UK to put nuclear power at heart of net zero emissions strategy

From your Queen's article :

On a trip to a school in Bristol, southwest England, Johnson told baffled schoolchildren: "I promise to get world leaders to cut greenhouse gases and save the planet."

He later held up a signed, leaf-shaped piece of paper on which he had written his pledge.

Whatever the outcome, I'll be very happy to hear about Johnson's pledge after the COP...

Was, the conservative party dismantled that pretty quickly.

Not really, that was Denmark, or France's nuclear buildout.

renewables are not big enough in a huge industrial and developed country like Germany

Hysterical shutdown of nuclear plants following Fukushima lead to the gap being covered by fossil fuels

also while US have very cheap gas from the domestic industry, Europe is constrained by a couple of pipelines and shipments and market fluctuations, so it didn't replace coal

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

More recently Germany has become a NIMBY country when it comes to building more wind power. From the outside it appears a lot of the easy wins have already taken place for wind in Germany, and once they began building closer to residential areas, people have gotten increasingly upset about it:

"Wind power is Germany's most important source of clean energy. But wind turbines have become contentious here, as more and more people protest against them being built near where they live."

https://www.dw.com/en/the-germans-fighting-wind-farms-close-...

"Germany has set some of the most ambitious goals of any nation for shifting from fossil fuels to greener energy. Now the centerpiece of that push—onshore wind power—is slumping, prompting the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and the bankruptcies of wind-power developers and turbine manufacturers. Wind power, often seen as a clean, abundant energy source, has faced growing bureaucratic hurdles and acrimony in communities out to block the erection of new turbines. "

https://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-push-for-wind-power-en...

They are compared to all the countries bigger than them. But compared to other Western European countries, not so much.

Merkel’s CDU has been popular because they offered stability, but there’s an understanding in Germany now that the country has fallen behind in critical areas like car electrification and grid storage technologies.

No, but people love their misinformation (in both directions). Coal and gas are slowly going down in Germany. Germany built a new coal plant 6 years ago only to shut it down this year. The real problem is that renewables aren't being built fast enough.

The EU helps to fund the sarcophagus built around Chernobyl:

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/eu-co-finances-...

Which might account for why they are reticent about nuclear.

OL3 is not yet producing power, apparently turbines didn't like spending a decade waiting for use and need some maintenance. Current estimation is that reactor will be started in January 2022 and regular electricity production will start in March.

The UK didn't put all their nuclear eggs in the EDF basket, it's just that the other companies offering to build new nuclear plants were even more of a disaster than EDF. At least they managed to actually complete a reactor build recently; if I remember rightly the other candidates went bankrupt.

It is regrettable that industry could not do better. But I can see some sense from the government perspective. Ultimately you get a big investment in British industry. And eventually a very reliable baseload generator. And people will blame the electricity companies for high prices not the government. And ideally the next build is at a lower strike price. Offshore wind was also very expensive in the early days but now has much lower strike prices. Ultimately the biggest hurdle to development is commercial risk and electricy prices need to match with that risk. Better to pay a lot than pretend that nuclear is super cheap. The UK energy sector is never going to be cheap! But it maybe can get less risky and cheaper.

I’m really keen to see how that plays out.

As someone pointed out before on HN, various NATO countries, US especially, churn out small reactors for their navies, apparently with great success. These reactors are built on time, roughly in budget, work, and aren’t failing all over the place.

That’s a fair few data points showing that SMRs ought to be very viable. Just... not here yet :)

It seems more and more likely they'll do this as part of the same announcement

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/15/uk-poised-t...

_If_ this works, it would be great. How many of them have been built so far?

Oh, this needs to be made into a caricature: "After the completing the Brexit plan without any meltdown, I pledge to solve the climate challenge in the same way!"

They did it with offshore wind, solar and now battery storage. These kind of agreements are an area where politicians can actually be successful.

Did you mean to swap those? Current nuclear power plants use fission, while fusion is still in development.

Fusion is getting slightly closer every 20 years. A fusion power plant approaching anything like a fission power plant's output is still at the very least 30 years away (EUROfusion's timeline says 2051). And that will probably be the most expensive power plant in history, even ignoring all the money poured into ITER.

That gives at least 100 years before Fusion can become a major part of power generation in any significant part of the world, and this is assuming current projects achieve all their milestones on time, which historically is extremely unlikely. And this also assumes that it's even possible to reduce the cost of a ten million kelvin plasma held in place by 12 kelvin superconducting magnets, covered in a pool of liquid lithium.

And IETR.

Their goal is 50% nuclear by 2035. From an economical point of view that's probably better than trying to keep todays levels, since they have to replace some old plants with newer ones and then the economics no longer make sense. Hence Macrons political move towards SMRs.

I disagree, France is being completely rational here. There is a better mix of power that is possible now than in the 1970s, because of technology advancements. A lot has happened in the past 50 years.

