Nuclear Power Nein Danke?

[NotAllThere]

The Germans are building new Coal-Fired power stations......

Oh great. Coal mining is by far the biggest source of release of radioactive substances into the environment. And the human cost is enormous.

Should have stayed nuclear -cleaner and, in terms of deaths per TW, safer.

[Doggy Styles]

Oh great. Coal mining is by far the biggest source of release of radioactive substances into the environment. And the human cost is enormous.

Should have stayed nuclear -cleaner and, in terms of deaths per TW, safer.

What about the giant mutant shark-lizard things that will evolve near the radioactive outlet pipes?

[Churchill]

If Aldermaston didn't have access to all the fissile material it needed then we'd be building Nuclear "power stations" like there were no tomorrow.

Just saying, like.

[vetran]

What about the giant mutant shark-lizard things that will evolve near the radioactive outlet pipes?

Sush Zeity doesn't like it when you talk about that side of the Family.

[Dominic Connor]

Big numbers

Last week I got briefed on this and we're looking at about 250-270 gigaquid in this phase of upgrading supply and distribution.

For completeness, no I don't believe the upper bound is hard.


Aside from green taxes, the move to "renewables" makes things more expensive and the maths are more than trivially complex.

Wind and solar are highly variable, solar of course being most active when demand is lowest. This has led the wind power industry to be solidly behind nuclear because for wind to be even remotely viable then we need something for the baseload.

That means we need a Smart Grid as well as putting cables in new places, this will cost about the same as HS2, and yes before you ask, you are paying.

We simply do not know within a factor of 20 how much shale gas we can extract, any numbers you read that don't have a wide spread are either lies or from fools, or both.

It is a matter of national shame that the country that invented nuclear power is now not competent to run its own reactors. We outsource to the French not on cost but because we don't have the expertise.

Only the most optimistic forecasts have the UK having enough capacity in the years to come and given the timescales for any generation from any source, that is a very hard thing to fix in time, personally I believe we will fail, the set of assumptions was so long.

Scottish independence is a free variable. It has nearly all the oil, as well as a good chunk of wind and hydro. Oil can be traded on world markets, though the current infrastructure is optimised for internal UK consumption since we are now a net energy importer. That means if Alex Salmond gets to be king, Scotland will have the power to turn the lights out in the UK if they don't get the price they want, but...

The only other countries Scotland can export electricity to are Norway and Ireland. Norway has a huge energy surplus and Ireland not a big energy consumer, plus the cost of cabling would be eye watering.

That means England (or East Wales) would be a monopoly consumer, this will lead to serious friction since energy will be a large % of king Alex's exports.

Given the track record of the industry, it is odd to refer to nuclear as the "safe option", but if your goal is keeping the lights on then it has several virtues.

It does not care about weather, including extreme weather events including known UK historical events that would kill most wind power. Despite being run by the French and paid for by Chinese, it is robust in the face of international events. Do you know the geopolitics from 2020 to 2070 ?
No, nor do I.
I do know that in the last 50 years, mid-east events have screwed with the UK energy supply big time, as have domestic strikes and general incompetence. Within the next month, Scotland, a huge net exporter of energy may lose 70% of its petrol output due to strikes, that's 2013, not 1973. A fire at that refinery would have the same effect, but last for years.

Of course you can have strikes and accidents at nuclear stations as well, but the key risk management term is to have enough diversity that ice storms, strong winds, Japanese grade management, strikes or whatever can't crash the economy in a way that the most malign banker can't even dream of.

[lukemg]

Looks ok to me, last thing I want is public sector financing this OR being involved in building it.
Reality is a mix of supplies is the only way to go and there is no free lunch with any of them. Nuclear is far more advanced than it used to be and waste has reduced accordingly but it should only be one element.
There is currently no good way to store leccy which is annoying as it leads to waste from plants that have to run 24hr or windmills in the night.
Currently, only major way is to pump water back up hydro-electric pipes but there is potential to use the excess to extract hydrogen from water which can then be used as fuel to smooth supply which sounds like a great idea to me.
Long term, shale gas might take the edge off price rises (don't see them dropping) but only solution currently is getting fusion working. If we sort this we are home free, for ever.
If not, we are looking at more wars over resources.

[darmstadt]

I don't know too much about nuclear reactors (even though my uncle worked at one as a nuclear physicist) but aren't they building the wrong type:

I understand that, with a project this big and timeframes this long, the government needs to pick a technology, but you would expect it to try to pick a winner. The clunky third-generation power station chosen for Hinkley C already looks outdated, beside the promise of integral fast reactors and liquid fluoride thorium reactors. While other power stations are consuming nuclear waste, Hinkley will be producing it.

An estimate endorsed by the chief scientific adviser at the government's Energy Department suggests that, if integral fast reactors were deployed, the UK's stockpile of nuclear waste could be used to generate enough low-carbon energy to meet all UK demand for 500 years. These reactors would keep recycling the waste until hardly any remained: solving three huge problems – energy supply, nuclear waste and climate change – at once. Thorium reactors use an element that's already extracted in large quantities as an unwanted byproduct of other mining industries. They recycle their own waste, leaving almost nothing behind.

To build a plant at Hinkley Point which will still require uranium mining and still produce nuclear waste in 2063 is to commit to 20th-century technologies through most of the 21st. In 2011, GE Hitachi offered to build a fast reactor to start generating electricity from waste plutonium and (unlike the Hinkley developers) to carry the cost if the project failed.

[vetran]

Looks ok to me, last thing I want is public sector financing this OR being involved in building it. .

We are underwriting it and paying above market rate for the output.

Sorry Dominic why do you say Solar is at the wrong time? Solar water/space Heating is proven effective and reliable even in our climate. Gather heat during the day and spend it during the night.

80% of domestic electricity is used for this.

https://www.gov.uk/government/upload..._factsheet.pdf


Solar electric does provide electricity during the day when industry needs it but hot water tanks etc can be heated with the excess during the day and last 24 hours. Salt storage or Hydrogen conversion are available.

[NotAllThere]

What about the giant mutant shark-lizard things that will evolve near the radioactive outlet pipes?

How else do we meet the market requirements for evil lizard overlords?

[Doggy Styles]

How else do we meet the market requirements for evil lizard overlords?

It was the shark bit that worried me.