The FT has reported this morning that:
Hitachi is on the verge of abandoning its plan to build a nuclear power station at Wylfa in Wales in a move that would leave the UK's energy strategy in jeopardy.
Which I would describe as good news.
I have opposed nuclear power since I was 13, when I realised my father had no answer as to how the waste from it would be managed. This was relevant: he was designing power lines out of nuclear power stations at the time. It did not take for family cohesion. We never agreed on the issue.
My answer is, of course, simple. We need a Green New Deal.
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Hear, hear really. As I white heat of the technological boy scientist I swallowed a lot of the nuclear argument. There are issues of keeping the grid up if sun and wind aren’t playing ball and physical space for renewables. Seen anything on coping with this, or not needing to? Fusion might be allowable, though this has been ’round the corner’ since before you were born and has been generally under-costed. Gas is the current backup and even ‘clean coal’. There are sea-power projects too. It’s hard to evaluate current lab-working tech. Much I see is hyped. Graphene and crystal storage, new catalysis ammonia or hydrogen? I really don’t know, though do know some very worried Sellafield employees who sound nothing like the nice lady propagandist of the visitor centre days. The old claim of making electricity as cheap as water has been achieved – er – by escalating the price of water. I’m waiting for more on Thorium fantasy, especially as, other than advertised, you can make bombs from those processes.
Geothermal and pumped storage hydroelectric would be a suitable backup for when solar and wind are not producing sufficient, the argument that nuclear is the only “always on” alternative for fossil fuels holds no water when those options are on the table!
Daniel McAuley says:
“Geothermal and pumped storage hydroelectric would be a suitable backup ….”
I’m not up to date with pilot schemes using Liquid Air as storage, but on the face of it they have great potential, not least because the fairly traditional technology involved is well established and the system has the merits of being relatively easily scaleable. Much less capital intensive than Hydro installations and far less environmentally intrusive. No doubt it has its downsides too.
http://eprints.brighton.ac.uk/14982/1/ener1400038.pdf
You may find that the Uk’s geothermal and pumped hydro resources are inadequate to meet multi-day winter periods when both wind (on & off-shore) and PV output is low. The Danes provide useful hourly data on wind which nicely illustrates the winter/multui-day calm periods. Neither am I suggesting that nuclear is the way forward, a business partner in his youth worked for EdF and brought US nuclear tech back to France. His observation was that the design was old fashioned then, what they build now are antiques. So much for nuclear.
The Uk in common with other EU countries already has a very large storage system – called the gas network. The German network at any point in time contains 220TWh of energy. Germany uses circa 500TWh of electricity in a year – thus the gas network in energy terms contains a vast amount of energy. If the network were converted to hydrogen (produced by wind) this would still amount to perhaps 100TWh – more than enough to keep the lights on & provide heating at bthe same time. Cherry on the cake: Uk has some very active power to hydrogen companies. Time for a renewable industrial strategy fit for purpose.
Nuclear has had 60 years to solve its problems – economic, technical and safety. Time to accept that it has failed. Meanwhile wind and solar have achieved more in the last 10-15 years and have overtaken nuclear at less cost. Imagine if we were putting that huge wasted investment in nuclear into renewables – add in tidal and wave for instance.
Time to put nuclear back into r&d until the problems really have been resolved. If they ever are. Just as we are seeing that the internal combustion engine may have run its course. I say it with a tinge of regret as having started as engineer I feel it ought to work but patently it has failed. The overlap with the nuclear defence world in the early days did not help with short cuts taken on safety. We lived in sight of one when I was growing up. An uneasy feeling…
Hitachi’s announcement is no surprise. Nuclear is no longer cost competitive and with the time that it takes to build a new plant the power station would be obsolete before construction is finished.
New coal is also virtually obsolete. See here and note the 2 charts: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/solar-power-cost-decrease-2018-5
I know that I’ve linked that article before. There are others but that data is just so definitive.
Good chart thanks. Can you reference one Marco that also includes tidal energy?
I’ve never agreed with nuclear even as a kid.
When you try to catch and harness the power that drives our sun here on earth of all places……….well it’s bound to come at an enormous cost – and it does.
