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UTILITY WEEK | 17TH - 23RD FEBRUARY 2017 | 11 Policy & Regulation Analysis I n the autumn statement in 2015, the then chancellor George Osborne revealed that a competition would be held to find the "best-value small modular reactor design for the UK". In the budget the following March he fired the starting gun for the development competition, and announced that a roadmap for the development of small modular reac- tors (SMRs) would be published in autumn of the same year. That, though, proved something of a false start and the industry is now getting restless at the lack of action. Both the roadmap and the results of the first phase of the competi- tion have so far failed to materialise. The only significant update came in August when the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) accidentally pub- lished a list of eligible participants for the SMR competition (see box). On the list was American company NuScale Power, which is planning to build its first SMR plant in Idaho in 2024. In December it applied for the US equivalent of a generic design assessment (GDA). "If the UK government wants to get behind the technology, the time to do it is now," says Tom Mundy, NuScale's managing director for the UK and Europe. "When they started this examination of SMRs, they couched it in terms of trying to see SMRs being deployed in the mid-2020s to be part of the solution to the low-carbon objectives. When we first started, we were working to that timetable. Every day we don't make a decision and move this for- ward, it causes the overall programme to slip beyond the mid-20s." Also on the list is Rolls-Royce. David Orr, the company's senior vice president for nuclear, is keen for the competition to pick up speed. "We believe it's a once in a genera- tion opportunity for UK companies to design and build the entirety of the plant," he says. The promise of SMRs rests on overturning what has generally speaking been a guiding principle of the nuclear industry throughout much of its history – bigger is better. Developers hope that they will be able to bring down the cost of nuclear power generation by building a greater number of SMRs still stuck in the blocks The UK is in danger of frittering away its first-mover advantage in small modular reactors, with a promised development competition and roadmap both failing to materialise. Tom Grimwood reports. though. Ed Davey, former energy secretary and chairman of community energy group Mongoose Energy, is among those who are sceptical. He says his understanding is that the technology will not be able to get "off the ground" until the early 2030s. "So many things are going to have changed by then there has to be a really serious question mark over whether these things will have any value at all to us." Although Davey has "no problem" with the government exploring the potential of SMRs through a competition, he says it should really be focusing its research efforts on storage technologies. "In terms of what our priorities should be, you need to deliver a lot of new low- carbon kit in the 2020s, and I see no evidence that small modular reactors can do that. SMRs have a danger of being a distraction." To bet the UK's energy future on SMRs with- out "hard evidence" about its costs would be "risky and highly irresponsible", he warns. The extent to which SMRs can play a useful role in the UK's energy mix remains unclear. It will depend on the untested hypothesis that mass manufacturing can bring down the cost, and the upshot of that is that support for SMR development will represent a gamble. However, if the govern- ment believes that SMR is a horse worth backing, it will need to hurry up and get it out of the starting gate. THE SMR ELIGIBLES China National Nuclear Corporation EDF EY GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy National Nuclear Laboratory NuScale Power Rolls-Royce Sheffield Forgemasters Westinghouse Note: this list is not exhaustive smaller reactors in a controlled factory envi- ronment before transporting them to site and combining them there to create larger plants. For the benefits of mass manufacturing to be realised, though, the reactors will need be produced in the hundreds if not the thou- sands. Being the first to market and getting a head-start on building up an order book would therefore be a real boon. "What we need to do is get clarity in the first half of this year because if we're not careful we'll start losing first-mover advan- tage in the global market," Orr warns. "We're pressing government now for clarity on the SMRs. Our understanding is that it is coming within the first quarter of this year." BEIS has yet to respond to a request for comment. Tom Greatrex, chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association, says that given the events of the 2016 – the Brexit vote, the change in government, and the merging of the business and energy departments – the delays have been "understandable". But he adds: "Evaluation can't go on forever if we're going to have an opportunity to realise the potential from small modular reactors." He says that at least part of that potential rests on being at the forefront of develop- ment and points out that the UK is "not the only country in the world" looking at SMRs. "The longer there isn't progress on the com- petition, the more difficult that becomes to realise," he warns. Not everyone is so keen for the gov- ernment to channel its efforts into SMRs, "Evaluation can't go on forever if we're going to have an opportunity to realise the potential from SMRs." TOM GREATREX, NUCLEAR INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION