UK small nuclear competition: Rolls Royce in, Bill Gates snubbed
UK small nuclear competition: Rolls Royce in, Bill Gates snubbed
Bill Gates' nuclear reactor design company Terrapower has not been shortlisted for the next round of the government's competition for SMRs.
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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?
The only problem is it never seems to be the most talented company who wins in these situations, its the company with the closest ties to a Conservative MP
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.
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
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.
Thanks
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.
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.
RR literally gave the soviet union their realistic jet engine program because they wanted a few bucks.
The damage to the west was incalculable.
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
Did you have one in mind?
Any one of the three British companies pitching.
Oh yeah, and fuck Bill Gates ya lizard