We can do better.
Don’t want to be pedantic but …. the sun uses nuclear fusion, which would be great if we could achieve it.
Pedantry is fine if it clarifies fine detail.
As a boy I read of nuclear power being compared to the power of the sun.
Am I missing something? Is it fission versus fusion? Just put me straight. Is nuclear on earth just a flash n the pan?
But the basic premise is the same: containing such power here on the earth is big ask and a big risk. That is still my main point.
Reality Check worth a watch.
BTW I’m a Green Deal Fan but also a realist.
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables/discussion?language=en
M
It’s my belief that the technologies will overcome current issues
The debate underneath the talk is as interesting as the talk itself with. McKay is challenged on quite a few of his points. A sense that he is a nuclear fan and as such, is down on renewables.
Sure.
At this time, demand is 28.57GW.
Surprisingly, wind is providing 11.34GW (nearly 40% of demand).
Nuclear is providing 6.2GW (4 reactors down for planned service) and gas 7.87GW.
Coal 500MW, but 10GW is available if needed (5GW provided the past few nights from coal). Coal comes at a high cost, financially.
At 1730z last night, demand peaked at 47GW….which is almost at the maximum available 50GW…
But the point being missed is that wind has no storage attached….so cannot provide the stable power needed for a stable grid.
Nuclear fusion is still at the meh stage…yes, it will eventually work…but that eventuality is decades away. Civilisation may not last long enough to see it!
Meanwhile, the moths have been flushed from the exhausts of the massed banks of diesel generators of the short-Term-Operating-Reserve….and high consumers have been preparing for the financial influx from turning themselves off (and the local hospital tested its generators for their use…they get paid for it)
“But the point being missed is that wind has no storage attached….so cannot provide the stable power needed for a stable grid.”
So that should be a fairly high priority….to develop and improve storage facilities. Is it happening ? I doubt it, because it’s the sort of development that probably needs major state investment and dogma says we can’t have that.
https://www.nationalgrideso.com/sites/eso/files/documents/DSR%20Battery%20Storage%20Test%20Procedure%20for%20Frequency%20Response.pdf
And a read of the very complex problems of balancing the grid may be of use……especially if the grid supply is composed of highly-intermittent generators (wind).
https://www.nationalgrideso.com/balancing-services
https://eelpower.co.uk/challenges-for-the-grid
“The United Kingdom needs to modernise and decarbonise its energy system and relies upon the National Grid to manage the network in the most efficient way possible. The two main challenges in delivering cost competitive, stable power to consumers are that:
Power generated by renewable generators is largely intermittent, cannot be relied upon and requires back up to be truly useful, and
The amount of excess power generation capacity is low and is set to decline further as the old coal fired, gas and nuclear fleet is decommissioned over the next 10-15 years”
Ultimately, the main system of grid balance is on the demand side….power cuts.
@JohnM
Not useful to me, John, but interesting to see an indication of the complexity of the system. Thanks for posting.
By chance I was reading about nuclear waste this morning, and I gather the problem is that if we wait for any commercial solution we’ll possibly wait forever as there’s no immediately apparent profit to be made from it. The business model of the corporate world clearly falls short of what’s needed here (as it does elsewhere) so this really is where government needs to step in and fund, as we know it can, the necessary research.
All countries using nuclear as their main source of energy are planning to move away from it.
Not out of ecological concerns, but because the necessary long term investments are not cost effective.
France has been selling its nuclear expertise abroad for decades, still produces over 70% of its own energy needs from nuclear plants, but has planned a gradual decommissioning of its oldest ones (over 40 years old).
New generation nuclear plants take so long to build that by the time they’re ready to start producing, they’re outdated and well over budget.
This does not even include the cost of decommissioning and stocking the waste.
Wales was desperate for highly skilled jobs, turning a blind eye to medium and long term consequences. I’m glad this latest project been stopped.
There are alternatives, Swansea Bay Lagoon should be back on the cards for instance.
Lots of research is going on and needs investments to produce more results, but fossil fuel and nuclear lobbies have tried to impede progress to keep their share of the market.