It's a demonstration of rationality? No one builds new nuclear power plants because they can not compete on price. Hinkley Point C will produce power at $145/MWh. That is crazy. At that kind of price point, you are better off building an interconnect to Norway and straight up importing hydro power.

Think about the kind of lifetime and investment that comes with nuclear. You start a new plant project today. It might produce power in 15 years, for some 30+ years to make it economical. Who the fuck wants to bet $20B+ on solar not supplanting our entire power generation within some 45 years? Because that is what you are saying: build new nuclear, because even half a century from now, we won't have the storage technology to make solar and wind work. That's the bet.

Russia was always exporting energy to Europe (oil gas and coal) so it does make sense from that angle too.

With Germany going off nuclear, they become increasingly dependent on Russian gas.

Anti-nuclear opposition was indeed primarily against nuclear weapons, until Chernobyl. But the idea that it was backed by the USSR is without substance, a slur that's always made against anyone vaguely left wing without substantiation.

The aim was bilateral (or occasionally unilateral) disarmament, because at that time we were all worried that the world might be destroyed at four minutes notice. The long slow problem of global warming was a lot further away.

Even today, this is why nobody likes the Iranian nuclear programme, and why Israel airstriked an earlier Iranian reactor.

At least in the UK, using coal or oil is very uncommon, while gas is very common.

So gas is the bigger problem to resolve. We need to get rid of them all eventually.

Here in France, most furnaces are electric, a few use gas, and some stovetops use gas but they are becoming more rare, as it's cheaper to simply not include gas in a building.

It's very surprising to me that people are still burning coal in their home, outside of very rural areas. Same thing with oil (except with cars of course).

Ah, in the US gas is the most common and I'm not sure about the UK — just going off what the article mentioned.

But yeah, my understanding is that burning gas in your home produces less CO2 than burning coal or oil, but they ALL pollute (and gas often has methane leaks from pipelines which is worse for warming than CO2). Whereas a heat pump emits nothing, is ~3x more efficient than gas combustion, and will increasingly cause no emissions as the grid is powered by renewables.

It's far better to emit NO pollutants in your home (and cars!) than to emit less, especially since polluting home infrastructure is replaced every ~15 years and pollutes for its entire lifetime.

Residential coal heating is extremely rare in the US[0], to the point where it occasionally gets a human interest story whenever a reporter runs into someone who uses coal. Most of America uses gas, some newer buildings and the south uses electricity, and wood handily outnumbers coal. The roughest equivalent we have here is oil heating, which is really only common in the northeast. It’s my understanding that that’s being phased out, because it’s unpleasant to live with.

I don’t even know where I’d go to buy coal, to be honest. For most of America the closest we get to the stuff is a charcoal grill.

0 - 130,000 households two years ago, half in Pennsylvania.

The UK strategy is to replace those gas burners with heat pumps, which you can power with nuclear energy.

The problem in the UK is that many houses are very old and poorly insulated. Passivhaus basically needs to be the standard (if it isn't already).

Yes, that's great! I just wish it was paired with the more ambitious stick of banning new gas hookups.

You may be right! But the time for ambition and execution is now because our planet is too damn important for anything less. :)

Why do you say heat pumps only work in well insulated houses with large radiators? Heat pumps are ~3x as efficient as the best gas furnaces so why would you need a better insulated house?

Also, the problem with hydrogen is how do you produce it? Probably with renewable energy, right? So why would you waste all that energy converting from renewable electricity to hydrogen then burning hydrogen (which is not super efficient anyway)? Might as well just use the renewables to power your heat pump. Plus, heat pumps already work at scale whereas hydrogen needs a lot more work before it's ready for primetime.

For a poorly insulated house, it's better to fix the insulation than to do lossy and expensive conversion to/from hydrogen, not to mention investment in storage or transport, when at the end of the day the expensive hydrogen will be mostly wasted due to lack of insulation (costing yet more of the expensive hydrogen).

That's great that that happened! I think it's to the point now where we need everyone to do that.

Was it hard for them to physically change out their gas system for the heat pump? Was it hard to find installers or units?

I'd take that bet. https://www.livescience.com/nuclear-fusion-reactor-sparc-202...

To be fair, I’m not sure that UK will be able to have fission generators running by 2035 if they kick off a project now…

Not the radioactive waste and meltdown chance though

Storage will be plentiful in most homes in the future, at least those with cars. A 50kWh battery will provide several days worth of electricity, even when powering a heat pump in the winter. And if batteries are cheap enough to be in cars and idle 95%-99% of the time, they are definitely going to be cheap enough for daily usage on the grid.

Already, in the US, the majority of new solar projects include storage attached to the same inverters as the solar panels. Batteries are on an exponential learning curve for cost. It's not hard to see where the future will be.

Additionally, a mixture of both offshore wind solar will be close enough to provide all of the UK's needs.

