So 14 years after they came into office this Government has made proposals to improve the regulations. Just i time for them to leave office in disgrace and another lot will come in who will likely defer any decision.
I wonder who owns the IP on the revised UK version of the plant. I wonder why the next two similar plants are not already under construction.
If MoD purchasing policy is anything to go by they will wait until just after the workforce has been dispersed before announcing a new order.
Astonishingly, Great Britain was the first nation to build a grid scale nuclear power plant - Calder Hall.
It was decided by the UK Government to proceed with the civil nuclear power programme in 1952, and construction at Calder Hall began the following year and was carried out by Taylor Woodrow Construction using 1950s engineering and construction techniques and was officially opened on 17 October 1956 by Queen Elizabeth II.
Originally designed for a life of 20 years the plant was after 40 years was in July 1996 granted an operation licence for a further ten years.
The station was closed on 31 March 2003, the first reactor having been in use for nearly 47 years.
The article shys away from revealing the projected absolute cost of Hinckley Point C, but the Wikipedia page points to £46B - yes, that's forty-six billion pounds (about $60B)! Gulp. A follow-up article to compare how an equal sustained investment over an equal time frame in wind+solar+batteries might have worked out would be most helpful.
Reliable energy can never be provided by your proposal so nuclear is the best we can have if hydrocarbons are to be reserved for the Chinese and Indian markets.
In era when china is building 5 nuclear plants per year...
"...equal sustained investment over an equal time frame in wind+solar+batteries..." -> i read today that Uk gov is allowing oil exploration in north see, in areas dedicated for wind farms... so we are essentially one bad election from getting rid of wind altogether. I.E. brexit for renewals.
Both criticisms seem fair … yet, the point about nuclear is that the cost of failure is exponentially higher than in say, transport. A train or aeroplane crash are unpleasant & may cost 200 lives. A nuclear mistake could cost 10m lives & devastating environmental / economic impacts so it’s not helpful to make comparisons with non power law domains. The suggestions seem reasonable - planning is the worst example of bureaucratic dead weight - it is non adaptive, non dynamic & hierarchical. It is the archetype of decision gated planning. For complex projects (& I speak as someone who spent 18 months trying to get permission to upgrade 4 1970s windows in a listed building) planners should provide simple checklists & ranges of acceptable solutions that can be waved through without long documentation (perhaps by working with other countries, as suggested, to produce core standards). For complex, unknown variables, they should offer a more streamlined process for decision making. Eg creating a task force of key stakeholders (locals, planners, environmentalists etc) that agree an overall mission & then make quick decisions about issues as they arise. If the task force agrees a power plant will be built that generates xxx energy, then they can’t turn down or delay elements that are critical to mission success. Anyway, this stuff us hard but abandoning regulations ad hoc is not a solution. High reliability organisations need a lot of slack & redundancy in their operation. You get rid of this at your peril.
There is no scenario that a nuclear disaster could ever claim 10M lives. Even if the core of the reactor was a literal hydrogen bomb in the middle of Manhattan. The point is the public has such a gross misunderstanding of the risks of nuclear that the exploding costs are due to mitigating damage where the costs greatly outweigh the any harm potential. Tens of millions to save ~100 fish? It's not about abandoning regulation, but making reasonable tradeoffs in the regulation so that they are more in balance with reality.
I do not possess skills to explain how ridiculously safe they are. But i will try anyway. Thermal power of a nuclear power plant in Czech republic was increased 15% incrementally AFTER it was producing power. That is how big of a margins they had to be built to pass all regulations 20 years ago..... They do not want to increase it anymore but they are not on limit what can be SAFELY done. Any "pin drop" in nuclear power plant has to be written up and sent to regulatory body, there are hardwired cameras which are transmitting situation in powerplant to IEAE, to regulatory body, etc. All instrument readings are sent remotely as a sixth top down check of nominal operation. They source, test and warehouse in multiple copies all kinds of circuit boards, integrated circuits, they subsidy manufacturers of components so manufacturers wont go out of business just so powerplant can have steady, safe and quality managed parts for whole lifetime of plant, etc etc etc etc etc. People working there do not want to die.
Your mental image of nuclear risks is based on scare stories and entertainment products, often pushed by interested parties (anti human development eco traditionalists and competing energy sectors).
Radiation is completely natural, it becomes dangerous only at sufficiently high doses. Nuclear plants have multiple redundant safety systems to avoid accidents or limit the radionuclide release in the event of one. If radionuclides are released, they are easy to measure and the population can be protected with straightforward measures, such as staying inside for a while, distribution of iodine pills and in extreme cases, evacuation.
If an aircraft, by accident or deliberately, is flown into a stadium, thousands will die and there is nothing you can do in response. Aircraft in many ways are more dangerous than a decently managed nuclear power plant, and have historically caused more deaths to the uninvolved general population than civil nuclear power:
So 14 years after they came into office this Government has made proposals to improve the regulations. Just i time for them to leave office in disgrace and another lot will come in who will likely defer any decision.
I wonder who owns the IP on the revised UK version of the plant. I wonder why the next two similar plants are not already under construction.
If MoD purchasing policy is anything to go by they will wait until just after the workforce has been dispersed before announcing a new order.
Astonishingly, Great Britain was the first nation to build a grid scale nuclear power plant - Calder Hall.
