The Return Of Nuclear Power !?!

[fizzy]

There are jobs being created in the SMR field all the time now. Rolls Royce went on a huge recruitment drive about 6 months ago, and it's still ongoing IIRC.
Nothing happens in the nuclear world quickly. We're still nearly a decade away from firing up a SMR in anger.

Yes SMRs are far from hype. Proven technology used in submarines.
The biggest stumbling blocks are governments not making up their minds.

 

[Erie Fred]

I like the pebble bed reactor, but that's just me.

 

[Ross365]

I worked in the Nuclear industry for some years back in the 1980's, mainly in regard to the last of the AGR's, built at Heysham and Torness and now (unbelievably) near end of life , and then with the Sizewell B PWR.

Even back in the 80's, RR were talking about "SMR's". The idea then was to assemble them on barges and "park" them in river estuaries. That scheme was liked because it would enable overseas sales, which had never been possible with the AGR's. It was long before 9/11 and selling reactors to Third World countries seemed plausible.

My perception (over some decades) is that RR are frequently advertising jobs, but I'm not sure how many people they take on. Isn't it the case that the next generation of UK submarine reactors will walk way from the RR heritage (which started in the 60's with an American design) and be a close copy of the current US design?

About a year ago, the Johnson Government was "on the point" of announcing the location of the first SMR (north Wales was tipped) but I don't think that ever happened. Suddenly, the interest seemed to be re-directed towards a full-size PWR at Sizewell.

What's real and what's hype in the Nuclear industry is hard to know. Perhaps it has something to do with the close links between energy generation and weapons production?

 

[Erie Fred]

What's real and what's hype in the Nuclear industry is hard to know. Perhaps it has something to do with the close links between energy generation and weapons production?

Yup ^^^
And "Billary" didn't do anything to help the situation either.

 

[Ross365]

Yup ^^^
And "Billary" didn't do anything to help the situation either.

I think your reference to the Clintons and Nuclear is a bit obscure for us Brits. When I left Nuclear, I went in to aerospace/defence and went to the States quite often on business. I went to see a company in Virginia in 1998 and their senior guys took us for dinner. Jeeze, those guys so hated Bill Clinton. What really surprised me was that they would say what they were saying about a serving President in front of foreigners . That said, I guess I would now be tempted to do the same regarding any of our recent Prime Ministers.

 

[Ross365]

I was listening to an American radio station today and there was a brief mention of the current goings on at Hinkley C. The story was that it was going to come in way over budget (as they always do) and the Chinese have refused to put in any more funding. That would mean the cost would have to be borne by our French chums at EDF and they are a "company" that already has serious financial problems. The same programme strongly suggested that SMR's just don't make sense from any point of view and will probably never happen... not, at least, on any truly objective appraisal or their merits and de-merits.

 

[Keith 66]

The obvious place to put a Nuclear power station is in London, they could run a district heating system from the waste heat and much of the demand is there due to the big servers needing to be close to the City, so few transmission losses. They never do build one anywhere close to London though, I wonder why?

Bradwell isnt far from London & i believe they intend to build a new nuclear station there, old one has been shut down for years.

 

[Ross365]

There is a very strong lobby group trying to get the Severn area (i.e. Bradwell) back in to nuclear. When I worked in nuclear in the 1980's, there was a Magnox station at Berkley just down the road from Bradwell, and also, the Berkley Nuclear Research Laboratory, which was a world leader in the work they did, but I think it got closed down when the industry was privatised.

I think that over the past year or two, I have cooled off of nuclear a lot. Britain had a nuclear industry that achieved some success, but successive governments over some decades let it rot. With the advances in wind and solar, and the terrible problems unique to nuclear, I don't think the latter is now attractive.

 

[daleyd]

I was listening to an American radio station today and there was a brief mention of the current goings on at Hinkley C. The story was that it was going to come in way over budget (as they always do) and the Chinese have refused to put in any more funding. That would mean the cost would have to be borne by our French chums at EDF and they are a "company" that already has serious financial problems. The same programme strongly suggested that SMR's just don't make sense from any point of view and will probably never happen... not, at least, on any truly objective appraisal or their merits and de-merits.

There is a very strong lobby group trying to get the Severn area (i.e. Bradwell) back in to nuclear. When I worked in nuclear in the 1980's, there was a Magnox station at Berkley just down the road from Bradwell, and also, the Berkley Nuclear Research Laboratory, which was a world leader in the work they did, but I think it got closed down when the industry was privatised.

I think that over the past year or two, I have cooled off of nuclear a lot. Britain had a nuclear industry that achieved some success, but successive governments over some decades let it rot. With the advances in wind and solar, and the terrible problems unique to nuclear, I don't think the latter is now attractive.

I think it’s got it’s place and will be a necessary asset in the coming decades, but it’s certainly not going to provide all our needs nor is it going to provide cheap energy which some people seem to think.

The drawbacks and legacy are immense though as you say.

 

[julianf]

There is a very strong lobby group trying to get the Severn area (i.e. Bradwell) back in to nuclear. When I worked in nuclear in the 1980's, there was a Magnox station at Berkley just down the road from Bradwell, and also, the Berkley Nuclear Research Laboratory, which was a world leader in the work they did, but I think it got closed down when the industry was privatised.

I think that over the past year or two, I have cooled off of nuclear a lot. Britain had a nuclear industry that achieved some success, but successive governments over some decades let it rot. With the advances in wind and solar, and the terrible problems unique to nuclear, I don't think the latter is now attractive.

You mention wind and solar -

I heard an interesting point a while back that made me think...

The gist was that the evolution of, pretty much anything, required iterations.

With nuclear, those iterations are hugely slow and massively expensive. With solar and wind the iterations and hence the evolutionary gains are, and will continue to be, so much more rapid. Battery storage is coming on in leaps and bounds at present. Portable electronics and EVs with their competition and market forces will continue to push that area forwards at speeds that the nuclear industry could only dream of.

The long and the short of the point that was made to me -

Sure, we still need nuclear in the short to medium term, but, really, simply due to its inability to iterate and evolve at anywhere near the rate of alternatives, it's already "walking dead"

 

[Ross365]

Sure, we still need nuclear in the short to medium term, but, really, simply due to its inability to iterate and evolve at anywhere near the rate of alternatives, it's already "walking dead"

Yes, I think that's true. The other issue that has come along is the security issue in the World after 9/11. We can only guess at the sort of security that is now in place around both the working and shutdown reactors. Even if the Small Modular Reactors were ready and sorted, I suspect the security problems in having a fleet of them would be daunting.

 

[daleyd]

Yes, I think that's true. The other issue that has come along is the security issue in the World after 9/11. We can only guess at the sort of security that is now in place around both the working and shutdown reactors. Even if the Small Modular Reactors were ready and sorted, I suspect the security problems in having a fleet of them would be daunting.

That was one of the arguments against them iirc- nuclear benefits from economies of scale, you will need almost the same number of skilled people to run/maintain an SMR as a full scale plant, same with security etc. But you need many more of them to provide the same power….

Some of the security issues will be offset by siting them on existing nuclear sites but not all will be.

 

[julianf]

I do wonder a little bit with nuclear as to if there isn't some interest in maintaining as centralized supply as possible.

It's not financially viable for someone to lobby government on behalf of the hugely decentralized small scale renewables. I mean even the old ROCS scheme effectively got stopped for anyone who isn't big... So there will never be the pressure on government to promote decentralized power gen, simply as there isn't someone with a massive bank account influencing their choices.

I'm not even talking about brown envelopes, but just the influence of government by huge sums of money running down "legitimate" pathways. Decentralized power gen will never have that financial influence and, as such, will never have the same government assistance.

 

[minimutly]

Phew, some strong comments there - if only wind and solar would be sufficient - it never will. Nor will we have enough battery storage to, er, store. Turn the gas off and we will be in the dark. So the only answer is nuclear, small scale or Hinckley size.
Pumped storage has a huge roll to fill, but the idiot g’ments Have not grasped this yet....

 

[8ob]

Phew, some strong comments there - if only wind and solar would be sufficient - it never will. Nor will we have enough battery storage to, er, store. Turn the gas off and we will be in the dark. So the only answer is nuclear, small scale or Hinckley size.
Pumped storage has a huge roll to fill, but the idiot g’ments Have not grasped this yet....

I really struggle with turning off these wind turbines when its too windy, how the hell has something so seemingly simple ended up so ridiculously complex,expensive and unfit for purpose? Little short of a disaster when you think of the potential of that non stop hooley blowing across the Atlantic.

Bob

 

[Morrisman]

Phew, some strong comments there - if only wind and solar would be sufficient - it never will. Nor will we have enough battery storage to, er, store. Turn the gas off and we will be in the dark. So the only answer is nuclear, small scale or Hinckley size.
Pumped storage has a huge roll to fill, but the idiot g’ments Have not grasped this yet....

