Kathryn Porter On Nuclear Power
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
Another excellent article by Kathryn Porter:
I write a lot about what isn’t working in the energy transition – so what do I think will work?
The answer is nuclear power. Not fusion, but regular fission power. Nuclear has a number of key advantages, not found all at once in any other source of energy. Nuclear produces no carbon dioxide emissions in operation, it has a very high energy density in that a lot of energy is produced from a small geographic footprint, and it is not intermittent. Less well-known is the fact that nuclear power stations actually can “load-follow” – this means they can vary their output in response to changes in demand.
Of course, there are downsides. Nuclear has a very high capital cost and an extremely stringent regulatory regime, and there are the issues of nuclear waste and public acceptance.
The UK Government has spent a lot of time and effort trying to design incentive schemes to encourage private investment in the sector, with minimal success. It has launched Great British Nuclear to kick-start interest in small modular reactors (SMRs) and expects to co-invest in these projects. But the fact is that nuclear power is beset by large and unquantifiable risks, which mostly come from government itself. The entire German nuclear power industry was recently ordered to shut down, for instance, in the wake of the Fukushima powerplant incident: this despite the fact that no health effect to anyone from Fukushima radiation “is ever likely to be discernible” according to the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. Every new nuclear project faces interminable legal action from anti-nuclear activists. There are legislators in every Western nation who make no secret of their opposition to nuclear energy, though some of these have changed their stance after realising how helpful it is in meeting net-zero goals.
In this kind of environment, it’s reasonable that the private sector should be reluctant to take on political risks. The government should go beyond incentive schemes and simply pay for new reactors, particularly large ones, out of public funds. I am not an advocate for widespread state ownership in the energy sector, but in the same way that we do not expect the private sector to finance physical security – the military and police – we should not necessarily expect it to fully finance energy security. It would be more efficient, and potentially cheaper for consumers, were the Government to get over its squeamishness about putting large infrastructure on its balance sheet and ensure that more reactors are built.
The issue of regulation is also possible to improve. Since Fukushima, despite the fact that basically no health consequences occurred, regulation has become even more risk averse. For example, the existing UK Advanced Gas Cooled Reactors may be forced to close early (some already have) because of the risk that a single control rod may fail to deploy in the event of an earthquake of a magnitude never experienced in the history of the UK. Not only can these reactors be safely shut down if fewer than a fifth of the fuel rods deploy, there are also two further shut-down methods should this fail. It’s no wonder that nuclear power is the safest form of generation with the lowest number of deaths per unit of energy generated.
The issue of waste also turns out to be a lot less thorny than expected. Most of today’s waste problems date back to the early days of nuclear power when waste was not handled correctly. The cleanup from this is an ongoing challenge. Modern reactors produce less waste, and the protocols for correct handling are now established. According to government data, the total mass of radioactive waste in stock and estimated to be produced in the UK over the next 100 years will be around 5.1 million tonnes. In contrast, around 5.3 million tonnes of hazardous waste come from UK households and businesses every single year.
When it comes to public acceptance, the best place to start is on the sites of previous reactors since the local population is used to living next door to nuclear power which has been a source of jobs.
There are significant opportunities for both large and small nuclear reactors. Despite the hype, SMRs are still some years away from being available commercially, and we can’t afford to wait. We should hurry up and build some more large reactors.
The most promising large-scale technology is the APR-1400 advanced light water reactor developed by Korea Electric Power Company (KEPCO). Six of these have been built in South Korea and the UAE, with another due to open soon. They have been delivered broadly on time (in eight years) and with modest cost overruns. Another option is the European Pressurised Water Reactor (EPR) which EDF is building at Hinkley Point C and another of which recently opened at Olkiluoto in Finland. Unfortunately, the three EPR projects in Europe (the other being the flagship development at Flamanville in France) have been beset with massive delays and cost over-runs. It’s a similar story with the Westinghouse AP1000, another pressurised water reactor which has just been completed at Vogtle in Georgia with a second unit due next year.
A further option would be an Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR). These were built on time – in just five years – and on budget in Japan before the Fukushima incident. While ABWR supply chains may be stale, they could be refreshed if multi-site orders came in.
SMRs provoke a great deal of interest, for good reasons. Companies such as Dow Chemical are exploring their use to deliver high temperature heat to their facilities: on-site nuclear is one of the more credible options for zero-carbon high temperature industrial processes. Dow is working with X-Energy to deploy an SMR at its UCC Seadrift Operations site in Texas, by about 2030. The companies hope to start construction in 2026.
Again, as ever with nuclear, the main hurdle is regulatory. US developer NuScale recently secured certification from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) but said the process ran from 2008 to 2020, cost half a billion dollars and generated two million pages of documentation. And that certification is only applicable in the US – NuScale would have to go through it all again if someone wanted to deploy its technology in the UK or elsewhere.
The UK Government has said it wants to co-operate with trusted national regulators, and this would be a good place to start – if the technology is good enough for the NRC it should be good enough for the UK and vice versa (of course, site-specific approvals must still be on a case by case basis).
The main British contender in the SMR space is Rolls Royce which was assumed to have an advantage given its role in nuclear submarine propulsion. Unfortunately, small civil reactors are quite different to military ones which run on high-enriched fuel, so there was less to leverage than expected. The company is on the slow road to UK design certification.
SMRs are essentially small versions of conventional nuclear technologies. The idea, which has also been trialled by Westinghouse for large-scale projects, is to build as many components as possible off-site using a modular approach, with reduced on-site engineering. An even more interesting prospect is a fully plug-and-play, transportable “micro-reactor” plant with virtually no on-site engineering. Again, Westinghouse is at the forefront, with a micro-reactor it expects to be built and fuelled fully off-site. The product, named eVinci, would run for around eight years before being taken away for re-fuelling, leaving no waste behind. It uses a novel passive cooling technology. Recently the company successfully produced a prototype of one of the main design components.
If micro-reactors work, their potential would be huge. They could be installed at industrial sites to generate electricity, and potentially produce hydrogen to fuel very high temperature operations such as glass-making, where the temperatures are difficult or expensive to achieve other than through combustion. They would also be ideal in various off-grid locations which currently rely on diesel generators.
Unlike these proven fission technologies, I am less optimistic about fusion. Recent “breakthroughs” have misled the public as they ignore the vast amounts of energy required to power the plant. The technology needs to improve by orders of magnitude before more energy comes out than goes in. It’s also worth noting that people talk about fusion power as though it would be free from the radiation and waste problems of fission: this is emphatically not the case. Worthwhile fusion power has been supposedly imminent for more than half a century, and it’s liable to be a very long time before it arrives. We should not put off building fission capacity to wait for it.
Fission power makes Net Zero actually possible to achieve, and has the huge benefit of being an established technology that fits very well with the way our electricity grids were designed to work. There is no need for backup generation, extra power lines, or additional balancing costs, all of which are needed when intermittent renewable generation is installed.
In 1956, the first civil nuclear power station in the world was built at Calder Hall in Cumbria with the nearby homes in Workington being the first to receive electricity generated from nuclear power. It ran for 47 years generating enough power to run a three-bar heater for 2.85 million years. We need to rediscover that same ambition and power up our nuclear sector once again.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/01/nuclear-power-green-energy-tech-net-zero-miracle/
If we do rollout large amounts of nuclear, then clearly wind power is a dead end technology, and we should put a stop to all new projects, as they will be superfluous.
Although nuclear reactors can vary their output, as she points out, to merely act as a back up for intermittent renewables would totally destroy their economics.
It would be absurd to spend hundreds of billions on both wind and nuclear, when the latter could do the job on its own.
There is, by the way, an easy solution to the problem of environmental activist opposition to nuclear – simply tell them the choice is nuclear or gas!
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Quite a lot of reader comments on this article extolled the virtues of molten salt reactors?
Can any NALOPKT experts explain why. I admit almost total ignorance.
Molten salt uses fuel esp. thorium at low pressure thus avoiding pressure leaks. Aren’t useful for generating nuclear bomb materials.
Thorium is more widespread and easily extracted from, say, beach sands.
The original research reactor was shut down in 1969 despite working.
The shutdown procedure at week ends was to turn off the fan cooling the bottom outlet (which it kept solid) and once the reactor heat melted the blockage the fuel load dropped into a tank below. Next week the fuel was pumped back into the reactor.
“Molten salt uses fuel esp. thorium at low pressure”
Good grief! No molten salt reactor has EVER used thorium. Where do you get this from ?!?!
Gamecock – from here perhaps:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment
“The MSRE was a 7.4 MWth test reactor simulating the neutronic “kernel” of a type of inherently safer epithermal thorium breeder reactor called the liquid fluoride thorium reactor.”
The article goes on to say the U233 that was used in the MSRE came from other reactors – so you’d be right to say it never had any Th in it. But I don’t read Graeme as saying it did.
As far as I know the MSRE was the one and only molten salt reactor that has ever been built, and though it worked, it didn’t supply a microwatt to a power grid. Like Aaron, I keep reading comments that suggest molten salt reactors are the answer to everything, but they don’t exist yet! The Chinese are having a go – TMSR-LF1, so we may yet find out if they are better than current reactors or not.
The U-233 came from Savannah River Plant. It was bred from thorium, but solid targets, not liquid.
While U-233 was created, none of it participated in the reactor fission. Which makes sense, as each converted atom would be a long ways from another. The thorium targets had to go through Separations to get the U-233 from the thorium. About 600 kilos were so produced.
Moltex is a UK company based in Warrington, that had to move to Canada to find a customer for its first design a Stable Salt Reactor – Wasteburner…
Moltex Energy – Reduces waste:
https://www.moltexenergy.com/reduces-waste/
Moltex are also developing a uranium fuelled thermal spectrum reactor…
MoltexFLEX:
https://www.moltexflex.com/
For an informative presentation by co-founder Dr. Ian Scott…
‘MITAB20-Ian-Stable Salt Reactors – a new platform technology in nuclear fission’ [August 2020]:
So, how many units does Moltex running.
Double-ought zero.
Also, the Thorium reactors can use uranium & plutonium as part of their fuel input solving a major problem of what to do with spent fuel rods and weapons grade nuclear waste.
G#3 is correct about the reactor shutdown they are deemed “intrinsically safe” sometimes called “fail safe” in that the reactive elements are automatically separated on failure!
One of the problems they have is the salts are very corrosive and finding the right metallurgical solutions is very challenging.
‘Also, the Thorium reactors can use uranium & plutonium as part of their fuel input’
Hilarious! There is literally NO SUCH THING as a thorium reactor. The theory is to put thorium into uranium reactors to breed it into U-233.
For the last 50 years it has been a well-known fact that nuclear radiation can damage the human body, and that there is no threshold below which no damage occurs. That rule (the LNT (Linear No-Threshold) rule) has recently been shown to be untrue. In fact, low radiation intensity (background radiation) can actually have a positive effect on the human body by turning on the body’s DNA repair mechanism. Even the Health Physics Society (who create and enforce the rules for radiation exposure in USA) now agrees. See the final presentation in a series of long presentations on this matter where the new theory is explained by the President of HPS. See http://hps.org/hpspublications/historylnt/episodeguide.html .
Episode 22 give you all the information you need.
Actually, it has been known for donkey’s years that LNT is nonsense.
As a tiny example from many, several European spas (e.g. Badgastein and Hofgastein in Austria) have mildly radioactive spa water.
And libraries stuffed with scientific data (not models!), proving actual health benefits.
As usual, the anti-nuclear nutters (and of course, the net zero nutters) have captured the politicians, media and academia with a tsunami of barefaced lies.
Nuclear is running out of time for existing net zero targets. All sorts of ideas but not much in the way of production.
The reality is rather that net zero is running out of time. The ideas of getting there via wind and solar are running into realities of cost, access to resources, and the impossibility of handling intermittency. Some more data points:
Oersted, Denmark, Sunrise wind, contracted at $110.37/MWh, contractor needs $139.99/MWh, a 27% increase
Equinor, Norway, Empire 1 wind, contracted at $118.38/MWh, contractor needs $159.64/MWh, a 35% increase
Equinor, Norway, Empire 2 wind, contracted at $107.50/MWh, contractor needs $177.84/MWh, a 66% increase
Equinor, Norway, Beacon Wind, contracted at $118.00/MWh, contractor needs $190.82/MWh, a 62% increase
I archived the previous version of this article, including 25 comments here when I spotted it was suffering from link syndrome:
http://web.archive.org/web/20231102170901/https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/11/02/kathryn-porter-on-nuclear-power/
Anyone who want to be spared the effort of retyping can copy and paste.
