a new subsidiary, TerraPower UK Ltd.
Vaibhav Yadav Jason K. Hansen, Shawn St. Germain (INL), Robby Christian (RPI)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 24-38
Economic or financial causes have led to closure or pending early retirement of several US nuclear reactors in the last five years. The published report “Economic and Market Challenges Facing the US Nuclear Commercial Fleet – Cost and Revenue Study” by Idaho National Laboratory (INL) identified 63 of the 79 studied nuclear power plants (NPP) lost money in the year 2016. The revenue-gap analysis (Figure 1) performed in the study also concluded that additional revenue is required to return most of these nuclear power units to profitable operations [1]. This can be achieved by reducing the operation and maintenance (O&M) costs that account for about 70% of the total operating expenditures for an NPP (Figure 2). There are many ways of reducing O&M costs; this work presents an innovative framework of reducing O&M costs by utilizing the onsite FLEX equipment at NPPs.