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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.
completely disingenuous. It was announced it was going to be built in 2010 having had some years of discussion beforehand. License to build was 2012 2008 preparatory work started
On radioactive pollution. there is much dispute in the medical world over this. some say there is a safe limit, some say there is no safe limits - all radioactivity causes issues. Yes even background radioactivity from Radon or Granite.
Me - I like to be cautious on this because its a pandoras box. You cannot get rid of radioactivity out of the environment.
The is also the big problem of public perception:
When asked
"would you mind having a nuclear powerstation built near you?"
pretty clearly a massive majority will answer
"NO"
But actually this is wrong question to ask. The real question is:
"Would you prefer to have a nuclear powerstation built near you OR would you prefer to have rolling blackouts in your electricity supply at times of high demand and low renewable generation"
Let me suggest, that the answer to THAT question is going to be rather different, especially if you ask it AFTER people have actually experienced said blackouts
Or burn more fossil fuels or decrease electricity consumption dramatically. Two more choices
some of you guys might be able to answer this related question. Biomass. How much wood do you need to burn to get a similar level of generation ( to hinkley)? I am thinking of all those horrid conifer plantations all over scotland especially argyle. could a Bioimass plant be built somewhere in the clyde estuary and burn all that stuff over say 20 years ie 5% of it a year ( transported by boat to the plant) with obviously a replanting with native species. Is this sort of idea the same magnitude or not? Any clues? Seems like a good solution to me and gives the breathing space / extra capacity and if you do the replanting properly its near carbon neutral
Or is that amount of biomass orders of magnitude to small?
The other significant problem is that people dont' understand the risks posed by pollution, both nuclear and conventional.
Yes the beaches near Nuclear stations have increased levels of detectable raditation, that could indeed given any person spending SIGNIFICANT amounts of time there potential heath problems. But let me ask, how many actual people have got health issues due to that contamination? How many people spend months or years there?
Compare that to say Oxides of Nitrogen released by buring coal or oil. They are around us all, in locations where we DO spend a lot of time (especially if you live in a built up area). Children are partiularly suscpetable to things like Asthma brough on by really quite low concentrations. And yet the average person doensn't see this as "dangerous" depsite being, in terms of total deaths, and in terms of the cost to our health service, and loss of earnings from people sick off work as a result, is many, mnay, many times more significant.
TJ simply dismisses this with a simple "i dont' have a car", which is great and all, but unfortunately, around 25 million people DO have a car in the UK alone, and you ARE going to breath in "their" pollution do to sharing an atmosphere with them.....
But because "NUCLEAR!!" the average person in the street (and i think TJ) consider nuclear waste to be a more serious problem!
According to the report referenced above, the highest public area dose localised around Sellafield is 0.37 mS per year. How "dangerous" is that?
This report details the doesage you recieve from cosmic radiation by living in Europe:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17445647.2017.1384934
It says "This paper presents and describes the European Annual Cosmic-Ray Dose Map at 1 km resolution (Main Map). The Main Map displays the annual effective dose that a person may receive from cosmic rays at the ground level, which ranges from 301 to 3955 μSv"
Therefore the dose you get, simply due to cosmic radiation is pretty much the same as, and up to 13 times higher than the dose from the worst case at Sellafield.
Hence the report stating:
"Natural ionizing radiation is considered the largest contributor to the collective effective dose received by the world population. The human population is continuously exposed to ionizing radiation from several natural sources that can be classified into two broad categories: high-energy cosmic rays incident on the earth's atmosphere and releasing secondary radiation (cosmic contribution); and radioactive nuclides that originated in the earth's crust and are present everywhere in the environment, including the human body itself. For most individuals, natural exposure exceeds that from all man-made sources combined"
So lets not all have a panic attack about "ooh noes, nuclear radiation is destroying everything" shall we.
Today, IMO, the only viable & secure method to meet our greedy energy needs, the method with the lowest overall pollution impact, but unfortunately far from the lowest total cost includes a significant proportion of nuclear driven generation.
I've been called many things but never before disingenuous.
The Final Investment Decision is just that and there is clearly preparatory work beforehand, as there would be for any large capital project. It doesn't have to take years though- Barakah Contract 2009, Unit 1 Construction start 2012, Unit 1 first grid connection 2020
To say it started 8 years after it did is disingenuous! They were digging ground in 2008 12 years ago. Its already several years behind schedule
How much wood do you need to burn to get a similar level of generation ( to hinkley)?
If I have done the sum right, you'd need 11 sq km of biomass per day to give you Hinkley's output. There are 14000 sq km of woodland in scotland so you would burn every tree in scotland in about 3.5 years.
some of you guys might be able to answer this related question. Biomass. How much wood do you need to burn to get a similar level of generation ( to hinkley)?
@tjagain I think you'd love Dave Mackay’s book 'Sustainable Energy – without the hot air' (as referenced by @dpfr above). It answers questions like that brilliantly - in an entertaining back-of-envelope-calculation way. It really helped me to clarify my own views on this subject.
I fear TJ you don't fully understand just how powerful modern power stations are!
GW of power takes KW of input energy. A modern Gas combined cycle plant might be 60% efficient. So say 4 GW of power takes 6.6 GW of input energy. Buring 1Kg of high density hydrocarbon fuel (coal or oil) produces around 8kWH of heat, so 6.6GW of heat requires 883 tonnes of fuel per hour!
A typical fast growing softwood has a density of 350 kg/m^3, so that 883 tonnes/hr requires 2,380 cubic meters of trees being fed in, per hour. A typical railway box car has a volume of about 150 cubic meters, so you need 16 odd box cars an hour to run that powerstation! (384 per day, typical train with 50 box cars, about 8 trains per day, one every 3 hours)
TJ simply dismisses this with a simple “i dont’ have a car”,
That was in response to someone who made a crack about people protesting against nuclear energy and then getting in their cars - ie accusation of Hypocrisy
As regards the dangers from radiation - two issues. its cumulative so everyone on this planet now gets more radioactivity than pre atomic era. does this increase risk?
I fully accept other energy production is polluting as well. the issue is they do not remain deadly for thousands of years.
I advocate a carbon tax based economy and a huge reduction in energy usage via a carrot and stick approach a nd I want to see the money wasted on nuclear used for real low carbon energy consumption. Nuclear has had and continues to get public money orders of magnitude higher than alternatives and since Hinkley was first mooted in 2008 scotland has with minimal public money increased its renewable to a level of generation that is of similar magnitude to Hinkley if not more
And yes - we now have enough wind generation to be a part of a sensible mix. thats why we need the tidal. If the money wasted over the last 20 years on nuclear had been put into tidal we wouldn't need the nuclear
And as above - i advocate a huge reduction in energy usage - not just electricity.
Of course they were digging- you need to make sure the ground conditions are suitable. It's called site characterisation and is part of essential preparatory work, as is getting regulatory approval of the design and a host of other things.
If you choose to define the start point somewhere other than the 2016 FID, that's fine and I can see why you might, but read what I posted. I said the FID was 2016 and there was a long lead time before it.
the issue is they do not remain deadly for thousands of years
No- things like cadmium, mercury, arsenic remain deadly forever
Thanks for the info on biomnass. so the trees are an order of magnitude to small.
At least one- I have burned every tree in Scotland, not just the plantation forestry!
Seriously, sl2000's suggestion above to read Dave Mackay's book is a good one. He was a really interesting guy, and you can download it free from the web
Oatway etc al, Public Health England, 2016
If man made climate change is indeed the effect we think it is (and by the time we are absolutely sure, it'll be far too late to do anything about it...) then i'd argue that this does indeed "last for thousands of years" and in fact, unlike stored nuclear waste, directly affects every single person on the planet on a daily basis.
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.
Thing is we have a stock fissile material in the UK already don't we, we've even accepted other nations material for reprocessing I believe.
And if you don't process it into fuel and use it, what exactly do you think happens to it?
We either flog it to nations with a functioning nuclear power industry or it ends up in a geological waste repository, to become future generations problem to deal with...
Believe it or not recovering and processing fissile material into fuel to generate leccy to run your fridge/iPhone/Tesla is more environmentally and socially responsible that paying Russian oligarchs for gas...
this is one of the issues to me. You guys look to the future and think nuclear is all good. I look to the past and see nothing but lies, deceit and accidents.
I do not own a car and nuclear emmissions are released into the environment all the time and cause massive and long lasting pollution.
You forgot about mutants! Bring on the superheroes!
But possibly not the bad Japanese monsters.
this is one of the issues to me. You guys look to the future and think nuclear is all good. I look to the past and see nothing but lies, deceit and accidents.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)61253-7/fulltext
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
Let’s again put this into the context of our town of 27,000 EU citizens, who would collectively consume around one terawatt-hour of energy a year. These are the impacts if they got all of their energy from a given source:
Coal: 25 people would die prematurely every year;
Oil: 18 people would die prematurely every year;
Gas: 3 people would die prematurely every year;
Nuclear: it would take between 14 and 100 years before someone died;
Wind: 29 years before someone died;
Hydropower or solar: 42 years before someone died;
Solar: 53 years before someone died.
Reprocessing - another huge can of worms with a horrible history of "accidental" releases, a huge pile of plutonium with no use for it and half a tonne of it on the floor of the irish sea.
2008 preparatory work started
Did it bollocks, unless by preparatory work you mean the government site identification and EDF buying British Energy which was early 2009.
is that amount of biomass orders of magnitude to small?
You tell me, one uranium pellet is equivalent to about a ton of coal. Not sure what the conversion factor is for biomass or what that forestry would produce. Its certainly far less energy dense though.
Yes the beaches near Nuclear stations have increased levels of detectable raditation, that could indeed given any person spending SIGNIFICANT amounts of time there potential heath problems.
Actually I know the very boring and maths heavy answer is that no, it wouldn't. (I did my monitor refresher yesterday) The action level for a C2 (contaminated) area is 10Bq/cm which is roughly equivalent to standing next to Caesium 137 for some ridiculous amount of time (it was maths heavy and just a nice to know) that amounted to an annual dose of 1mSv. The legal limit is 20mSv and the actual dangerous limit is 300mSv IIRC. Feel free to pull a copy of the Ionising Radiation Regulationsand bore yourselves to death with it.
Also plutonium is plenty useful unless you want to pretend MOX fuel or a plutonium fuel cycle doesn't exist.
and where are the reactors that use these fuels? are we building any? There is tonnes of the stuff.
Did it bollocks, unless by preparatory work you mean the government site identification and EDF buying British Energy which was early 2009.
Yes it did. they started moving earth to build car parks and access roads for the ground investigations.. ie the first part of the preparatory works. in 2008. thats the first part of the building works
this is one of the issues to me. You guys look to the future and think nuclear is all good. I look to the past and see nothing but lies, deceit and accidents.
Dunno, the magnox fleet was relatively successful, given it was essentially a 1950s design (itteratively changed for every reactor) and did actually generate power for the grid for a bloody long time. Of course there were issues around waste management, they didn't plan for it, understand it or have the same regulation there is today.
The problem is people seem happy to conflate nuclear arms and nuclear power generation, winscale was nothing to do with the civil nuclear effort at the time, it was a badly designed pile made solely for the weapons lot...
Like I said, what does a nation with a growing need for leccy and an abundant stockpile of fissile material that can be used to meet that need without emmiting more climate changing gasses do?
Apparently we think we can rely on foreign gas and whily gigs...
the issue is they do not remain deadly for thousands of years.
I may have this wrong, but doesn't the fact that it have a hugely long half life mean that it is in fact quite stable Wouldn't a half life of say: 50 years be much more dangerous as it's decaying (and thus releasing energy) so in reality you'd want nuclear waste to have a long half life...I mean obvs it's a bit more complex than that, but (from school memory) plutonium is insoluble, so no danger to water etc etc. But U238 is so stable as to be relatively safe, no?
an abundant stockpile of fissile material that can be used to meet that need without emmiting more climate changing gasses
Do we actually build reactors using MOX or plutonium? I thought hinkley was uranium.
Nuclear power generation does produce climate changing gasses. Not as much as fossil fuel of vcourse but plenty from all the concrete and plenty from all the decomissioning
We have just about enough whirly gigs now. They cannot be too much of the mix until we develop some decent storage
Yes it did. they started moving earth to build car parks and access roads for the ground investigations.. ie the first part of the preparatory works. in 2008. thats the first part of the building works
And the next couple of sentences on wikipedia go onto say:
Early enabling works started in July 2008 with the construction of a car park for a ground investigation programme. In 2012 EDF purchased the site of the Manor of Sydenham near Bridgwater which had previously been used as a factory site by British Cellophane,[58] including the Grade II listed 16th century building.[59]
In 2014, 400 staff undertook initial preparation and construction work. This work included access roads and roundabouts for increased construction traffic, park and ride schemes for the site workers, and a new roundabout for the village of Cannington. Further plans include the construction of a sea wall and a jetty for ships to deliver sand, aggregate and cement for concrete production.[60]
In 2015 the factory site was razed to the ground for construction of temporary accommodation for 1,000 workers.[61][62]
In September 2016, the BBC reported that if construction were to start now, the plant could become operational by 2025.[63]
In March 2017, EDF, after the Office for Nuclear Regulation gave approval to start building a network of tunnels to carry cabling and piping, started work also under way on a jetty, seawall and accommodation blocks.[64]
and where are the reactors that use these fuels?