KP’s main argument for nuclear is that it is low or zero low “carbon”. She comes back to this quite a lot. I don’t value low or zero carbon, so each reference to it is a non-sequitur.
Give me coal fired-power generation. It is preferable to nuclear on all measures. Coal-fired power generation doesn’t depend on nationalisation of the GB power industry – euphemistically referred to as “government co-investing” in the article. If KP is not an advocate for widespread state ownership in the energy sector, why isn’t she calling for coal-fired power instead of nuclear.
Is it because KP is so fearful of “Global Boiling” that her irrational fears overturn a logical preference for a commercially viable energy supply industry?
Governments ordering the closure of industries (and other economic activity) is nothing new. It’s certainly not a particular risk of nuclear power.
The UK government ordered the closure of the coal industry. It has set its sights on ordering the end of the internal combustion engine. Do we conclude the entire global coal industry and motor car industries (all worth many £billions) can only exist in the public sector?
She is closer to the truth when she alludes to the private sector not being the place to manage multi-century nuclear liabilities. Can you think of a private sector financial instrument capable of lasting many centuries, who’s use will be governed by regulatory constraints for centuries to come (holders being prevented from opportunistically squandering or raiding these funds), who’s value will be secured to protect against foreseeable and unforeseeable events for centuries. If anybody has any great ideas to address these requirements, then put it on the table for consideration. Private sector investors can’t think of anything, so the choice for nuclear liabilities is nationalisation or nowt!
Which means KP is fooling herself if she thinks the issue is regulation. She can set herself a challenge of torching every single regulation she thinks will reduce the costs of nuclear generation. It will be a waste of time – the cost of regulation is not the issue.
KP’s enthusiasm boils over into: “we can’t afford to wait” and “we should hurry up and build some more large reactors”. Let me just correct that. I don’t buy into her hurry scurry. I can afford to wait. I prefer private sector investment in fossil-fired generators for the foreseeable future.
My view is that coal is the superior fuel for power generation. In large stationary facilities, all of the relevant pollution issues are fully resolved. Gas and oil have other (better) uses and this shows up in the economics.
No, she does not think we need to decarbonise to save the planet, but she recognises that the opinion that we do need to decarbonise is deeply entrenched to the point where energy policy is enormously damaging. In seeking improvement to policy you will get nowhere if you simply try to refute that religious belief. As Charles Mackay pointed out “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
Kathryn’s considerable expertise and knowledge is in energy. Her degree was in physics, so she had a sound foundation for her career. She is not a climate scientist by profession, and seeks to ensure her real expertise can be brought to bear in influencing energy policy by not getting side tracked into debates on climate.
It is the job of the likes of Shellenberger, Lomborg, Koonin, Pielke, Wijngaarden and Happer, etc. to push forward the idea that there is no climate emergency. They are a different part of the team.
Anyone with a good understanding of energy recognises that we need to find ways to extend the use of fossil fuels by using them more efficiently and by supplementing them with other energy sources such as nuclear and hydro that can help support a modern economy. That is quite independent of any opinion about climate. It is a debate that needs to be had, and not skipped by pursuing anti CAGW puritanism. Moreover, it is a provable proposition, and its consequences rapidly evolve into a conclusion that adaptation will in the end be necessary since destroying the energy system at great cost is bound to fail. Better save the pennies for adaptation as we go along. Then if adaptation needs prove to be less than alarmists project there is a bonus, and they have space to come to their senses one by one.
If opinion is wrong, the answer is debate, and not to roll over to the fundamentalists as you are suggesting KP is doing in the above article.
KP is not the only person in the room with background in energy and physics. Her shortcomings are commercial when she fails to spot how civil nuclear activity is incompatible with private sector risk-taking. I’m happy to join that debate and help her to fill-in the gaps in her understanding.
It’s great that other members of the team are tackling the climate dogma. So why would KP think it’s a good idea to join the fray with misguided solutions to a non-problem. It makes no sense whatsoever.
We may well need to alternatives to fossil fuels, but it is a question of timing. Why do anything today when there is no need – better to allow innovation to find better/more cost effective ways to recover fossil fuels and we can look forward to a further period of peak fossil fuel sitting on a receding horizon, the same way as fission.
If there is a debate to be had about when to diversify away from fossil fuels, let’s have a debate about how and when to diversify away from fossil fuels.
KP builds her case from the wrong issue. It does no good to treat people like children by advising them run away from an imaginary bogey man. All this does is to squander her credibility – which all her opinion piece does as far as I’m concerned.
Your final conclusion (that adaptation will prove better than the alarmist project) is correct. We can see this today in the collapsing drive to wind power, the same EVs, and for electrification of home heating . All totally unnecessary and public opinion gets there in time to save the day (being asked to pay the cost kinda helps it get there).
Maybe you should have that conversation with KP. You will do her a big favour.
Correction: “the same way as fusion”. (Don’t want to set hares running on that little slip.)
You would never make a statesman. When you meet a roadblock you have to find a way around it, not assume that you will be able to demolish it unless you can be certain of success. Frankly, I doubt that all the believers in CAGW in government are magically going to recant as the result of lectures from Jordan – but try it if you like.
With respect, I rather suspect that she has considerably more commercial experience than you (although you plainly have good engineering expertise), including working in energy finance in banks and energy companies on the back of an MBA. She has excellent knowledge about and contacts in the nuclear industry, as her detailed articles on it demonstrate. She is under no illusions about the impossibility of private finance for nuclear: indeed, she devotes a chunk of her article explaining why that is the case, pointing out that governments are the main problem in several different dimensions, and she has called publicly for government to provide the finance for new nuclear rather than private industry or attempts to bribe foreign governments with sweetheart terms as with Hinkley Point. She has spoken in favour of retaining coal generation. She understands precisely that we no longer have a competitive market, despite what government thinks: see e.g. her article critiquing the government attitude to CFDs. She also understands that the government plans for a renewables dominated grid are infeasible and bound to fail. See her speech to the Energy Industries Club for instance:
Very importantly, she has a growing media presence with her regular articles for the Telegraph and radio and TV appearances including managing Newsnight and Farage on the same day. She gives talks to APPGs and major energy seminars where she points out the flaws in policy. She is being listened to in quarters that matter including those concerned with making policy, even if they are taking time to understand the message. It would be a complete waste to undermine her entire position by getting her branded as a climate denier who should therefore be excluded from all discourse.
KP must be very pleased to have you to write her CV in public, and to compare her favourably with people you don’t know. You leave a position where only I can measure KP versus Jordan. Well done you!
True, I’m no statesman. I’m no Guterres. Or Kerry. Or Thunberg. Its a badge I’ll just have to wear with honour.
Politicians do what’s politically expedient. Businesses do what’s commercially expedient. They bend with the wind when it is in their interests.
I doubt there are very many true believers in CAGW in government or business. There will no doubt be some, but I am pretty confident there will be magical recanting when political or commercial expedience determines.
So you can please yourself if you do or don’t want take lectures from Jordan. Public debate should accommodate all views. Too much bending in the wind can lead to groupthink.
The outlook doesn’t look too bright for the doom and gloom merchants who seem to be doing a very good job of destroying their own arguments. I see growing public appetite for different views and weariness with the cultism and doomsaying.
You and KP seem to be happy to bend with the wind. As you say, KP’s role probably involves a certain amount of “fitting in”, so it is understandable. This places her in no different position to others who act for their own expedience. We cannot readily tell what her views are on things like nuclear. Maybe KP writes a gushing article about nuclear today, and if things change, she’d write a different article. That’s what it takes to “fit in”.
Businesses need to protect themselves against the groupthink that can follow when there is too much of that “bending with the wind”. Business needs to risk assess to measure up its true options. I do have an outlet to express contrarian views, even if you find them uncomfortable and prefer “fitting in”.
