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UK small nuclear competition: Rolls Royce in, Bill Gates snubbed
(www.cityam.com)
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this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klimov_VK-1
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