MOX? All over the world.
Pure PU? Breeders, all Gen IV so not in the light of day yet.
they started moving earth to build car parks and access roads for the ground investigations.. ie the first part of the preparatory works. in 2008. thats the first part of the building works
A ground survey is not building works. However the next paragraph is a bit more helpful;
In 2014, 400 staff undertook initial preparation and construction work.
Initial. Preparation. 2014.
You're havering and quite frankly making yourself look daft.
Really - I am not the one denying things - work started on the site in 2008. No doubt at all. What else do you call moving earth around in preparation? The decison to build it had already been made at that point hence the preparatory works.
so where are the UKs MOX and plutonium reactors? no one wants the reprocessed fuel. How much has been sold? the japanese and the germans are actually paying us to keep it because it has no value at all - just a liability
We have just about enough whirly gigs now. They cannot be too much of the mix until we develop some decent storage
Do we? That base load is sure to treble in the next couple of decades, more leccy cars and the already stated intent to make all UK households electrically heated, plus our growing love of data centres... We're going to have to fill the North Sea with those whirly gigs and get a wriggle on with all these promised power storage and transport systems...
Or there is nuclear, a better understood technology than it was 75 years ago, fueled by material that we will have to deal with anyway, why not do that by putting it in a reactor to generate electricity we know we're going to need for many many decades to come...
Do we actually build reactors using MOX or plutonium? I thought hinkley was uranium.
The Japanese certainly have some MOX fueled reactors don't they? What would stop the UK using MOX fuels?
I do not know why the uk does not use MOX but it does not. Nor plutonium. so we have no use for the stuff and you do know that the japanese refused to take back the fuel we reprocessed for them instead paying us to store it for them
None of the proposed reactors for the UK use any of the stockpile of plutonium.
Really – I am not the one denying things – work started on the site in 2008. No doubt at all. What else do you call moving earth around in preparation? The decison to build it had already been made at that point hence the preparatory works.
On 18 October 2010, the British government announced that Hinkley Point – already the site of the disused Hinkley Point A and the still operational Hinkley Point B power stations – was one of the eight sites it considered suitable for future nuclear power stations.[3][24] NNB Generation Company, a subsidiary of EDF, submitted an application for development consent to the Infrastructure Planning Commission on 31 October 2011.
A bit more googling and apparently CANDU can be run on a full load of MOX.
And It's not unheard of to mix MOX and LEU fuels in some reactors...
What else are we going to do with it? Once it's moved out of military stockpile it's not allowed back under non proliferation rules I believe...
MOX only has a small proportion of Pu in it anyway, but it's not like we have any other use for it...
johhnystorm - yes after doing work to make sure the site was suitable. work that started in 2008
"Early enabling works started in July 2008 with the construction of a car park for a ground investigation programme"
Thats the start of the project.
What else are we going to do with it?
gawd alone knows - its just a huge dangerous liability. No one wants it. No proposal to use it for electricity generation has been put forward. As for taking other countries unwanted plutonium - utterly stupid
“Early enabling works started in July 2008 with the construction of a car park for a ground investigation programme”
Thats the start of the project.
A moment ago that was when the decision to build it had already been made. Something that wasn't even certain two years later.
For someone supposedly so interested in safety you seem quite dismissive of due diligence and detailed planning.
I am thinking of all those horrid conifer plantations all over scotland especially argyle. could a Bioimass plant be built somewhere in the clyde estuary and burn all that stuff over say 20 years ie 5% of it a year ( transported by boat to the plant) with obviously a replanting with native species.
Depending on biomass to power the country would require intensive production which would result in far more of the conifer plantations you don't want to see. This is the main problem with it.
Molgrips - it was idle wondering and the folks on here knew some numbers to put to it. I am not particularly in favour of biomass but if those confer plantations could make a decent amount of electricity it might have been a good idea - but its not enough to be worthwhile. a lot of it is pretty poor quality timber
For someone supposedly so interested in safety you seem quite dismissive of due diligence and detailed planning.
Oh I am all for that. But surely thats a part of the project?
Ground investigations are not the same as starting a construction project. It's simply feasibility, due diligence and data gathering so you can tender more competitively/if at all.
It's the equivalent of having a survey done before you buy a house.
if you say so. to me once you start spending money on something that the project started. Its more like digging some test pits on a building plot to see what sort of foundations you need