Meanwhile, transport needs sorting, industrial pollution seriously kept in checked, housing insulation subsidised, recycling initiatives supported.
A Green New Deal indeed.
As someone who has serious doubts that renewables can totally displace fossil fuels from are energy system, I’m obviously somewhat out of step with this thread. However, I will go ahead and put some numbers on the table that are cause for concern.
Between 2006 and 2017 the UK reduced its fossil fuel consumption for producing electricity from 746 TW.h to 357 TW.h and increased electricity produced by wind and solar from 4.2 TW.h to 53 TW.h, which is a significant achievement.
Between 2006 and 2017 the UK reduced its consumption of fossil fuels for transport, industry and domestic purposes from 1,588 TW.h to 1,348 TW.h and increased the produced energy from bioenergy and waste from 11 TW.h to 71.5 TW.h, which also a significant achievement.
The really tough part is moving all that remaining fossil fuel energy over to the electricity supply. There will be some efficiency savings ( battery cars are 3 or 4 times more efficient than conventional cars and heat pumps for heating provided some savings when compared to gas central heating, thermal electricity plants are only about 40% efficient), but some energy for industry will need to be provided by a combustible material. Bio-gas is a possibility, but if it is being used by industry it can’t be used to produce electricity when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. Hydrogen (or other synthetic fuel) is also a possibility, but electricity is required to produced hydrogen (1 TW.h of electricity produces about 0.6 TW.h of hydrogen).
A recent study (Is a 100% renewable European power system feasible by 2050? – W. Zappa et al, published in ‘Applied Energy’) looked at Europe as a whole (the EU27 plus the UK, Norway and Switzerland) and found that the electricity system plus heating and battery cars could all be run by renewable energy, but it would cost 530 billion Euro per year and would be 30% more expensive than using nuclear power. It didn’t include industrial energy, planes, ships and trucks, which will all need to be decarbonised very soon after 2050, if we are to avoid dangerous climate change.
Can we decarbonise without renewables? Definitely not. Can we decarbonise without nuclear? I think not, although I’m open to being persuaded – but I’ll need some numbers to back up the persuasion.
I would suggest that we have about five years to make the choice. If we get it wrong, including nuclear is a minor inconvenience (yes, I know the spent fuel is very dangerous but that can be managed and some nuclear plants can ‘burn’ the high level waste to reduce its intensity), while leaving nuclear out could mean that dangerous climate change becomes inevitable.
I am aware that there is a transition going on and we are not there yet
I am persuaded by the likes of Jeremy Leggett that total transition is possible
He has a great blog
Thanks for the Jeremy Leggett info. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any numbers to back up the assertions and when I tried the links to his Power Point presentations (which have all the links to source URLs) none of them worked on my computer. I’ll have to try again later when I have more time.
I am a great fan of David MacKay, his book Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air (it’s freely available as a PDF download – all 400 pages) puts all the numbers on the page and provides the support data to back them up. I watched the video that was linked to by Marcus and found the counter comment (there was really only one) had so many errors that it was meaningless.
I have just read Keith Barnham’s book – Burning Answers: A User’s Guide to the Solar Revolution and found that high in assertions and low in actual data.
That’s what I always seem to find with anti-nuclear websites, they seem to be more propaganda than information. Maybe it’s confirmation bias on my part, which I try to avoid!
Electric cars….my pet hate “we’ll all be ok when cars are electric”
If you live in a flat or terraced house and have no off-street parking, you have problems.
If you live in a house with attached parking, you will still have problems…charging a 60KWH battery from a 13A socket will take nearly a day….and that is the largest socket available, current-wise, in a house….at the moment!
Even having a 30A socket installed hardly solves the problem…if you have a few dozen cars charging on the same circuit and the local transformer cannot handle the increased load, more problems.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/electric-vehicle-car-infrastructure-charging-point
Which brings us back to “demand side regulation” (power cuts). which are almost inevitable. Especially as we are running on-the-edge at the moment, and are dependent upon having every single GW available….just wait until we have a really cold spell, with inevitable no, or low, wind…and the demand spikes to over 50GW…
Robin Trow -can you give an example of an item on the CND website that is propaganda and not backed up with data? If so, would you suggest I don’t renew my subscription to CND on this basis?
