Sweden Picks Rolls-Royce for First New Reactor Since the 1980s
High Tanker Rates Disrupt Persian Gulf Oil Shipments to Asia The leading economics blog online covering financial issues, geopolitics and trading.
Rolls-Royce SMR justaddedits third major European contract.
Videberg Kraft, backed by Sweden’s utility Vattenfall, selected the UK design for three units on the west coast, making it Sweden’s first new nuclear plant in more than forty years.
The multibillion-pound export win, actively supported by UK government trade efforts, lands on top of existing deals in the UK and Czechia and makes Rolls-Royce the only SMR developer with multiple binding commitments across the continent.
Wetrackedwhen the UK advanced its own program, Great British Energy – Nuclear signed a contract earlier this year to move forward with initial units at Wylfa in North Wales.
CEZ in the Czech Republic had already inked an early works agreement for deployment at Temelin, with plans ultimately targeting up to 3 GW of Rolls-Royce capacity and even taking a 20% stake in the company’s SMR subsidiary.
The Sweden announcement came one day after Rolls-Royce, the UK National Nuclear Laboratory, and Japan’s JAEA signed trilateralmemorandumsto accelerate High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor (HTGR) technology and the next generation of coated particle fuel that goes with it.
The program is positioned as complementary to the existing 470 MWe pressurized-water SMR.
HTGRs are different reactor technology, different size and power output, but the same modular construction philosophy and supply-chain approach.
The fuel development announcement carries added weight given the UK's history of developing the first generation of advanced, durable nuclear fuel.
Coated particle fuel, the accident-tolerant form that enables the high-temperature safety case for these gas reactors, traces its conceptual lineage straight back to BISO work done in the UK during the Dragon reactor program in the 1960s.
TRISO evolved from those early British coated-particle concepts.
| Product | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Brent Crude | $102.14/bbl | +0.34% |
| WTI Crude | $96.90/bbl | +0.21% |
| EN590 Diesel | $846/MT | +0.18% |
| Jet Fuel A-1 | $1090/MT | +0.55% |
| Mazut M100 | $450/MT | -0.15% |
| Bitumen 60/70 | $470/MT | +0.08% |
| Sulphur Gran 99.5% | $470/MT | -0.44% |
| Urea 46% Gran | $650/MT | +1.12% |
| NPK 16-16-16 | $460/MT | -0.28% |
| Nat Gas TTF | $15.42/MMBtu | +0.92% |
Comments
Post a Comment