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Hiya,
Read this with interest. If I may add something my background was electrical engineering at Uni and I remember with interest that peak power and top up is OK from renewals. The key issue is us all switching to EV cars and with that the increase in the need for increased production of electricity in non-peak times. Nuclear really is the only one that can support this demand currently and increases.
Finally as an Engineer it is the same old story we led the world in Nuclear power and we had up to about 10 years ago an industry. The government as per usual screwed it up and split up BNFL and sold the parts to EDF, America. So now with Hitachi pulling out we lack the skills and expertise to do it ourselves. Same old crap British political short sightedness prevails. In fairness to the current government at least they were trying to do something about it and the need for capacity. It was the Labour government that made the mistakes from what I can see and I'm a Labour voter ;-(
JeZ
we pay operators a subsidy when production is too high
The guaranteed prices being paid to wind farms are falling dramatically for new developments but the issue of energy storage, as opposed to generation, is one that will need to be addressed.
As for Hydrogen storage, whilst it is difficult, I can't see it being any more dangerous than storing LNG/LPG or petrol for that matter and we do that as a matter of course.
I was speaking to an engineer from ABB Cables a couple of years ago.
They were working on some ultra low loss cable system that would allow efficient power transmission over thousands of miles.
The idea being, is that you connect power stations that are on different time zones from your grid and as power requirements drop in their area, you take power from them and vice versa. Interesting idea.
If we really want sustainable power, we really need to look at again at hydro electric and start developing the already identified sites in the Northwest and Scotland.
£40-60bn saved from the two nuclear sites, kill off HS2 saving another £30+bn and we're well on our way to a £100bn infrastructure project.
Norway generates 95% of it's power from Hydro.
That game is tough by the way… Just saying.
Apparently, I did a really good job by building a biomass generator and some windmills. Only managed to get 41% though!
Daffy - sorry - large scale hydro is not going to happen and the small scale hydro is a help but thats all. Upgrading existing hydro may make a differnce but even in Scotland we do not have the space to have a 5 fold increase in hydro.
Only managed to get 41% though!
I bought 5 solar units and got 45% still managed OK...worst was tidal, just sayin'
Norway is huge, has loads of great hydroelectric sites and a very small population.
As for Hydrogen storage, whilst it is difficult, I can’t see it being any more dangerous than storing LNG/LPG or petrol for that matter and we do that as a matter of course.
You can't see, but maybe scientists and engineers who've looked into it can?
I am of the opinion that large scale liquid batteries could prove useful for storage, if they can be produced effectively. More work is required there still.
I'm not saying it's a single solution, but used as a means of energy storage in conjunction with solar and wind. When ts raining, we can store/generate, when it's sunny we can store/generate and when its typically British (windy and rainy), we can generate, store and export.
Daffy - its a question of land available. There simply is not enough to make a significant difference. Small scale flow hydro is being rolled out and will help but hydro cannot be extended on the scale needed in the UK
Pumped storage - from memory we have about 4 hours worth of storage. We need a couple of weeks worth of electricity consumption stored to cope with winter high pressure events. there simply is not the room in the UK to do this from pumped storage.
the plan i do like is to have an interconnect to Norway from scotland -Scotland becomes the generator and Norway the storage battery. the two countries share the electricity and sell excess to Germany
THing is... Nuclear is a great idea, when done right. We haven't done it right. And I don't mean disasters, although, those are certainly disastrous. I mean finance and project planning. Hinkley is a nuclear disaster of a whole new breed, frinstance, the sort that causes massive damage before it's ever turned on. IF it's ever turned on. And any project involving EDF is dubious on account of they're essentially bankrupt, because the entire French nuclear industry was financed by just making up decommissioning costs.
But the trouble is, it's now incredibly hard for nuclear to stand, or to fall, on its merits. For any power source in fact, since the economics of most power generation is so fictional.
tjagain
Full Member
Daffy – its a question of land available. There simply is not enough to make a significant difference. Small scale flow hydro is being rolled out and will help but hydro cannot be extended on the scale needed in the UK
But there's practically no one in Cumbria and Scotland (speaking as a Scotsman and a Cumbrian) and there's plenty of peaks and troughs - surely there's somewhere with adequate rainfall and catchment at which a dam could be built? Or could the Spey and Lochabler Hydro system be expanded as a start?