It was decided by the UK Government to proceed with the civil nuclear power programme in 1952, and construction at Calder Hall began the following year and was carried out by Taylor Woodrow Construction using 1950s engineering and construction techniques and was officially opened on 17 October 1956 by Queen Elizabeth II.
Originally designed for a life of 20 years the plant was after 40 years was in July 1996 granted an operation licence for a further ten years.
The station was closed on 31 March 2003, the first reactor having been in use for nearly 47 years.
Says it all...
I followed the link from the sentence "Nuclear, of course, is the safest form of power generation there is."
The link goes to a web page at Our World in Data that says that solar power is safer than nuclear power.
Should link to this instead: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC125953
I spy an opportunity for the Caymans, the Channel Islands, and Panama in certifying nuclear designs as safe ... for very reasonable fees.
The article shys away from revealing the projected absolute cost of Hinckley Point C, but the Wikipedia page points to £46B - yes, that's forty-six billion pounds (about $60B)! Gulp. A follow-up article to compare how an equal sustained investment over an equal time frame in wind+solar+batteries might have worked out would be most helpful.
Reliable energy can never be provided by your proposal so nuclear is the best we can have if hydrocarbons are to be reserved for the Chinese and Indian markets.
Never? Never ever say never.
Wikipedia says: In 1962 Decca rejected the Beatles. The executives felt that "guitar groups are on the way out" and "the Beatles have no future in show business". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles%27_Decca_audition
California and Texas say welcome to the 21st century: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/07/climate/battery-electricity-solar-california-texas.html
"Those batteries ... pumped out ... electricity ... akin to the output from seven large nuclear reactors."
Never? No future, eh?
The laws of physicas do not change just because campaigners wish it so.
In era when china is building 5 nuclear plants per year...
"...equal sustained investment over an equal time frame in wind+solar+batteries..." -> i read today that Uk gov is allowing oil exploration in north see, in areas dedicated for wind farms... so we are essentially one bad election from getting rid of wind altogether. I.E. brexit for renewals.
Both criticisms seem fair … yet, the point about nuclear is that the cost of failure is exponentially higher than in say, transport. A train or aeroplane crash are unpleasant & may cost 200 lives. A nuclear mistake could cost 10m lives & devastating environmental / economic impacts so it’s not helpful to make comparisons with non power law domains. The suggestions seem reasonable - planning is the worst example of bureaucratic dead weight - it is non adaptive, non dynamic & hierarchical. It is the archetype of decision gated planning. For complex projects (& I speak as someone who spent 18 months trying to get permission to upgrade 4 1970s windows in a listed building) planners should provide simple checklists & ranges of acceptable solutions that can be waved through without long documentation (perhaps by working with other countries, as suggested, to produce core standards). For complex, unknown variables, they should offer a more streamlined process for decision making. Eg creating a task force of key stakeholders (locals, planners, environmentalists etc) that agree an overall mission & then make quick decisions about issues as they arise. If the task force agrees a power plant will be built that generates xxx energy, then they can’t turn down or delay elements that are critical to mission success. Anyway, this stuff us hard but abandoning regulations ad hoc is not a solution. High reliability organisations need a lot of slack & redundancy in their operation. You get rid of this at your peril.
There is no scenario that a nuclear disaster could ever claim 10M lives. Even if the core of the reactor was a literal hydrogen bomb in the middle of Manhattan. The point is the public has such a gross misunderstanding of the risks of nuclear that the exploding costs are due to mitigating damage where the costs greatly outweigh the any harm potential. Tens of millions to save ~100 fish? It's not about abandoning regulation, but making reasonable tradeoffs in the regulation so that they are more in balance with reality.
I do not possess skills to explain how ridiculously safe they are. But i will try anyway. Thermal power of a nuclear power plant in Czech republic was increased 15% incrementally AFTER it was producing power. That is how big of a margins they had to be built to pass all regulations 20 years ago..... They do not want to increase it anymore but they are not on limit what can be SAFELY done. Any "pin drop" in nuclear power plant has to be written up and sent to regulatory body, there are hardwired cameras which are transmitting situation in powerplant to IEAE, to regulatory body, etc. All instrument readings are sent remotely as a sixth top down check of nominal operation. They source, test and warehouse in multiple copies all kinds of circuit boards, integrated circuits, they subsidy manufacturers of components so manufacturers wont go out of business just so powerplant can have steady, safe and quality managed parts for whole lifetime of plant, etc etc etc etc etc. People working there do not want to die.
Your mental image of nuclear risks is based on scare stories and entertainment products, often pushed by interested parties (anti human development eco traditionalists and competing energy sectors).
Radiation is completely natural, it becomes dangerous only at sufficiently high doses. Nuclear plants have multiple redundant safety systems to avoid accidents or limit the radionuclide release in the event of one. If radionuclides are released, they are easy to measure and the population can be protected with straightforward measures, such as staying inside for a while, distribution of iodine pills and in extreme cases, evacuation.
If an aircraft, by accident or deliberately, is flown into a stadium, thousands will die and there is nothing you can do in response. Aircraft in many ways are more dangerous than a decently managed nuclear power plant, and have historically caused more deaths to the uninvolved general population than civil nuclear power:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_accidents_and_incidents_by_number_of_ground_fatalities
What's needed for SMRs and nuclear in general is a "Liberty SMR" program as I outlined here: https://mfioretti.substack.com/p/a-nuclear-power-offer-that-you-cannot