All in favour of coal power generation, after 40 years as a Chartered Engineer working in the public / private coal industry.
But be aware that even if, at last, the Government had a much needed epiphany and realised the utter nonsense of the last quarter of a century’s “energy policies”, only Ratcliffe and a chunk of Drax are capable of burning coal, using obsolete and poorly maintained equipment, due to finally close next September.
And the coal would have to be imported.
The amount of coal presently produced in the UK is like a rounding error and note the problems developing a project for a coking coal mine near Whitehaven.
If the relevant Planning and Environmental Legislation was scrapped and the “Protestors” properly controlled, it would still take roughly three years to produce significant amounts of surface mined coal.
For deep mined coal, think 10 years, even allowing for the fact that I still remember the few old mines that could be re-opened and the most promising prospects for new coal mines.
Where are the necessary experienced shaft sinkers and drift builders coming from, or the engineers, surveyors, managers, or the actual miners?
Who would be keen to disrupt their lives coming here, after the treatment dished outc in the past?
I’m all in favour, but don’t underestimate the problems!
If Paul wants a more detailed discussion, he only has to ask before I peg it.
A better plan, get fracking NOW. Companies still keen to invest their own money and pay huge taxes! Might have to encourage Potato Ed Davey and his chums to enjoy a very long period of quiet contemplation.
Interesting to note though, that coal fired generation has been in the mix over the last few weeks
Yes Energywise. They keep on having to fire up Ratcliffe when the grid is on the brink of collapse. Immingham is still operating, I think, probably mainly for coking coal and other industrial coal. So they will also maintain limited steam coal stocks for Ratcliffe etc., adding reclaimed low grade coal slurry deposits.
I have a tonne and a half in a bunker and in sacks immediately outside from where I sit. Expensive and rather high ash, but meets “,smokeless” specs. Mainly well seasoned, cut and split timber now.
After 40 years of working for dependable and cheap energy, I refuse absolutely to shiver in the dark.
Martin Brumby
I agree the remaining coal fired units at Drax and Ratcliffe need to be replaced. A new fleet of coal-fired units would use the latest technology, so cost improvements would make that case.
I’m definitely not suggesting UK mined coal. My position is only based on supply being available and competitively priced in the global coal market.
Where UK sources of coal can compete on the global coal market, there should be a case to take supply from them (why wouldn’t we). If UK sources of coal cannot compete (whether on price or permitting or public acceptance), coal should be sourced from imports. This is what the global coal market provides.
And its what our international competitors do. There is nothing to fear from coal imports as a mechanism to align UK energy economics with our international competitors.
The various challenges you mention for UK sourced coal are irrelevant. It’s not a question of underestimating them, it is a question of why estimate them at all.
The difficulty with imports is that supply sources are not well diversified. When we last ran serious volumes of coal prior to 2015 our major sources were Russia, USA and Colombia. There is little other choice today, with China stitching up the major Eastern exporters (Indonesia and Australia) as well as South Africa. Neither Russia nor the USA can be classed as reliable, with the USA threatening to ban exports altogether.
Major coal consumers like Poland and Germany burn what they mine.
I’m surprised by that response IDAU. Since when did you give up the idea of market price winning supply?
We could have a very similar conversation about sources of natural gas and oil. And uranium for that matter.
You forgot South Africa as a significant coal exporter.
I mentioned South Africa: these days its coal mostly goes East. See the charts I posted below.
We have reasonably secure gas via pipeline from Norway and the UKCS. We are perhaps overly dependent on the US for LNG, although much of that was for re-export to the Continent. LNG accounts for about an eighth of global gas supply. Oil is heavily internationally traded (73% of production in 2022 either as crude or products), mostly by ship, which makes it much easier to secure alternative supply. Only around 20% of global coal supply is traded, and that is heavily dominated by the East.
We do of course have what was previously assessed as 300 years of coal supply from days when we used it much more like the 1970s. But we need the will and the nous to exploit it cost effectively. It doesn’t compete currently with open cast from elsewhere.
Sorry IDAU, you did mention South Africa.
