In less than a decade remote villages may be able to purchase their own miniature nuclear power plants to secure reliable carbon-free electricity or complement renewable installations. There has been a lot of talk lately about small modular reactors (SMR’s), small-scale versions of pressurised water reactors, the most common technology to be found inside nuclear power plants. These modular units, completely manufactured in factories and easily assembled on site, could deliver up to 300MW of power each and could present a viable alternative to building massive plants such as Hinkley Point. However, uranium enrichment firm URENCO has decided to go even further and develop a miniature nuclear power plant so small and cheap that it could power a single village or a factory, essentially empowering users to have their own nuclear power plant in their own back yard. “A single unit would occupy an area the size of two squash courts,” explained Paul Harding of URENCO, overseeing the project called U-Battery. “The footprint of each unit is about the penalty area of a football pitch. Each unit is designed to give 10 megawatts of thermal output of which around 40 per cent can be converted into electricity, so you can get four megawatts of electricity from a single installation.”
Engineering & Technology 7th Oct 2016 read more »