GE Hitachi and Rolls-Royce SMR are two of four shortlisted small modular reactor (SMR) companies which have announced that they have submitted their final tender responses as part of Great British Nuclear’s ongoing SMR selection competition.

There were originally six companies shortlisted by Great British Nuclear (GBN) which is the arms-length body set up to oversee the U.K.’s plans for new nuclear installation. Holtec and Westinghouse are the other two of the final shortlisted companies which entered negotiations last September. Last February, the four SMR vendors were given an Invitation to Submit Final Tenders.

The goal is for GBN to select up to three of the proposed technologies, with the intention of supporting the deployment of multiple units of one company’s SMRs at any particular site. GBN currently owns land for siting potential new nuclear installations at Wylfa in Anglesey in North Wales, and at Oldbury in Gloucestershire in southwest England, but other sites could also be chosen.

GE Hitachi’s BWRX-300 is a boiling water reactor. Holtec’s SMR-300 is a three-hundred-megawatt pressurized water reactor. The Rolls-Royce SMR is a four hundred- and seventy-megawatt pressurized water reactor. Westinghouse’s AP300 is a three-hundred-megawatt electric and nine-hundred-megawatt thermal pressurized water reactor. All of these companies stress that their designs are all based on existing technologies and will be able to be constructed at speed. They will benefit from modular production techniques.

Andy Champ is GE Hitachi’s U.K. Country Leader. He said, with respect to the submission of its tender, “The government has a unique opportunity to position the U.K. at the forefront of delivering the next generation of nuclear power and this submission marks a significant step forward in achieving this goal. The BWRX-300 offers a simplified, safe, and scalable design, backed by a proven track record of advancing SMR technology internationally. Together with our strategic investment partners, we are eager to bring this expertise to the UK.”

Chris Cholerton is the CEO of Rolls-Royce SMR. He said, “I am grateful for the dedication and teamwork of everyone at Rolls-Royce SMR who has contributed to our submission. We have a world-class team behind a market-leading product, and I am confident we have provided a compelling offer to GBN, to partner with them in delivering the next generation of nuclear power for the UK.”

Last February, GBN said that it remains on track to select the chosen technology before this summer. A final investment decision is expected to be made in 2029.

Simon Bowen is the Chairman of GBN. In an interview early last year for the World Nuclear News, he said that their intention was to sign contracts with one, two or three technology providers. This would be for co-funding the technology all the way through to completion of the design, regulatory, environmental and site-specific permissions process that will be required for these projects. There will be the potential to place a contract for the supply of equipment. Each selected technology would have an allocated site with the potential to host multiple SMRs.

Great British Nuclear

As China expands its nuclear energy infrastructure and increases its power capacity, the demand for uranium is also increasing. In 2024, the country imported thirteen thousand tons of natural uranium, while SCMP reports that domestic production is only around seventeen hundred tons. The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that China’s uranium demand will cross forty thousand tons by 2040.

Demand has reached the point where China’s uranium mines have failed to keep up. Chinese scientists have now directed their attention to the extraction of uranium from the sea. The world’s oceans are estimated to carry a thousand times more uranium ore reserves than on the ground, which is about four and a half billion tons of uranium.

The process is not simple. In seawater, the concentration of heavy metals is extremely low, at just three and a third milligrams per ton. In addition, the presence of the transition metal vanadium in the sea presents a challenge because it has chemical properties similar to uranium, and the two must first be separated through a complicated extraction process.

Greater demand for marine extraction of uranium has led to groundbreaking research. Lanzhou University’s Frontiers Science Centre for Rare Isotopes has developed a technology that improves uranium-vanadium separation efficiency by forty times. This new process can selectively capture uranium ions over vanadium ions.

Professor Pan Duoqiang of the Frontiers Science Centre led the study which was published in the international journal Nature Communications earlier this month. Adapting to large-scale application could secure China a sustainable and independent way of ensuring a dependable uranium supply.

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a class of compounds that combine inorganic and organic elements. They form a coordination polymer which is distinguished from conventional adsorbents by highly tunable structures, diverse functions, and vast surface areas. These features make MOFs highly effective for selectively separating uranium.