Today’s coal economics are dominated by open casting as deeper resources can be accessed by open casting technology advancements. There will be a limit to this, although fair to say open casting will lead coal extraction and economics for the foreseeable.
Coal, gas, oil and uranium will vie for market share of global energy supply, with share being resolved at the margin (the economic “Law of One Price”).
There may be a case for nuclear power on these types of portfolio and risk management arguments. However nuclear still faces the question of not being investable to the private sector, and its contribution can only come through the public sector. That’s the main objection I want to raise to those who imagine it is commercial and argue it is competitive according to their calculations of what a non-existent private investor might do.
The UK has set itself on some path to a nuclear future, and is well down the road to a scheme of administered power pricing. The old CEGB Bulk Supply Tariff is coming back. REMA is very likely to be part of that progression, as was NETA.
Does anybody here have objections to the CfD and pricing? Better prepare yourself for for what’s coming. And all for that nuclear fleet which cannot exist otherwise.
It is ironic to see pro-market views here who believe nuclear power can exist in a market.
Regarding GB’s inaccessible and uneconomic coal resources, this is really more a question of today’s technology and economics. We have decades and centuries to get around this – why assume they are beyond the possibility of technologies we don’t presently have. That kind of thinking happily seeks to rule out fracking, and would have sought to rule out exploitation of UKCS hydrocarbons.
True, coal is not the same homogenous fuel as others, and this may segment supply or demand. There can be reasons why only a fraction of global supply is traded. 20% of global production being traded today doesn’t mean the future global coal market could not possibly accommodate demand from the UK (the leap you seem to be trying to make). The UK was significantly in that game until just a couple of years ago when the Government made the huge mistake of our mandatory withdrawal.
Energy prices were lower when we held the option to readily switch between gas and coal.
” Give me coal fired-power generation. ”
Something in which the UK used to be a world leader.
Modern coal-fired offers load-following, lower-than-nuclear construction cost, quicker-than-nuclear construction programme, grid stability, the potential to stockpile months of fuel at the power station and CHP.
I grew up in the era of Apollo and Concorde, so – for me – the long term solution to the generation of electricity is fusion.
From California – earthquake country – and anti nuclear government,
Kathryn Porter is exactly correct on the future of wind/solar and nuclear.
Comments from a very senior (96 year old Chemical/Mechanical) Engineer.
1 Fusion; I have not seen articles on how the millions of degree energy will be transferred to electricity. 2 Fission Safety: None were caused by runaway nuclear chemistry. Three Mile Island – a stuck control valve. Chernoble – a test run without any knowledge of parallel cooling water flow around a 20% of the fuel rods cluster operating at 100% power. Thermal expansion of those rods at high temperature, followed by water hammer = a catastrophe Fukushima – a government study setting the plant location above “any tsunami” without a hardened building for the standby generators.
I feel we are missing an opportunity to install the reactors underground in caverns we know how to dig quickly and cheaply for added safety.
Beyond all that, is the ice age anticipated by the sunspot data. I am working on a book to present that data.
Art Krugler
>
“Fission power makes Net Zero actually possible to achieve….”
Er, no….It may solve our electrical energy problems if low CO2 emissions really is necessary (and I don’t think it is) but it doesn’t solve the other Net Zero problems caused by the impossible task of the electriication of everything which requires an impossibly large amount of minerals, metals and construction together with the replacement of useful hydrocarbon products with sub-optimal and expensive electric replacements. Furthermore, putting all our energy eggs into one basket, electricity, will be a huge security risk unless large amounts of electrical energy can be stored easily, cheaply and safely for long periods of time, even if nuclear gives us energy security from China.
Coal, Gas & Oil fired power station WORK NOW
The climate alarmists don’t want a solution to their imaginary problem. They want said problem to continue so that they can tell you what to do. The fact that CO2 has no significant effect on the climate is now pretty much proven. If this weren’t so there would be no need for the constant lies about perfectly normal weather events being a new and increasing problem.
Correct. It’s not about weather; it’s about control.
The good thing is they still think they need our approval. Trying to trick us into believing says they need us to believe.
Jordan
You are less pessimistic than me.