If you go and redo David MacKay's energy scenarios for the UK from Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, and use modern costs, the all renewable scenarios look pretty great. If nuclear can chip in and reduce some storage needs during a week long wind lull, that would be great too. But at this point in time we can't depend upon new nuclear to contribute anything to our immediate needs for climate solutions. Game day is here, now, and we have to play with the team of players we have currently.

> "Any realistic plan for going carbon-neutral has to deal with that issue."

That's true, but unbuilt nuclear power dreams can't keep homes heated either. We almost can't build nuclear plants. We almost can't politically or socially agree to build them, we almost can't fund them, we can't keep the costs reasonable, we can't keep them to budget or on-target with construction times.

Look at the history of nuclear power in the UK:

Trawsfynydd construction began in July 1959 and both reactors were online by March 1965 with works finished in 1968, for £103M. Bank of England inflation calculator puts that at ~£2.5Bn in today's money.

Sizewell B was first announced in 1969, design reworked in 1974, design reworked and announced in 1980, had a public enquiry from 1982 to 1985, started construction in 1988, finished on schedule in 7 years for £2Bn which is ~£5.8Bn in today's money.

In 2008 the UK gov said new nuclear plants could be built for £2.8Bn. The chairman of EO.N said it could be as much as £4.8Bn.

Hinkley C was announced along with seven other sites in 2010, EDF said the construction cost would be £16Bn in 2012, electricity strike price set at £6Bn in 2013. Site preparation started 2014. Approved by the board of EDF and the UK gov in 2016, scheduled to generate power from the first reactor by 2025. The strike price has increased to £50Bn. The construction cost increased to £20Bn and then £22Bn. This year they've announced a 6 month delay and half-billion price increase due to COVID.

It's the most expensive nuclear power on the planet. It's twice the cost per MW as nuclear power in France. It's been criticised by Dieter Helm, Professor of Energy Policy at Oxford University for being too expensive, by an advisor to PM Theresa May for "selling our national security to China", by George Monbiot for being an outdated reactor design even in 2013. It's part-owned by a Chinese company sanctioned by the US government for espionage, it's almost 4x the cost of electricity compared to the design estimates for this kind of reactor. EDF were fined €5M for misleading investors about the costs in 2014. "The UK nuclear regulator has raised concerns with EDF Energy over management failings that it warns could affect safety at the Hinkley Point C power station if left unaddressed" reported The Guardian.

And of the seven other sites announced back in 2008? None of them have had any further development, they've all been shelved.

Is the next one going to be 20 years in development for £40Bn construction cost and £150/MWh and the one after 30 years in development for £55Bn construction and £200/MWh?

Nuclear power advocates are like "we need to have lots of nuclear plants online by the end of the decade, if not sooner; therefore we will have that, no worries". Any realistic plan for going carbon-neutral through nuclear has to deal with these realities. No government is going to blow a trillion pounds on ten Hinkley C's now after COVID19 spending.

Links:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_Ki...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trawsfynydd_nuclear_power_stat...

- https://www.ice.org.uk/what-is-civil-engineering/what-do-civ...

- https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/in...

Carbon sequestration makes more sense for intermittently-available renewables since it can happen when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing and doesn't need massive battery storage otherwise.

Nuclear makes much more sense for base load electric needs for homes and industry.

Boris Johnson isn't doing it because it makes sense, but for political benefits. Who benefits? Who is making money?

10 years ago I thought nuclear was the clear answer - that we should do a moon-shot style massive project to develop a new generation of reactors and build them worldwide. I'm not against nuclear.

But there's an important political dimension also, and to talk as if it's decided on technological merits is to implicitly spread the BS.

I think you've got that reversed. Grid scale wind solar and storage are dominating all new equipment on the grid. Check out the interconnection queue for ERCOT or PJM, the few competitive markets where there's public information like that, and where the choices are made purely based on profit, rather than the preferred whims of crafty utility executives that get guaranteed profits and don't have to pay for bad capital allocations.

In contrast, new nuclear is nearly impossible to build. Nobody even wants to attempt to build it unless they get massive blank checks from governments to backstop all the massive cost overruns. Even China, the one country that has the capability to build big things still, is only building a tiny tiny fraction of nuclear in comparison to their massive renewables builds.

Building new nuclear in the UK means either going with designs that have proven to be very difficult to construct, like the EPR, or going with completely unproven SMR designs, that are the last ditch effort to save nuclear as an energy source.

At this point I don't think the targets will be met.

Replacing all those boilers will be very unpopular, it will require a huge amount more electrical capacity and infrastructure alone.

It's also very unlikely any new nuclear power will be available by 2035 the first target date.

Spending the same money/political capital on cutting cars or flights or renewables would get a lot more co2e reduction a lot faster...

No German greens who are subverted by Russian interests?

That has nothing at all to do with the rising energy prices which have been natural gas related - not electricity.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58090533