@daffy not all waste is weaponisable, it is perfectly possible to convert all our existing stocks (and those of other countries that we hold) to non proliferable isotopes.
Fuel is a finite resource and yes,the can has to be kicked to a degree. Fuel routes play a major part though and reactors can burn anything from low enriched fuel to mixed oxides. As pointed out breeders have far less hazardous daughter products and if the big bugger in Cadarache proves viable the can will need kicked no longer.
@monkeysfeet my sympathies, I'm at Hunterston B myself and when we shut down and the site eventually gets mothballed (as A station will next year) the area is going to be screwed. People think things are bad now, it's going to be a whole lot worse.
I hope all of you gloating take time to remember that. This isn't just ideology, this is peoples livelihoods and the life and death of towns. There is nothing else for folk round here. Think on that.
But there’s practically no one in Cumbria and Scotland (speaking as a Scotsman and a Cumbrian) and there’s plenty of peaks and troughs – surely there’s somewhere with adequate rainfall and catchment at which a dam could be built?
basically no - there isn't.
@squirrelking - that's only true if we were to build breeder reactors like LMFBRs, which we're not as they're deemed to be too expensive. I'd certainly be more behind building breeder reactors as I believe they're part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.
Building conventional reactors is a sticking plaster until full renewables or fusion takes over. But due to the costs, contracts and decommissioning it's a cost that we'd be paying for for decades even if renewables could take over in 5-15 years.
I'm not gloating here and hope others aren't also, and as someone who worked at both Sellafield and Barrow (Nuclear Subs) and lived 20 years in Cumbria, I feel for the people, but we can't base a future energy policy for the nation on the financial impact to a few thousand.
This is big picture stuff and like it or not, nuclear fission isn't looking too promising and hasn't done for the past 20 years in the UK - had Fukashima happened earlier, I very much doubt we'd have built Hinkley Point, we'd have gone another way.
The only glimmer of hope (for fission) is the Rolls Royce Civil Nuclear program.
Isn't that just a sub reactor by any other definition? I'm not knocking it, SMRs are the next logical step but they're not proven yet and, critally, we need new build yesterday. That's the massive issue, all the coal has been shut down, gas is unsafe from an energy security perspective and we are years too late on a new build program that came at the worst time possible. The EPR is (finally) proven and the AP1000 and ABWR were proven from the outset.
But you're right in do much as the cleanup costs are high. As are costs for fusion. Everything comes with its own toxic legacy, there is no silver bullet.
squirrelking
Free MemberIsn’t that just a sub reactor by any other definition? I’m not knocking it, SMRs are the next logical step but they’re not proven yet and, critally, we need new build yesterday.
SMRs do have the advantage of also taking less time to build. I made a 20p bet on here years ago that the first production ASMR enters service before Hinkley C does, that's maybe not the good bet I thought it was now with the (political and financial, not scientific) setbacks SMRs have taken over the last few years but still not terrible. (even if I don't include NuScale, on account of it's bloody enormous)
Sorry for trolling earlier.
Anyone know what happened to the nuclear power design that Bill Gates was involved with that had to be stopped due to the sanctions against China or whatever it was?
Both Trawsfynydd and Wylfa closed quite a while ago,and power is still provided uk wide without them and locally to me, Fiddlers ferry Coal powered and polluting power station also closed,and there is also the deeside power station,north wales gas fired also closed down.
Whats needed is wholescale reduction in power use, free low energy bulbs, cut all non essential building floodlighting, reduce manufacturing companies energy demand,turn off stuff, have a national campaign to reduce usage.
this is interesting
" the National Infrastructure Commission – are not banging the drum for new fleets of giant nuclear power stations.
The NIC reiterated its two-year-old advice only last month: “The government should take a one-by-one approach to nuclear and not agree to more than one new nuclear plant, in addition to Hinkley Point C, before 2025.”