I can think of no country in the world that I would be fully confident would supply coal ( or any other energy) if the international energy shortages are as bad as I anticipate. A decent proportion of indigenous energy is essential. I am old enough to remember the Arabs quadrupling the price of oil after the last time they had serious drubbing after invading Israel.
Difficult times.
There is absolutely no reason to delay fracking.
Hi Martin, I often joke about this issue on here but I personally do have a dual fuel generator (manual transfer switch) and two 47kg propane cylinders (diesel and petrol go “off” so fast now they are unreliable). I have hybridised my combi boiler system to include a hot water storage tank on the heating side controlled by a motorised valve. This allows the back boiler from my living room multifuel burner to be connected to the system to take over the whole house heating if necessary. I have a tonne of British mined coal from Gloucestershire by the garage and a vast supply of seasoned logs from felling trees at the foot of the garden. So if the electricity fails and the gas supply as well (God forbid but who knows what might happen these days) then I am covered for several months.
I am not what Americans term a “prepper” but I have even checked the old CB radios are in good working order. Memories of 1962/3 cannot be forgotten.
To think it should come to this 60 years later is absurd.
Take your pick of coal exporters:
Who buys it:
Oops. IMporters here:
Nuclear power – its the future
Funny. I heard that in 1958.
Agreed, energywise, especially if we can get our Beloved Leaders to back nuclear intelligently.
Cameron gave Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to obnoxious Limp Dim Jailbird Chris Huhne who stuffed Sheffield Forgemasters, then when Huhne was deservedly doing porridge, to Potato Ed Davey. Another Limp Dim Supertwat who picked the PWR option for Hinkley as being the least likely option to work, the most expensive and the most Chinese (and French) option. If he had picked the Korean option we’d have had three new reactors working already.
Of course he later bragged that he’d “banned fracking” by imposing a limit on seismic intensity 3,160 times lower in energy terms than in any other ground shaking activity from quarrying, pile driving, or even geothermal fracking. At the time and doubtless now, he was trousering £18,000 a year for “advice” to a solar “energy” outfit.
Why the malevolent barsteward isn’t breaking rocks on Dartmoor, I cannot imagine.
And yet, it’s ok to drill geothermal boreholes – the duplicity is astounding
No one in the UK lives “next door” to a nuclear power station. I doubt anyone anywhere does, except maybe China.
It is not only the control rods issue which is over regulated. The exposure limits for people are excessively low based on limited understanding in decades past but bureaucrats are incapable of making life easier. their goal is to make life more profitable for them and more difficult for us.
“I doubt anyone anywhere does, except maybe China.”
Gamecock lives <7 miles from a nuker. Downwind.
There are residences a half-mile from the containment.
South Carolina, USA.
Thank you. I liove and learn!
Epping Blogger, I think you need to study the locations of nuclear power plants in the UK. I have personally walked from Seaton Carew station to the Hartlepool site as it was quicker than waiting for a taxi. The Heysham site is bounded by a holiday camp, ferry port and a golf course.
And as for living “next door” to one, Derek Jarman (artist/film maker) literally lived next door to 4 reactors at Dungeness. You can visit his former home alongside all the other houses, railway station, cafe, 2 pubs and various craft outlets.
https://www.creativefolkestone.org.uk/prospect-cottage/
The first picture above shows the B station top left.
Thank you. I did not know this.
I have always thought one advantage of the small modular reactors would be the ability to locate them nearer to customers so transmission losses could be reduced. I had been concerned that excessively restrictive safety regulations might prevent that but you and Permalink shows that is not likely to be so.
Hi again EP, far and away the biggest advantage of SMRs is production line manufacture. By making the parts is units small enough to be transported for one site assembly massively reduces the overall cost and speeds up the process.
Imagine trying to build a car in the middle of a green field and bringing every individual part and tooling to the site to construct just one unit – it would cost millions. That is largely how large nuclear plants are built at present and why they cost so much. Henry Ford saw the solutions a long time ago and the nuclear industry is rather slow to catch up on this.
Heard on a discussion in Berkeley, CA some 20 years ago:
The spent nuclear fuel storage problem is a political one, not a technical one.