"newshound" wrote in message
o.uk...
On 6/15/2016 6:57 PM, Mike Tomlinson wrote:

Let's talk about something other than Brexit and the gay club shootings.

The UK's Small Modular Reactor Competition

"The UK government has launched a competition to select a design of a
small modular reactor (SMR) for future deployment in the UK. The idea
behind SMRs is that they can be factory built and stamped out like
aircraft and transported to location on the back of a truck. With
thirty-three companies / designs on the shortlist, this looks like the
process could take a while to complete"

http://euanmearns.com/the-uks-small-...r-competition/

An interesting read. The idea of lots of small reactors distributed
widely is appealing. It gives redundancy, means that spares for only
one type of reactor needs to be held, and training is simplified.

Indeed, an interesting article, to my mind worth reading for the Rickover
quote alone. It was a new quote to me, but it does rather sum up my
opinion.

Not so many years ago, there was quite a lot of enthusiasm in the UK
industry for the South African PBMR

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble...odular_reactor

but it seems to have sunk without trace.

If I were asked to bet on one, I would agree with the author's view on the
Westinghouse one, except that it is probably really too large. But while
every country has a regulatory system which seems to insist on analysing
every design from first principles, and even "repeat orders" need a major
reassessment, I can't see SMRs getting off the ground, at least in the
west.

I know nothing about the regulation of the airliner industry, but we don't
seem to see every country reassessing each new plane or modification and,
Concord(e) apart, you don't seem to get countries blocking introduction of
major "foreign" planes.

They do actually. That's why you don’t see the russian
passenger aircraft flying into the EU or the US etc.