Whats needed is wholescale reduction in power use
Lmao
And how do you propose doing that whilst doing away with fossil fuels?
TJ, that may be but we NEED the energy security. Right now we are beholden to foreign powers (as of this new year) to provide for shortfalls in generation and our fuel supplies. You can argue the rights and wrongs of it but that's the way it is. Its another ****ing ridiculous situation we've found ourselves in.
@squirrelking - essentially, yes. It’s a PWR3, but has the advantage that RR have built 5 in the last 7 years and will be building 6-7 more over the next 5 years, so with the SMR, the economies of scale really start to show. Also, they’re very fuel efficient and your entire grid is VERY scaleable.
Large plants are, despite their fuel use, MUCH more productive than little ones, but as a stopgap, SMRs (I think) have the advantage.
RR have been trying to do civil nuclear for ages. I was involved in the business case aspect back in 2006/7.
I agree squirrel king that its ridiculous. where we disagree is on the solutions. Nuclear can never make up the shortfall in time. Plants simply take too long to build. Hinkley is how late now?
If all the money wasted on Hinkley had been put into renewables we would have less of an issue and we should have been pushing hard for a total reduction in energy usage
So a couple of things to add to any of this, first off I actually work at a gas (3 Gas Turbine Generators, 3 Waste Heat Boiler, 1 steam turbine setup) power station but the company also own and operate biomas / coal power station, other gas power stations, pumping hydro stations and in the process of setting up carbon capturing plant.
With any energy production it’s not a simple subject with one answer. I am fully for the use of wind and solar generation but they do have a number of problems that means they can not be the only option to use. Obviously if it’s night time or not windy they will not be producing electricity so you will still need to produce the required amount using other means (so would still need a system that could product over 100% required without renewable).
Secondly you will never get 100% solar or windy due to the requirement of modulating the frequency of the electricity which you can’t do with renewable. We sometimes have to run when it is too windy or sunny due to the larger inertia (a big heavy turbine and generator) to control the frequency and make sure it stays at 50 hz. The pumping stations will pump water to the storage lake to use up some of the excessive electricity produced. There are even some power stations that will turn there generator into a motor to use up the electricity to help with the control of the grid.
Yes the pumping stations can supply a constant 4 hour connection to the grid (National grid set a minimum 4 hours running contact with energy supplies). They are mostly used to deal with sudden demand of electricity (10 minutes and they can be full operational V a boiler would take over a day if stone cold) when everyone suddenly decides to make a cup of tea in an add break.
My site will only operate when asked to by NG, this means we get a better price but also less Co2 released. Normally we only operate 2-4 times a week in the evenings.
One other form of electricity production that hasn’t be discussed is waste incinerators (burning anything that can’t be recycled). Since landfills are not allowed anymore majority of household waste will go to incinerators. Because the cancels pay them to take the rubbish away they undercut the price of gas power stations so run 24/7. The Uk even send of of their waste over to Holland to be burnt in their incinerators (which adds to the fun of Co2 production) and then sell the electricity back to the Uk using undersea cables (should the Co2 produced by these Dutch incinerators be counted as Uk carbon released?).
This afternoon energy production consisted of:
Solar - 14.3%
Wind - 14.9%
Hydro - 1.0%
Gas - 45.6%
Coal - 1.9%
Biomass - 5.0%
Nuclear- 12.3%
Pump stations- 0%
Import - 5.0%
The biggest way of reducing Co2 release is not just by changing the way that energy is produced but by how much is used, through out the beginning of lockdown energy usage was down by 30% (every day was a Sunday in the eyes of energy sector).
Lets face it, us humans have grown fat on a glut of extremely cheap and addictive hydro-carbon derived energy. Today, we are increasingly coming to the realisation that we have been paying another price beyond pure cost for that energy, namely the potentially unstabilizing effects of massive relases of Carbon Dioxide into our atmosphere. Whilst groups like Greenpeace were worring about a few hundred of thousand tonnes of nuclear waste that might (<< note might, not did, or will) get realsed into the environment, we went ahead and ACTUALLY release tens of billions of tonnes of pollutants into our atmosphere unchecked. Anti-nuke peeps say "ooh but nuclear waste is soo dangerous" and then drive to work in their car without a single thought for the fact that every time they run the engine, pollution pours out the back. Pollution that kills people daily, and potentially could result in a significant issue for the human race as a whole.
So far, any new generation tech is simply based on "commercial worth" ie how much it costs, vs what you can sell it for, ie to make a profit for share holders. This is what has stiffled things like tidal or wave energy, not the (relatively) minor engineering problems involved in developing generation assets. The fact is, wave or tidal energy costs more per unit of electricty that wind or solar. And modern nuclear generation is even worse, because rather than saving money to pay for the decommisioning, you're giving the profit to your share holders.
I can see a sea change (sic) comming tbh. At some point, if and when we do run short of 'lecy, suddenly, the vast majority of people are going to stop worrying about saving 2 pence per kWH, and worring about keeping the lights on, the water and sewage pumping, their employers buisnesses running! Suddenly, "oh nuclear power is too expensive" will be replaced with "i need to keep my fridge running".
Unfortunately, without a non politicised, non commercial plan and methodlolgy for providing the Uk with a long term viable generation mix, by the time this happens it will, imo,be too late.......
(and if you are poor, live in a deprived location, are non skilled with a low paid job, then you are totally F'd when the lights go out, because at that point, money talks)
maxrtorque - I do not own a car and nuclear emmissions are released into the environment all the time and cause massive and long lasting pollution.
tjagain
Full MemberNuclear can never make up the shortfall in time. Plants simply take too long to build. Hinkley is how late now?
Hinkley's pretty much a textbook example of how not to do it tbf. It's not a good example for anything apart from that weird thing where people sometimes decide to do things the most expensive way possible regardless of if it makes any sense, just to prove they can. The "Buying Alan Shearer for £15m effect" I shall call it.
Northwind - have not most recent nuclear projects worldwide been on a similar scale - 20+ years from the go ahead to any electricity?
Depends what you mean by "go-ahead". Consultations, etc, or actual build time. Non-engineering planning, public consent, finance, and general all round Politics tend to add a huge amount to the actual build. OTOH, people quite reasonably suggest that some of the recent faster projects like Astravets and Haiyang might have been rushed more than they should. Basically I think you need to separate out "time it has to take to do this" and "time it will take including entire years of totally avoidable fannying about".
TBH it's hard to separate these things and possibly there's no such thing as a really good example but hinkley's particularly farcical. Vogtle would probably be a good example if it weren't for the whole Westinghouse thing.
(though in point of fact even Hinkley's still scheduled- hah- to go online within 20 years from absolute start to finish. It was originally announced in 2008, and ground works only really started in 2014, so there's still a fair chance that it'll be generating within 2 decades. It's just really easy to forget how relatively recent construction's start was, because it was already going over budget and over schedule before anyone lifted a shovel. )
We could definitely go planning-to-power in a decade with some of the modern designs, without cutting any corners in the plant. Basically that's entirely a matter of political will. IMO that political will is the actual reason that nuclear's probably not going to play the part in tackling the climate crisis that it should- not time, not money, nothing to do with the technology, just that governments are basically incapable of doing even the most essential stuff today, if there aren't any benefits til after they retire. They wouldn't go to the toilet if they thought there was a chance they'd be voted out before they flush, so they end up serving most of their term with shit in their pants.
But if we started actually acting like adults, everything changes. Right now it seems to me where in a hopeless middle ground where the UK is expecting and requiring to and acting like it will have nuclear as a major part of its energy strategy, but isn't actually even trying to make it happen. Maybe we can keep warm around a bonfire of shitted pants.
nuclear emmissions are released into the environment all the time and cause massive and long lasting pollution.
Citation please. We are heavily regulated by SEPA and the only isotope we discharge is tritium in concentrations far below that found in nature. Everything else is filtered. Unlike coal.
have not most recent nuclear projects worldwide been on a similar scale – 20+ years from the go ahead to any electricity?
I've corrected this numerous times and you keep throwing it out hoping it will stick. No, they have generally not, the exception being the N type predecessors to the EPR. Hitachi ABWRs have been built as quickly as 5 years from first digs to commissioned and Westinghouse AP1000s were up and going within a decade.
You also keep saying Hinkley C is delayed like its a technical issue. First they had to have an approved GDA (generic design assessment) from the ONR, then planning permission for the new station including local consultations. Nothing was getting done before any of those were sorted. Then there was the funding issue which took some time to close out. That's what has delayed the build,technically I'm not aware of anything holding it back. EPRs are already generating, they work, the casting problems experienced in France and Finland shouldn't be repeated here assuming Le Crueset have their act together.
@squirrelking, everything you say about those delays is true but it's not all that's caused delays. Last year it was all about bad ground conditions frinstance. Not a "nuclear" issue of course except in that the plant's nature makes it one of the biggest construction projects in the world, but those two are inseparable. And they haven't reached the tricky bits.
IIRC EDF are still talking about generating by the end of 2025, but with a possible delay of 18 months. Likely? I bet 20 scottish pence that it's not fully operational by 2028.
You're right, it's not all exclusively down to the stuff I listed but more importantly it's not technical issues either. Any large project would be similarly impacted so it's not really fair to single this one out is it?
So why is there radioactive contamination in the irish sea? Radioactive contamination all around sellafeild? all around Dounray?
yes they are not supposed to discharge radioactivity but "accidental" discharges happen all the time.
Then of course there is fukishima, 3 mile island, windscale, chernobyl
its the catastrophic nature that concerns and the long lasting effects of the pollution.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/irish-sea-radioactivity-worse-than-at-nuclear-site-1.161463
yes they are not supposed to discharge radioactivity but “accidental” discharges happen all the time.
Problem is that coal also contains trace amounts of radioactive material that is released when it is burned. A trace amount adds up to a lot when you are burning billions of tonnes of the stuff. On top of that, coal emissions are nasty anyway, so coal plants cause tens of thousands of lung cancers, but these are widely distributed and don't alarm the public like Chernobyl did, despite killing many more people.
Chernobyl was an order of magnitude worse than Fukushima, which was an order of magnitude worse than Three-mile Island. The Chernobyl type reactors were massively flawed, more conventional designs are much safer. If a Fukushima type accident occurred once per decade, the environmental harm would still be much less than that caused by coal, oil, and natural gas.
Another consideration about nuclear accidents is that, when a serious one occurs, lessons are learned from it, so it is much less likely to occur again. Fukushima happened because the backup generators for the cooling system had no redundancy and were all knocked out by a gigantic tsunami that breached the sea-wall. (Lesson: Ensure redundancy of critical systems.) On top of that, the operators were too scared of their bosses that they dithered for days because they didn't want to be held responsible for damaging the reactor by pumping in seawater to cool it. That would have prevented the hydrogen explosions that destroyed the reactor, but would have wrecked it in the process. The operators were too scared to do that in case their bosses got angry. That's a cultural management problem that can be addressed by having explicit regulations for situations where the cooling system fails.
Worked in nuclear power production for the last 35 years.
It's about time the Scottish government woke up and invested in it sooner rather than later.
The grid need large scale rotating machines as well. Or an equivalent that no one seems to want to pay for either.
squirrelking
Free Member
Citation please. We are heavily regulated by SEPA and the only isotope we discharge is tritium in concentrations far below that found in nature. Everything else is filtered. Unlike coal.
@squirrelking - sorry, but this is a fact. Stones near decommissioned discharge pipes in the Solway firth from 2002-2020 have been found to have highly dangerous levels of Cesium137. How did these stones become so irradiated?
There's also another report on there (that I can't for the life of me find again) which shows that radioactivity near active discharge points was 2000% higher in 2016 than it was when first recorded in 2007.
Key facts and figures:
UK electricity demand has dropped 20% in the last 7 years.
Typical daily demand is 30GW (but can be over 37 in winter)
Renewables typically contribute between 4 and 13GW of this capacity but it's often closer to the lower end and is highly variable. Wind has a better capacity factor at an average of ~42% of the ~8GW capacity, whilst solar has a capacity factor of around 10% on 13GW of generation capacity, which isn't great.