Professor Pan explained that using existing MOF presents certain challenges. He said, “Designing MOFs with overly precise structure-activity relationships often results in a decrease in the specific surface area of the materials and a reduction in the density of active sites.”

To deal with this issue, researchers integrated hydrocarbon diphenylethylene (DAE) molecules into the MOF materials. This innovation allows the MOFs to adjust their pore size when exposed to ultraviolet light.

The modified DAE-MOF material was tested in simulated and real seawater containing metals similar to uranium to evaluate its uranium adsorption capabilities.

The tests revealed that the DAE-MOF material has a uranium adsorption capacity of five hundred and eighty-eighty milligrams per gram and a uranium-vanadium separation factor of two hundred and fifteen, significantly outperforming all previous materials tested in both simulated and natural seawater conditions.

From the 1980s to the 1990s, Japan led the development of seawater uranium extraction. They achieved the extraction of two and two tenths pounds of yellowcake, or uranium concentrate, through extensive marine trials, the highest yield reported to date.

The state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation, manages all sector aspects. In November 2019 it formed the Seawater Uranium Extraction Technology Innovation Alliance with 14 domestic research institutes.

The alliance has established ambitious objectives for the next thirty years, up to 2050. From 2021 to 2025, the first phase aims to replicate Japan’s pound-level achievement. The alliance’s long-term goals include constructing a ton-scale demonstration plant by 2035 and achieving continuous industrial production by 2050.

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)

South Korean researchers are studying radiocarbon as a source for safe, small and affordable nuclear batteries that could last decades or longer without charging. They have developed a prototype betavoltaic battery powered by the radioactive carbon-14 isotope.

Su-Il In is a professor at Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology. He presented a report on his work at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society, held on 23-27 March. Funding for the carbon-14 battery research was supplied by the National Research Foundation of Korea, as well as the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology Research & Development Program of the Ministry of Science and Information and Communication Technology of Korea.

With the increasing number of connected devices, data centers and other computing technologies, the demand for long-lasting batteries is rising. In says that the performance of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries is “almost saturated”. His team is therefore working on the development of nuclear batteries as an alternative to lithium batteries.

The researchers have produced a prototype betavoltaic battery with carbon-14 which is an unstable and radioactive form of carbon, called radiocarbon. In said, “I decided to use a radioactive isotope of carbon because it generates only beta rays”. A by-product of the operation nuclear power plants, radiocarbon is inexpensive, readily available and easy to recycle. And since radiocarbon degrades very slowly, a radiocarbon-powered battery could theoretically last for millennia.

To significantly improve the energy conversion efficiency of their new design, the Korean team used a titanium dioxide-based semiconductor, a material commonly used in solar cells, sensitized with a ruthenium-based dye. They improved the bond between the titanium dioxide and the dye with a citric acid treatment. When beta rays from radiocarbon collide with the treated ruthenium-based dye, a cascade of electron transfer reactions, called an electron avalanche, takes place. Then the avalanche travels through the dye and the titanium dioxide collects the generated electrons.

The new Korean battery prototype also has radiocarbon in the dye-sensitized anode and a cathode. By treating both electrodes with the radioactive isotope, the researchers increased the quantity of beta rays generated and reduced distance-related beta-radiation energy loss between the two components.

During testing of the prototype battery, the researchers found that beta rays released from radiocarbon on both electrodes triggered the ruthenium-based dye on the anode to generate an electron avalanche that was collected by the titanium dioxide layer and passed through an external circuit resulting in usable electricity.

In said that these long-lasting nuclear batteries could enable many applications. These include powering implants, remote applications, satellites and many more. A pacemaker would last a person’s lifetime, eliminating the need for surgical replacements.

This betavoltaic design converted only a tiny fraction of radioactive decay into electric energy, leading to lower performance when compared to conventional Li-ion batteries. In suggests that further efforts to optimize the shape of the beta-ray emitter and develop more efficient beta-ray absorbers could improve the battery’s performance and increase power generation.

Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology