Great British Nuclear - UK's Push To Include Nuclear Energy

Tephnos said:
The Greens have done more damage to the environment (especially Germany) than the actual O&G sector has done. They have a lot to answer for with the current climate crisis. I hate the Greens, hate them.
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Blaming “the Greens” is pathetic when we consistently elect centre right governments and actual green voices in parliament have been negligible. The biggest barriers to improving our energy security have been short term governing and NIMBYism. This move has been in the government’s gift for a long time.
 
If we're going to do nuclear we need to build 5 identical Hinkley C's. I'm not a fan of PWR's but since we've gone that route we need to keep building exactly the same thing with the same people using the same supply chains and get 10 units and maybe some of the benefits of repetition. The absolute death of the UK nuclear industry was that nearly every station was different we got no cost reduction through the programme.

We then need to move forward on a domestic molten salt reactor programme and we can spend the next 1000 years burning all our left over fuel.
 
D.P. said:
Indeed. You also just have to look at france to see how unreliable Nuclear is, when half the capacity was offline for much of the last year
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That isn't really a good benchmark for how reliable [or not] nuclear power can be, there are specific circumstances for why France has had reliability problems due to a combination of unintended factors like the Ukraine war having an impact on other energy supplies at a time when maintenance on their ageing reactors was disrupted by several events. When their nuclear production hadn't been intended to take up the kind of duty they've been faced with.

Money is also a factor - Japan had around 20 years of reliable nuclear power until the money wasn't there to replace ageing reactors sufficiently - but money is always going to be an issue for any large scale form of power generation.

A nuclear implementation designed to handle a specific requirement with enough overlap for maintenance for an intended demand is very reliable.

Like many arguments against nuclear it is taking a bad case scenario and trying to portray it as the norm to smear nuclear power.
 
Its the perfect benchmark as it was meant to be the perfect system yet its failed.

Solar/Wind & Tidal (tidal is the hardest to crack it is hard on equipment)

Nuclear is not the answer typical short sighted last minute government nonsense, the time for nuclear has moved on its not the 1950s anymore, the world has enough energy for everyone it needs some much bigger thinking where we use it for everyone not just the country you happen to live in.
 
SPG said:
Its the perfect benchmark as it was meant to be the perfect system yet its failed.

Solar/Wind & Tidal (tidal is the hardest to crack it is hard on equipment)

Nuclear is not the answer typical short sighted last minute government nonsense, the time for nuclear has moved on its not the 1950s anymore, the world has enough energy for everyone it needs some much bigger thinking where we use it for everyone not just the country you happen to live in.
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That is ideology rather than reality talking as to the perfect benchmark thing... absolute rubbish.

Nuclear shouldn't be the answer but that is where we are - storage technology (or massive breakthroughs in transmission technology) and innovations in more localised generation and so on just haven't been pushed enough and tidal seems to be very much a low priority for development despite huge potential for stepping in for some of the time shifted needs.

EDIT: We do share power generation with Europe especially France, Holland and Norway however the interconnect technology just isn't there for massive scale power sharing and you can't magically import power generated in Africa to the UK, etc. even though in theory the generation could be there globally.
 
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It's not where we are, it's another 10 years before nuclear hits it mark could be longer pending all the committees required etc etc.

So we should be upsetting the countryside and building more wind farms,solar and Welsh, Scottish mountain storage systems and push green energy 100% we also no longer have the skill base for nuclear mass scale.
 
SPG said:
It's not where we are, it's another 10 years before nuclear hits it mark could be longer pending all the committees required etc etc.

So we should be upsetting the countryside and building more wind farms,solar and Welsh, Scottish mountain storage systems and push green energy 100% we also no longer have the skill base for nuclear mass scale.
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There is if we tap into Europe... oh wait...
 
Rroff said:
Like many arguments against nuclear it is taking a bad case scenario and trying to portray it as the norm to smear nuclear power.
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I am "for" nuclear at the moment but I dont think people worried about Fukushima, or Chernobly or reports about the concerns right now about Zaporizhzhia, or questioning what the hell to do with the waste for 1000s of years is a smear campaign against nuclear...... Perhaps these people ultimately are wrong and it IS the lesser of 2 evils (lesser of 2 evils is about where i stand now) but given the history of nuclear as well as how nuclear has been portrayed for decades, not to mention our own self destructive nature i think these people have valid concerns who need to be persuaded and not written off as scaremongering.
 
SPG said:
It's not where we are, it's another 10 years before nuclear hits it mark could be longer pending all the committees required etc etc.

So we should be upsetting the countryside and building more wind farms,solar and Welsh, Scottish mountain storage systems and push green energy 100% we also no longer have the skill base for nuclear mass scale.
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The storage systems just aren't feasible - we have few places even in Scotland which are suited to it (never mind England) and even if we went crazy on wind and solar, etc. yesterday for instance potential power from wind dropped right out around peak demand - no matter how many wind generators you had it wouldn't have produced more than a fraction of what was required, solar was sporadic through the day and later into demand non-existent.

(Though I'd like to see *GES given some serious thought for smaller scale local storage).

bigmike20vt said:
I am "for" nuclear at the moment but I dont think people worried about Fukushima, or Chernobly or reports about the concerns right now about Zaporizhzhia, or questioning what the hell to do with the waste for 1000s of years is a smear campaign against nuclear...... Perhaps these people ultimately are wrong and it IS the lesser of 2 evils (lesser of 2 evils is about where i stand now) but given the history of nuclear as well as how nuclear has been portrayed for decades, not to mention our own self destructive nature i think these people have valid concerns who need to be persuaded and not written off as scaremongering.
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The biggest problem with nuclear is people being responsible to do the right thing so it is run safely and reliably, which is by far my biggest concern with it.
 
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bigmike20vt said:
I am "for" nuclear at the moment but I dont think people worried about Fukushima, or Chernobly or reports about the concerns right now about Zaporizhzhia, or questioning what the hell to do with the waste for 1000s of years is a smear campaign against nuclear...... Perhaps these people ultimately are wrong and it IS the lesser of 2 evils (lesser of 2 evils is about where i stand now) but given the history of nuclear as well as how nuclear has been portrayed for decades, not to mention our own self destructive nature i think these people have valid concerns who need to be persuaded and not written off as scaremongering.
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Nuclear, the perception is it will destroy everything. So what happened is we pursued fossil fuels which are destroying everything. Great win there. Just the air pollution in one single British city probably kills more people per year than nuclear ever has.
 
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Rroff said:
The biggest problem with nuclear is people being responsible to do the right thing so it is run safely and reliably, which is by far my biggest concern with it.
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i think this is true about just about everything..... (even right down to stuff like autonomous cars..... if people were out of the equation it would all be much better)
 
bigmike20vt said:
i think this is true about just about everything..... (even right down to stuff like autonomous cars..... if people were out of the equation it would all be much better)
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Yeah but in this context relative to the various forms of power generation it is by far the biggest weakest link when it comes to nuclear, rather than its actual technical merits as some try to portray.
 
200sols said:
Nuclear, the perception is it will destroy everything. So what happened is we pursued fossil fuels which are destroying everything. Great win there. Just the air pollution in one single British city probably kills more people per year than nuclear ever has.
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I dont disagree with you about air pollution (not sure about the kill numbers, i dont think anyone outside of high level russian politicans know how many died around chernobl as well as long term health issues but that is splitting hairs)....... the damage caused by fossil fuels have been known about for what..... 40 years maybe. With correct funding and without the corruption we could be so much furher down the road to genuine clean and renewable energy ...... and if nuclear fission was needed we could have been much further along there too.... but unless someone has a time machine hidden away somewhere we are where we are.

even now tho NIMBYism as well as I believe high level back handers and what not is holding back genuine clean renewable energy (as a way to minimise the need for nuclear but not replace).
 
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bigmike20vt said:
I dont disagree with you about air pollution (not sure about the kill numbers, i dont think anyone outside of high level russian politicans know how many died around chernobl as well as long term health issues but that is splitting hairs)....... the damage caused by fossil fuels have been known about for what..... 40 years maybe. With correct funding and without the corruption we could be so much furher down the road to genuine clean and renewable energy ...... and if nuclear fission was needed we could have been much further along there too.... but unless someone has a time machine hidden away somewhere we are where we are.

even now tho NIMBYism as well as I believe high level back handers and what not is holding back genuine clean renewable energy (as a way to minimise the need for nuclear but not replace).
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Telling thing for me is we don't make radical changes mandatory with new build houses in respect to both climate change and energy. So much could be done there.
 
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