The cost of powering the UK with SMRs & NEH is 2X better than a zero-sum-game!

Health costs of air pollution in European cities and the linkage with transport

“…people have a clear preference for healthy life years in a good and clean environment. As a clean environment is not something that can be bought in the marketplace, however, a robust methodology is required to monetize them in order to quantify the wider public health impacts…”

But what might it cost to ‘buy’ a clean environment?

This is the UK’s ‘Energy Flow Chart 2019 (million tonnes of oil equivalent)’. The ‘Total Final Consumption’ includes the the 7.7 ‘Non-Energy Use’ figure

This is a Table version extracting all of the figures from the flow chart and tabulating consumption under the ‘Energy Sources’ (Gas, etc.).

The sum of the ‘Total (Mtoe)’ in each column is 164.7, but this also includes the sum of the entries for ‘Energy Industry Use & Distribution Losses’ which tots up to 15. On the ‘Demand’ side, the Flow Chart and Table agree, but the figure of 164.7 mtoe (1,915 TWh) is the legitimate one to use when energy supply is from SMRs and NEH alone.

Now to allocate every entry in the table for energy supply from SMR electricity or SMR manufactured NEH. This is subjective, but it might be reasonable to conclude that a bit of ‘tweaking’ would not dramatically affect the outcome figures.
This is my effort:

The 648.4 TWh of electricity part is easy. Assume all electricity is supplied by the 470 MWe Rolls-Royce SMR Ltd’s UK SMR, with a stated capacity factor of 95%:

A total of 166 units (78.02 GW of installed capacity) would be required. It gets a bit more complicated when peak demand in the depth of winter has to be ‘adequately’ catered for.

This is the link to ‘Drax Electric Insights’ for 2019 showing the average power level for the year was 32.58 GW. And this is the link showing the highest power demand on 4th January at 18:40 at 46.57 GW, which is 43% higher than the average figure for the year.

Assuming ~50% higher installed capacity, to cater for the worst possible winter conditions, the increase in UK SMR units required rises to 250 x 470 MWe = 117.5 GW of installed capacity.

In respect of determining the lowest level of demand to calculate base load, this link shows that on 1st August at 05:40, demand fell to the lowest point in the year at 21.54 GW, which is 66% of average demand.

It means 110 of the 166 UK SMR units can be dedicated to only electricity generation, leaving 140 (250 - 110) UK SMRs combined with PEM electrolyser plants for load following and NEH manufacture.

110 x 470 MW UK SMRs operating at 95% capacity factor will generate 430.2 TWh per year. It means that the 140 ‘Combos’ (UK SMR + PEM electrolysers) will need to generate the balance of electricity demand: 684.4 - 430.2 = 254.2 TWh

140 x 470 MW combos, with the SMRs 95% capacity factor, are capable of generating 547.6 TWh per year, leaving 293.4 TWh (547.6 - 254.2) available for NEH manufacture.

Units to be supplied from ITM Power’s Gigafactory can manufacture NEH at the rate of 18 kg/MWh: ”…The HGAS3SP is rated at ~2MW start of life (including all sub-systems) and is able to produce ~36kg of hydrogen per hour…”

So the 293.4 TWh of combo manufactured NEH would result in a total 5,281,200 tonnes per year. The energy content of 1 kg of NEH is 33.36 kWh, meaning:

The 140 UK SMRs, combined with PEM electrolysers for load following, will generate 254.2 TWh of pollution-free, on demand electricity and manufacture NEH with an energy content of 176.2 TWh, every year for 60 years.

To meet the 1202.7 TWh of total NEH energy demand, a further 1026.5 TWh
(1202.7 - 176.2) needs to be manufactured. High temperature steam electrolysers (HTSEs) are ~50% more productive than PEM electrolysers, manufacturing NEH at a rate of 26.7 kg/MWh (equivalent).

Although the great majority if the energy comes from the thermal capacity (steam) of the SMR, the simplistic way to use the data is to consider the NuScale study, where their 77 MWe ‘Power Module’ can manufactures 2053 kg of NEH per hour. So: 2053 kg ÷ 77 MWh = 26.7 kg/MWh (equivalent)

At 33.36 kWh/kg of NEH, 1 MWh (equivalent) of nuclear energy produces 0.896 MWh of NEH energy. So the 1026.5 TWh of NEH energy will require:
1026.5 ÷ 0.896 = 1145.6 TWh/year of electricity supply.

Again, considering the 470 MWe UK SMR, with its 95% capacity factor, a total of 293 units would be needed. Add this to the 250 units generating the base load and load following electricity and:

An SMR/NEH powered UK requires a total of 543 x 470 MWe UK SMRs.

With an overnight capital cost (OCC) of £1.8 billion, requires £977.4 billion of investment. Over a 60 years design life, this equates to £16.29 billion per year.

In respect of the cost of PEM electrolysers, the 140 units operate for ~53% of the time (293.4 TWh ÷ 547.6 TWh). Over the 60 years lifespan of each ‘Combo’ (525,600 hours), 470 MW of PEM electrolyser plant will have to operate for ~280,000 hours. The expected lifespan of a PEM unit is 80,000 hours, meaning 4 PEM electrolysers will be required per ‘Combo’. At an expected cost of US$250/kW, the PEM electrolysers would add $470 million (£380 million) to each combo. For the 140 units, that’s an extra £53.2 billion which, over 60 years of operation, equates to ~£0.89 billion per year.                 

For the 293 dedicated SMRs combined with HTSEs, the electrolysers will operate continually for 60 years (525,600 hours) meaning 5 x HTSE plants with expected lifespans of 90,000 hours would be needed. At double the cost of PEM electrolysers, the additional cost per unit would be $1.175 billion (£952 million). That would add a total of £278.9 billion which, over 60 years of operation, equates to £4.65 billion per year.

The total OCC that can be expected by the end of this decade, to meet all of the UK’s energy demand (as of 2019) from electricity generated by UK-manufactured SMRs and electrolyser plants to manufacture NEH, will amount to a continual investment need of:

£16.29 + £0.89 + £4.65 = £21.83bn per year

Compare this to the CCC’s estimates: “…the independent Climate Change Committee think this needs to…[be]… about £50bn per year by the late 2020s – mostly on transport, renewables and buildings – and stay around that level until 2050…”.

For each of the UK’s 29 million households, the payment (energy bills/taxes) for this extra investment is approx £1,000 per year - forever!
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"…Health costs of air pollution in European cities and the linkage with transport…”

The health cost burden of air pollution, involving ~22 million UK city dwellers, was ~£20 billion per year. It would seem extremely reasonable to extrapolate this to the ~57 million urban (67 billion total) population of the UK to a cost in the order of at least £44 billion/year.

The cost of powering the UK with SMRs and NEH is:
2X better than a zero-sum-game
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Next up: In 2019, ‘Global primary energy consumption by source’ is 92.4X greater than the above calculated 1887.1 TWh of energy consumption of the UK. What are the numbers and cost of an SMR/NEH-powered world?
How do these numbers compare to Simon Michaux’s calculations?