As far as I can tell the production of weapons grade uranium or plutonium needs different conditions from those found in civil nuclear power plants. The concentrations of fissile uranium or plutonium produced are far too low for weapons production and would need extensive processing to be useful. The best use for spent nuclear fuel is to be recycled and ‘burnt’ in a reactor.
Neither North Korea nor Iran were using civil reactors for their weapons production.
Your contribution to CND is entirely your concern.
In response to JohnM, electric cars are the most efficient way to decarbonise personal transport. The only alternative to battery power would be a synthetic fuel, such as hydrogen or methanol The losses in production of the fuels and the operation of the fuel cells is much less efficient than battery charging this would impose higher demand on the electricity supply.
Battery cars are available now, fuel cell cars are only just becoming available and the refueling infrastructure is very limited.
Whatever happens, cars have to reduce their carbon footprint to zero soon if there is to be any chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. The electricity supply system will have to cope.
It won’t cope.
Each house has around a 100A supply current maximum….and the local infrastructure is designed around that, meaning the substation transformer. Very slowly the system is moving over to semiconductor means of altering transmission voltage to consumer voltage…very slowly.
That is without an extra load of +20%+- being imposed on the system…..that’s only the household with one car….perhaps you have not noticed, but many have more than one. around here, the average is three. Work it out, 3 X 7KW…21 KW. Each house is 230V and 100A, which is 23KW. Of course, we are slowly moving to “smart” meters……so demand-side-management will enable high-consumers to be altered to low-consumers at the input of a “turn Mr Fred off” command. That’s the houses that can charge cars….if roadside parking is you, then unlucky, as I cannot see every street having a few dozen charging posts being done very quickly (as I said..infrastructure….a dozen fast chargers installed will add a massive load to a system operating at its limits anyway..
The efficiency of an Oxygen/Hydrogen fuel cell is around 83%.
The efficiency of an electric car is around 98%.
The efficiency of the low-voltage transmission system is around 87%
So, all-in-all, not much difference.
I think your estimate of fuel cell efficiency is rather optimistic, the best value I’ve seen is 60% for power output, rising to 85% CHP applications – where the waste heat can be used. There’s also hydrogen hydrolysis, which is about 60% efficient, if the power to compress the hydrogen is included. Overall the efficiency in a car comes to 36%, about twice the efficiency of a conventional car. A battery car is about 80% efficient.
The big question is – will there be sufficient excess wind to make the hydrogen to make up for the doldrums? If we use nuclear, we can guarantee there is suffucient energy when tge grid load drops overnight.
A fuel-cell in a car would be around 60%, or less depending on the fuel. Fuel-cells featuring co-generation can achieve efficiencies of over 80% easily, but not for car use! Quite frankly, I do not see them happening in any large amount…largely because of the need to install the infrastructure, while we are also installing the infrastructure for all-electric cars. Also, storage within the vehicle of the fuel is another problem…high-pressure compressed gas or liquid hydrogen in cryo-storage…neither are friendly.
When i did a physics project back in the 80’s on alternative energy. I recall I concluded that fission nuclear reactors along the lines of CANDU and Thorium, were the safest. Although I couldn’t get past the old thermal cycle steam generators as the ultimate means of harvesting that energy.
‘In February 2014, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), in Mumbai, India, presented their latest design for a “next-generation nuclear reactor” that will burn thorium as its fuel ore, calling it the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AWHR). They estimated the reactor could function without an operator for 120 days.[48] Validation of its core reactor physics was underway by late 2017.[49]’
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
Unfortunately we have a few centuries of guaranteed employment in dealing with our blind rush into nuclear with all the decommissioning and waste.
What is the long term, responsible, answer to that for the humans we will hope to still be around scores of generations down the road?
I have knowledge of the salt mines of Cheshire. The most secure geological structures in Britain. Deep and unable to poison the ecosystem.
Let’s get on with clearing up the mess without making any more, please.