'Build baby build', says Keir Starmer as he sets out nuclear plan
'Build baby build', says Keir Starmer as he sets out nuclear plan
The government wants to make it quicker and easier to build mini nuclear power stations in England and Wales.
Interesting gamble the government is taking here. Unusually the environmentalists are right to be cautious, SMRs have been designed since the 90s and not a one of them has ever come to anything.
Also not completely sure why we'd need it. By the governments own plans we can expect our wind power to jump from 10gw to 50gw by 2035, which would mean being 100% renewable powered for months at a time.
Which will make it very very expensive, the research I've seen recently says nations that manage that transition can expect electric price falls of a quarter to a half, and that Hinckley plant is already going to be selling at over twice the unit price of any other source. I would expect SMR plans to collapse for that reason by itself.
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I guess this is justified by the fact nuclear has a high initial cost, but a very low cost if and when demand increases, whereas most renewables are the opposite?
If we're doing a grid that has a base load, then I'd much rather have that base load supplied by nuclear than by coal, oil or gas. It's a straight swap. Nuclear is clean and safe. And it'll be these same big nuclear companies that pivot to fusion if and when it happens.
Ideal scenario is 100% renewable. I'll take a shift to nuclear from fossil fuel as a positive step even if it's not perfect.I guess this is justified by the fact nuclear has a high initial cost, but a very low cost if and when demand increases, whereas most renewables are the opposite?
I don't understand that thinking.
Nuclear has a very high incremental cost when demand increases. You need to build another nuclear power station. You're then set for a while.
Wind has a very small incremental cost. You need to build another wind turbine, but that won't last you very long. Maybe you build a wind farm rather than individual turbines. Still a lot cheaper / quicker.
As I understand it, reactors are built with a lot of spare overhead, so for a long time, we just need to keep adding uranium to increase the output, until it reaches its absolute maximum.
We need a new wind turbine each time to increase capacity.Your understanding is incorrect.
Reactors always operate at maximum capacity. It's the only way they are economic to run. Fuel isn't the primary cost for running a reactor. It's staffing and maintenance. These don't become cheaper when you run lower outputs. They are constant. If your costs are constant, generating half the power makes that power cost twice as much per kWh.
Just look at any of the grid dashboards out there. Look at how little nuclear output changes. We only change the output when we power down whole reactors for refuelling or other maintenance.
This is also why partnering nuclear with highly variable source of power like wind doesn't make any sense. Nuclear can't realistically vary it's output in response to what the weather is. Even if it could, it wouldn't make economic sense to do so.
Well your comment is too, reactors do not always run at maximum capacity, that's silly.
But they do have a lower SMRC than renewables.
I don't think you're an expert in the economics of nuclear reactors, and I know I'm not. I clearly made a mistake in the understanding of scaling them up. But, as ever on the internet, you have picked a side and therefore you're not a reliable interlocutor. If and when I want to know more about this subject, I will get my information from a neutral source.Maybe the terms I used were too absolute, but they always aim to run at their highest sustainable output for the reasons I gave.
I'm not an expert in nuclear economics, but this is knowledge accumulated from reading articles over the years by people who are. Apart from the economics, I'm pretty pro-nuclear, but the economic (and the related time-scale) arguments kill it for me.
I think with the situation we're in, we're much better going all in on technologies that replace fossil fuels today, but in smaller chunks that add up to big numbers over time. Nuclear will take bigger bites out of fossil fuels, but those step changes will take 10-15 years and we're stuck on fossil fuels for all that time.
Fair play to you. I guess that this decision is the result of the nuclear lobby having a bigger say than they should. It's an old story, where the facts are obfuscated by energy companies, for profit. I think the argument that nuclear has an important place in a robust energy grid is hard to debunk. But we should have started building decades ago.
Nuclear is better for the environment than renewables tbh
MMMMMWWWWHAHAHAHA!!!!!
I'd say we don't understand enough about secondary and tertiary effects of supply chains to know which is better environmentally. Certainly both are far better than fossil fuels, but our supply and construction worlds are so dependent on fossil fuels we can't really tell the impact of constructing them.
What you can absolutely say is that the time scale of nuclear is too slow. Wind power in the UK has basically gone from ~0 to 80TWh annually in 15 years. 32 megatonnes of CO2 didn't get emitted because of wind generation last year (Vs combined cycle gas generation). When Dogger Bank comes on line this year that will be closer to 100TWh and 40 MT of CO2. I haven't even considered the 5 MT saved from solar.
(Loose annual numbers based off grid.iamkate.com)
Hinckley point C is looking at a construction time of 13 years (2017-2030). That'll generate 28TWh annually. It'll save 11 MT of CO2 annually Vs gas, but up until 2030 it's saving a big fat zero. All whist our other nuclear plants age out and we have to resort to gas for the shortfall.
People can say we should of / would of / could of done things better with nuclear in the past, but we didn't. Renewables are saving CO2 emissions today because they can be brought on-line bit by bit. Nuclear is all or nothing and a long way in the future.
How is Hinkley A and B going?
The UK worked out what to do with the waste yet, or how much the decommissioning cost is going to be?
It absolutely is. Nuclear waste is bad, but it's not nearly as bad as millions of tonnes of carbon.
The main issues people have that I've seen are:
- What do you do with nuclear waste?
- What if it explodes?
(And the ever present 3rd option: I don't want it near my house, and I don't want pylons on my land)
You recycle nuclear waste. The bits you cannot recycle are so small, you can keep it in an underground bunker.
Nuclear explosions only happen if you extremely mismanage a power plant.
Is the underground bunker in your back yard?
How do we get it to this bunker?
How much will that cost to transport and store for...oh....25,000 years?
No, its called Swindon.
Probably less than all of those landfill sites we dump plastic in