Surely there must be some remote valley up in the wilds of Scotland that could be blocked off and used as a massive pumped water storage, storing the power from windmills. The Chinese did something similar with the Three Gorges dam. Not everybody was happy about it though.

Three Gorges Dam | Facts, Construction, Benefits, & Problems | Britannica

Three Gorges Dam, dam on the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) just west of the city of Yichang in China. The largest dam in the world, it allows the navigation of oceangoing freighters, generates hydroelectric power, and may offer flood protection. Learn more about the Three Gorges Dam.

www.britannica.com

 

[Maker]

I really struggle with turning off these wind turbines when its too windy, how the hell has something so seemingly simple ended up so ridiculously complex,expensive and unfit for purpose? Little short of a disaster when you think of the potential of that non stop hooley blowing across the Atlantic.

They're designed for some maximum wind speed/RPM, there's no point spending twice as much making a turbine twice as strong so it can generate the few days a year the wind blows too hard.

 

[fizzy]

You mention wind and solar -

I heard an interesting point a while back that made me think...

The gist was that the evolution of, pretty much anything, required iterations.

With nuclear, those iterations are hugely slow and massively expensive. With solar and wind the iterations and hence the evolutionary gains are, and will continue to be, so much more rapid. Battery storage is coming on in leaps and bounds at present. Portable electronics and EVs with their competition and market forces will continue to push that area forwards at speeds that the nuclear industry could only dream of.

The long and the short of the point that was made to me -

Sure, we still need nuclear in the short to medium term, but, really, simply due to its inability to iterate and evolve at anywhere near the rate of alternatives, it's already "walking dead"

Battery storage is not coming on in leaps and bounds. It is good for smoothing only!
To get Britain through a 2 week wind lull like we had recently would need 300 years of whole world Battery production. The costs are horrendous as are the problems with mining and disposal. Lead acid still makes just as much sense for storage. Cheaper and very easy to recycle.
To put it into perspective the World's biggest battery bank would power a container ship or cruise liner for just 1hr. 7 IBCs or pallets of fuel would have the same output.

 

[Ross365]

The Politics behind power generation are scary. When Hinkley B closed down last year, there were articles in the press about whether or not that station could have been kept going, at least for a few years. In the National interest, that might have been a very good thing to do, but I suspect that the interests that resulted in it being closed down were political and commercial. Of course, Heysham I is getting close to shut down and Heysham II is not that far behind. I think I'm right that quite soon, we'll be down to just the Sizewell B PWR; nuclear's contribution to the grid will have fallen from a peak of about 33% to ~3%. I wonder if delays at Hinkley C mean we go in to a period when nuclear could go to zero? In the meantime, I read that there is something of an unexpected problem with used fuel rods coming out of the old AGR's with cracking around the welded tube ends. These things all have to go into cooling ponds and corrosion of the rods in the ponds and release of radiation may be worse than had been expected (info can be found by Googling for corrosion of 20/25/Nb steel).

Meanwhile, in France, I read that a very sizeable number of its nuclear fleet has been offline this winter due to all kinds of technical problems. The British reactors went through all kinds of development problems, but generally, the AGR's and the single PWR went on to operate really very well.

 

[fizzy]

The Politics behind power generation are scary. When Hinkley B closed down last year, there were articles in the press about whether or not that station could have been kept going, at least for a few years. In the National interest, that might have been a very good thing to do, but I suspect that the interests that resulted in it being closed down were political and commercial. Of course, Heysham I is getting close to shut down and Heysham II is not that far behind. I think I'm right that quite soon, we'll be down to just the Sizewell B PWR; nuclear's contribution to the grid will have fallen from a peak of about 33% to ~3%. I wonder if delays at Hinkley C mean we go in to a period when nuclear could go to zero? In the meantime, I read that there is something of an unexpected problem with used fuel rods coming out of the old AGR's with cracking around the welded tube ends. These things all have to go into cooling ponds and corrosion of the rods in the ponds and release of radiation may be worse than had been expected (info can be found by Googling for corrosion of 20/25/Nb steel).

Meanwhile, in France, I read that a very sizeable number of its nuclear fleet has been offline this winter due to all kinds of technical problems. The British reactors went through all kinds of development problems, but generally, the AGR's and the single PWR went on to operate really very well.

The problems in France weren't helped by their last government giving up on nuclear. Lack of investment and people started to leave the industry. Then they changed their minds again. For decades France had the cheapest safest power generation with far less CO2 output than countries with loads of renewables like Britain and Germany.