The history of nuclear power in the U.K. is a pitiful record of neglect, says Andrew Orlowski in the Telegraph. Here’s an excerpt:
Last week we experienced our first ‘dunkelflaute’ of the winter. That’s the term used in the renewable energy industry to refer to a period of high pressure and calm that we experience in winter, when the leaves crunch beneath our feet, but the blades of the wind turbines don’t turn.
As the Telegraph reported, this event pushed our energy system close to breaking point. But if successive governments had done their job, we would have more than enough power to spare.
Firstly, we have abundant natural gas resources in Europe that lie completely untapped beneath our feet. Yet we pay the highest price for gas in Europe, and did so even before Putin’s tanks rolled into Ukraine, thanks to the design of the energy market.
The U.K. also pioneered the peaceful use of nuclear energy, proving it to be the cheapest, safest and least environmentally damaging energy source of all. Harwell’s trailblazing GLEEP reactor was the first anywhere in the world, creating electricity in 1947, and was still chugging away in 1990. …
We already have an energy gap because we don’t generate enough as it is to meet demand, we have to buy it, expensively, and so we are importing around 5GW via connectors from other countries.
This autumn we’ve typically imported between 3GW and 5GW of what we need. Yet the nuclear baseload generation didn’t blink, delivering a consistent 5GW. …
All is not lost, however. We can summon up a promising small modular reactor (SMR) from Rolls-Royce based on scaled-up submarine engine designs, one of many SMR designs on drawing boards. …
Yet the delays drag on. There’s little sign of urgency in Whitehall as the Department for Energy and Net Zero continues to mull over which SMR design to back. A decision will appear in the spring, the department tells me. But not one reactor will be online before 2030.
Worth reading in full.
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The government has indeed done its job – stopped mining coal, closed coal fired power stations, stopped buying cheap gas from Russia, subsidised unreliable power like wind and solar.
Imports from Russia were only 4% in 2021, so not much of a loss.
Enough to make the difference… lights on, or lights off on a cold day. But in any case, a supply source if needed.
The responsible thing to do would be to simply build some gas generators quickly…..
It would only take 12 months.
This is not complicated.
Lose the overthinking……..
Rolls Royce also make small scale nuclear generators, except the Mandarins have insisted RR must tender against foreign ‘competition’. Not sure who the Civil Service work for but it’s not the UK.
“Consistency never has been a mark of stupidity if the diplomats who have mishandled our relations were merely stupid they would occasionally make a mistake in our favor. The fact that not one single mistake has fallen in our favor I would suggest that’s not incompetence that’s people working to a script “
James Forrestal
The civil service work for themselves; a job creation industry full of ever expanding ‘teams’ that rush around from meetings about meetings to other meetings about meetings; a self licking lollipop.
It isn’t clear to me why the government doesn’t seek to pass legislation that allows them to hire and fire civil servants at will, at least for the top few levels of seniority. Should be sufficiently uncontentious to easily pass in the Commons.
That should be in Starmer’s interest as well, although he might take the long term view that the civil service is on his side anyway; or at least on the side of his cause.
Interesting to see that Harwell actually developed a novel thermal reactor. A bit of a baby, though, with a peak output of around 3kW. Calder Hall was reportedly the first commercial scale one to come into service.
Incidentally, if you look up a list of UK based power stations with nuclear reactors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_reactors you’ll see that there are quite a few due for shut down over the next few years – well before planned commissioning dates for replacements, like Hinkley Point C.
I’m aware of the RR proposals for using SMR units on land; it might be nearly as good as there marketing website. Spot the controversy about the location of them. And when it comes to domestic gas reserves, this might be interesting: https://www.bgs.ac.uk/geology-projects/shale-gas/shale-gas-in-the-uk/ especially if you map it against the Parliamentary Constituencies!
If there was still justice in the UK the ppl who inflicted net zero would be hung for treason. I fear prolonged mid winter power cuts are the only way to focus minds.
Hanged. Pictures are hung, traitors are hanged.
The issue is so urgent that at least two candidate designs should be financed in parallel. If either shows signs of failing it must be recognised promptly snd another then viable option pushed forward.
we cannot afford to let Whitehall chose a dud because their friendly preferred business or adviser says so.
even better, provide (say) one third of the initial capital and allow tax efficient subscription for another third. Give orders now with a big bonus for contingent on earliest delivery of a gigawatt of output.
It is not about net zero. It is about Marxism.
Nuclear is dramatically more expensive than natural gas (and to a lesser extent coal).
It also takes vastly longer to build the relevant power stations, is much less practical in the sense of an inability to ramp up and down in response to ever-changing demand etc.
It only really came into existence to provide a pseudo-ethical cover for humanity’s greatest shame, mass incinerating nuclear weapons. Also more recently Net Zero delusions about a need to avoid C02 emissions (in reality to some extent the more the better, it is after all one of the main fuels for plant growth).
We need to completely abandon all these contemporary ideology and politics driven attempts to overthrow the simple practical wisdom of the Industrial Revolution – that fossil fuels represent a near perfectly packaged source of cheap energy, hence route towards material security and comfort for all.
“It takes longer to build the relevant power stations”——-Yes but that is a bit like saying it takes longer to built a ship than a bicycle. OfCourse it does. But if you are always going to wait till 20 years after you need the ship to start building it, your will have made a pigs ear of it won’t you? You will have run out of ships. And that is what government have done with energy policy. Made a total pigs ear of it, but for political purposes. ——–I know that Nuclear does not work well with back up for turbines like gas does, but if you have enough Nuclear and gas you won’t need the dumb turbines anyway will you?
The most important commodity is energy, and unfortunately government dictate energy policy. This was ok in the past, and even when the market was privatised in the 80’s and everything ticked along great till 2008. ——Why 2008? That was when Labour (Miliband) gave us the Climate Change Act. This set us on the path to getting rid of affordable energy and replacing it with unaffordable energy. (To save the planet). That situation got even worse in 2019 with Teresa May’s Net Zero amendment increasing the amount of emissions we were allowed to emit up from 80% of 1990 levels to 100%. A quick look at energy bills over this time reveals the steady year on year rise in people’s bills as FREE WIND is not cheap, and the more wind energy we got the higher the bills went. Till today when we now have the highest electricity prices in Europe along with Germany and Denmark. The 3 countries with the most turbines. What a coincidence. Somehow Nuclear energy was not preferred despite it having zero emissions , and despite the fact that France was getting 80% of it’s electricity from Nuclear plants and unsurprisingly their bills were half of ours. I keep hearing about “Greedy Energy Companies” but you don’t get much more greedy for taxpayers money than silly planet saving governments who when we fill up out petrol tanks take 50% tax on that. Even the mafia would blush at extortion of that level.
The error continuously made despite all the evidence, is the to believe that the aim of Net Zero is transition from fossil fuels to energy provided from other sources such as wind and solar.
The aim is transition to one energy source alone, electricity, which is instantly controllable up to the point of use, to reduce the amount available in order to reduce industrial activity and consumption and thereby reduce the Human ‘environmental footprint’ to save Mother Earth.
There are ZERO plans to increase electricity output, just replace existing fuel sources, ZERO plans to upgrade the grid – long distance and local networks – to carry and distribute the 2x to 3x extra load.
Stop yapping on about nuclear being ‘the’ solution – it isn’t. Non-problems don’t require solutions. Talking up nuclear as ‘the’ solution accepts the premise there is a problem to be solved.
Insofar as a problem of electricity supply caused by Govt policy is concerned, the easiest most ready solution, is coal. Quick, easy, inexpensive to build and operate, provides constant, dependable output, coal is the lowest cost, least market price volatile and most abundant.
Net Zero and the CoVid scamdemic are not cockup, it IS deliberate and calculated.
Yep Fossil fuels are the choice if you want affordable reliable energy. But Nuclear is also an option that you underestimate. Unlike wind and sun it does exactly what it says on the tin.