UK government planning nuclear site in Scotland
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9eze1dzy5no
This is pointless: Scotland is already self-sufficient on renewables. What we need is a new grid interconnect between Scotland and England so we can export our surplus energy to the south!
It's all about the lobbyists, of course:
"Its ambitions for up to a quarter of all electricity to come from nuclear power by 2050 are being led by government-backed body Great British Nuclear." (Who?)
It's probably true that the desire for Plutonium fast breeder reactors for nuclear weapons material has led us to the Uranium-based nuclear power plants we have now.
If we'd not been obsessed with getting weapons-grade Pu, we might have tried some other, potentially safer, options.
@HighlandLawyer I have nothing against new-build nuclear on safety grounds: my objection is that it doesn't make any kind of economic sense (except insofar as it lines the pockets of certain big construction and engineering companies).
There might be a role for SMRs in powering very large container ships … in a couple of decades. So this *might* be a hidden cross-subsidy to RR to fund developing a civil nautical prime mover. But I don't think today's Tories are that far-sighted.
@cstross @InsertUser my local MP is one of those Conservatives who campaigns for more regulation on new things like grid batteries that could pollute rivers, but is more quiet on regulation on sewage outflows:-
@cstross Scotland's getting ~19% of its electricity from nuclear right now (over at Torness, which will be shut down in a couple years' time). Might be worth building a new plant to ensure that the gas power stations that are supplying 26% of Scotland's electricity can be shut down faster, given that the supply chain is quite different to wind & solar and therefore won't "get in the way" of them. But that reeks of state planning, we can't have that
@cstross Nobody is self-sufficient on »renewables« (if by that you mean solar+wind). When the peak of solar+wind generation hits the demand line, the downs and ups mean that they meet only about 40% of live demand. Everything else must come from storage or other »backup«.
And nuclear energy is one of the best backup solutions there is. (So much so that it begs the question why only backup, but that's the fear of the renewables-only lobby.)
@Ardubal @cstross only an idiot would design a renewables-powered network where demand was only just met by nameplate capacity.
Surplus energy is the name of the game. Dump it into batteries, thermal storage, hydrogen electrolysis, or other industrial processes that are flexible in output, and could really benefit from some free (or almost free) electricity.
Nobody serious expects a renewables system to not have periods of surplus generation.
That point of just-met-demand is not an ideal or proposal, but a plausibilization case. It is the point up to which solar+wind scale roughly linear.
Yes, after that point comes overbuild plus storage. Every MW of that overbuild must be matched by storage with the same power output and hours or days of energy capacity. And every MW of that overbuild is diminished by storage and transmission losses. So, this point is like a sound barrier for ROI.
@Ardubal @Bern The ROI on renewables/gridscale storage looks a whole lot better, though, if you first cancel all the subsidies (visible and hidden) for fossil fuels. And better still if you bear in mind that PV prices per kWh are still dropping and battery prices are *also* falling.
Whereas nuclear reactor prices only ever seem to increase (unless like France in the 1970s you build them on a conveyor belt—politically non-feasible today).
@cstross @Bern Not really. The build cost of each model fall build-by-build, even if the FOAKs seem always more expensive (which has reasons).
The biggest hurdle now is restarting the building industry, but that is actually happening. And it's already politically feasible in many european countries.
And these hurdles are all not fate-given, intrinsic, unchangeable. They are challenges to overcome, not /if/ but /how/.
@cstross @Bern If even a fraction of the techno-optimism propping up hopes for solar/wind+batteries was applied to existing nuclear technology, fossil burning could already be history.
Nuclear advocates usually say »yes, do solar + wind, but it will not be enough, also do nuclear«, while Renewables-Only advocates say »no, don't do nuclear at all, and kill the existing ones«. I think it is rather clear which side is the favourite of the fossil lobby.
@Ardubal @cstross I'm quite familiar with the arguments from nuclear advocates - I used to be one myself, a decade or more ago. Back in the 90s, something like the Integral Fast Reactor would have been an absolute godsend, and produced vast amounts of clean and safe electricity.