Nuclear contributes around 10-13%
The rest predominately comes from Gas and biomass.
So far, 2000 offshore wind turbines generate the lions share of wind energy at a total development cost of ~£17bn
Decommissioning costs for Sellafield alone are at ~£53bn and are rising annually.
@tjagain the contam you are talking about is historic discharges from when stuff wasn't regulated like it is now. Sellafield and Dounreay both have horrific legacies that are mind boggling in today's industry, I'd imagine that would account for the discharges in the Solway as well from Chapelcross.
As I said, everything is regulated now and the stuff getting flung under the carpet in the old days no longer happens.
As for that report, I'd prefer to see some real numbers. Concentrations "thousands of times greater" means absolutely nothing without context or dose rates. I could claim a ludicrously high percentage increase of wildlife deaths caused by wind farms that, whilst factually correct, would be meaningless without the proper context.
squirrelking
Free MemberYou’re right, it’s not all exclusively down to the stuff I listed but more importantly it’s not technical issues either. Any large project would be similarly impacted so it’s not really fair to single this one out is it?
Completely fair- nuclear is always (currently) a massive and complex project, with relatively little repeatability, so civil engineering challenges are magnified. It's not about singling nuclear out, rather the opposite in fact- you can't give it a free pass on this because it's complicated, rather you have to take into account that complexity and scale as a disadvantage. And in Hinkley's case, it's a project that's right at the complex end of big nuclear.
Another thing is that discounting this sort of challenge with big nuclear, diminishes much of the point of smaller nuclear. Even with current plants, going with AP1000s wouldn't have removed the likelihood of some construction challenges, but would have meant that it wasn't, frexample, the biggest concrete concrete pour in UK history. (bad example maybe as AP1000s would have been impacted by the collapse of Westinghouse, but you get the drift)
Ah okay I see where you're coming from. Yeah that's fair, I'm just trying to make it very clear that the delay issues that Hinkley has suffered from are nothing to do with any technical issues despite what some folk would like others to believe.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/radioactivity-in-food-and-the-environment-rife-reports
Sellafield inevitably is responsible for the highest Total Dose but it's still under half the limit.
delay issues that Hinkley has suffered from are nothing to do with any technical issues despite what some folk would like others to believe.
If that is aimed at me again do not make up stuff I have not said.
I merely said like most nuclear reactors time taken is 20+ years from the decision to go ahead to generating electricity. Hinkley is going to be nearer 30 years if it ever produces any electicity.
Caesium 137 levels around the UK including the Solway Firth:
There’s also another report on there (that I can’t for the life of me find again) which shows that radioactivity near active discharge points was 2000% higher in 2016 than it was when first recorded in 2007.
The Rife report is in its 25th year and the AEMR preceded it. By and large discharges have a downward trend, certainly not a massive increase like 2000%!
I work on this stuff, esecially the nuclear bit, and have been resisting the temptation but can't any longer....
Hinkley Final Investment decision was mid-2016. You don't just wake up one day and decide to build an EPR- there is a loooong lead time for all sorts of reasons, but the 'Go' decision was made four years ago.
There is much confusion of electricity and energy in this thread. Electricity is only about 20-25% of UK energy consupmtion. If you want to eliminate hydrocarbon fuels (and that's what Net Zero means) then you have choices- for example 200000 wind turbines, 250000 square km of biofuel crops, a couple of hundred nuclear reactors, or carbon capture and storage of maybe 50 million tonnes of CO2 per year. Any of these is a massive change, unlike anything we have done before. Read Dave Mackay's book- it's a bit dated now but the points he makes are valid.
On radioactivity and discharges, as others have said, modern limits are way lower than historical ones though Nobody sane wants to go back to the seventies, and just because you can measure something, that doesn't make it dangerous. I'd sooner work with radioactivity than the horrors left behind by Victorian gas works (that was a summer job I won't forget), and I just don't believe those numbers in the Irish Times. It's easy to mess up these measurements and, in almost 40 years, I have never seen numbers like that from the Irish Sea.
I could go on but won't.....