this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023

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UK small nuclear competition: Rolls Royce in, Bill Gates snubbed (www.cityam.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

Good. Now let's put the tender to a BRITISH company. British pound paying a British company, with British jobs and tried and tested British engineers. Did I mention British?

[+] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

In this case though, RR does have the experience and means to do it. They already make SMRs for submarines.

TerraPower, on the other hand, has limited experience, nothing production-ready has ever been made by them, and they've hit all kinds of issues in their relatively short past.

Plus of course the UK is going to go with RR over a company that in the past was trying to get close to the CCP and do data sharing/joint programmes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

There's 12 sat in old subs in Plymouth at the moment. Not sure they are RR though?

I've often wondered if they could be repurposed

https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/history/devonport-dockyards-12-nuclear-submarines-4654431

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Wikipedia lists all 12 subs as having Rolls Royce Pressured Water Reactors.

Your PWR reuse idea is is kind of where Rolls Royce is looking to go with Small Modular Reactors (https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactors.aspx).

I suspect refurbishing decades old PWR reactors would be far more expensive than just building new ones, for example a SpaceX Merlin engine costs $1 million and a Blue Origin BE-4 costs $15 million. Nasa argued it would be 'cheaper' to reuse Shuttle components for the Space Launch System (SLS). Refurbishing Shuttle RS-25 engines has cost Nasa $50 million dollars per engine, restarting a production line is costing $100 million for each new RS-25 engine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Thanks

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Plus of course the UK is going to go with RR over a company that in the past was trying to get close to the CCP and do data sharing/joint programmes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klimov_VK-1

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Bit of a difference between a foreign startup you can't control getting very close to them and RR, a company they can control and who isn't reliant on them, doing a project for them.

This really isn't the gotcha you think it is, sorry.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

RR literally gave the soviet union their realistic jet engine program because they wanted a few bucks.

The damage to the west was incalculable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

RR didn't, the UK govt did, and the Soviets copied it

From your link

However, in 1946, before the Cold War had really begun, the new British Labour government under the prime minister, Clement Attlee, keen to improve diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, authorised Rolls-Royce to export 40 Rolls-Royce Nene centrifugal flow turbojet engines. In 1958 it was discovered during a visit to Beijing by Whitney Straight, then deputy chairman of Rolls-Royce, that this engine had been copied without license

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Did you have one in mind?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

Any one of the three British companies pitching.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago

Oh yeah, and fuck Bill Gates ya lizard

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

No one wants a BSOD in a nuclear reactor.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Just switch it on and off again

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Great let's build 4 down south then abandon the 2 in the North due to soaring costs