But we've had several decades of maturation of renewables since then, and the cost differential now is so great that it just makes no sense to build nuclear, except in relatively niche applications.
Wind and solar combined get effective capacity factors over 60% in many locations, and even a 10x overbuild is *still* going to be cheaper than nuclear. Grid-scale batteries mean you don't have to go anywhere near that far, though.
@Ardubal @cstross I agree that some of the LCOE projections for nuclear (as published by the nuclear sector) look pretty impressive, at only 20 or 30% more expensive when you compare hypothetical 'nth of a kind' nuclear a decade or two down the track (which may or may not ever achieve that kind of cost reduction) to wind and solar that exist today, and are getting cheaper by the year.
Good luck getting the social licence to build those nuke plants, though... especially after the FOAK comes in at double or triple the price, after a decade or more of delays.
Meanwhile, the gas & coal producers will be laughing all the way to the bank, and atmospheric CO2 will keep on climbing...
I don't dispute that nuclear *could* solve the emissions problem - there are no *technical* barriers to it doing so. But I think there are some pretty sizeable economic and social ones, that for me push the balance very firmly toward renewables + storage.
@Bern @cstross Nuclear and solar+wind do not really compete on resources. It makes no sense to inhibit a proven option just because the hope in the unproven is so high right now.
And the fossil producers are mostly funding such pseudo-ecological organizations as »Friends of the Earth«, »Sierra Club«, and »Greenpeace«. They do not laugh about nuclear, they actively work against it, while presenting themselves as »ideal partner« for »renewables«.
@Ardubal @Bern Build-out of nuclear will take much too long to do any good at this point. Even when France went nuclear, it took a couple of decades to hit 90% (and that didn't include most of the 40-50% of power consumed by transport, i.e. cars/trucks/planes/boats). Whereas we have a renewables industry that's mostly up to speed already.
One problem for nuclear is most of the construction and operator cadre have aged out and retired. What's the lead time on a new nuclear engineer again?
@cstross @Bern Yes, that's all problems that have been deliberately created. They can be deliberately be overcome.
No, solar+wind industry is not up to speed, and it's already running into diminishing returns, as outlined before.
And solar+wind doesn't help with the other energy forms /at all/.
Even Germany's nuclear buildout (1970's and 80's) was faster than its fastest wind+solar buildout (around 2014 iirc).
»It's too late« is the false mantra for decades already.
@bjn @cstross @Bern It is known how much the Messmer plan cost overall. It is less than half of what the german »Energiewende« cost /so far/, and the difference is that the Messmer plan actually had an effect. That is the main point.
The side show of individual cost points: I distinctly remember a graph showing how each series was more expensive than the one before, but each reactor within the series got progressively cheaper, but I'll have to re-find it. Either way no argument for/against.
@bjn @cstross @Bern You can't extrapolate what solar and wind cost now, at low grid penetration, to what it costs to build a complete grid on it. And no one has ever done that.
China builds nuclear in 5 years and 5 G$ per large reactor on time, on budget. I refuse to believe that we are worse at engineering. The question is how to create the political and financial environment that makes it possible, not how to find excuses not to do it.
Do it on top of solar+wind, no reason to stop that.
@Guinnessy Yep. It's a market regulation problem—because late-stage actually-existing capitalism rewards predatory corporate incumbents who learn how to suborn or co-opt regulators to maximize profits, rather than adapting to changing conditions. Like, oh, climate change.
Our problems are mostly political, not technological. And the fix is to end the Friendmanite deregulation fetish that has set the agenda for politicians over the past half-century (since Chile in 1972).
@elmadagdale They haven't announced a site yet, just a proposal to run rough-shod over the wishes of the predominantly-anti-nuclear Scots. (Alister Jack hates devolution and this is another political stick to bash Holyrood with, while paying off lobbyists down south.)
Hint: if the USA decided to site its new nuclear reactors in Canada, without the consent of the Canadian government, you might smell a rat. This is much the same.
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