(Very quiet) Hooray for beginning more nuclear power

[SerendipityJane]

Lots more please. Should never have stopped building them.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c87w5ld0p80o

And the British government has very little interest in the wellbeing of its citizens when money is at stake now. The time when they did has gone, we’re back in imperial times now. They don’t even bother to ask who are its citizens in a time when nationality is easily redefined and purchasable by anyone around the globe. I’d trust them slightly more than Orban or Trump, At this moment in time, but theirs is the path our politicians have been following.

It seems quantity of fuel used plays a part too, and of course at this time use of coal massively outweighs uranium use (although in Britain we have now closed our last coal plant).

For all the enthusiasts we can build one near your house and dump the waste nearby as well.

True. I’d far rather have the ability to build a wind turbine for my house!

Go for it, with SMRs we can.

There is more radioactive waste from hospitals than nuclear power plants, your smoke alarm is radioactive.

It’s not like the Simpsons with barrels of glowing green goo, you can fit years of spent fuel into a room. It’s safer to live next to some nuclear waste encased in lead and concrete than a busy road inhaling fumes all day.

Anyone who understands the actual risks involved will be fine with this and I would be too. As I mentioned before, long term waste is always stored near communities that have volunteered for it. The waste is never ’dumped’ though, there’s an immense amount of legislation on how it can be disposed.

And during a dunkelflaute? (When the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine) Battery storage would be a huge undertaking for the lengths of time needed, plus the grid upgrades required would be astronomically expensive.

For example, the UK had a period of nearly 2 weeks of dunkelflaute in Nov 2024, where some areas had only 12 minutes of sunlight a day and winds dropped to 3-4% of the need. A similar event happened in 2021, so these aren't infrequent occurrences.

Although the lengths above are the extremities of the timescales of these events, we usually have between 2 and 10 dunkelflaute every year.

Nuclear is there to provide a flexible base load to prevent extended blackouts.

That is why we have the international interconnectors. There's always energy in the weather/stored somewhere.

@MaJoady

"Nuclear is there to provide a flexible base load to prevent extended blackouts."

Thanks for mentioning the base load. I'm all in favour of people in hospitals attached to beeping machines being able to rely on the base load providing the necessary electricity. And the air traffic controller information feeds and airport lights functioning. And the surgeons in operating theatres expecting the lights to stay on... etc.

Love the word dunkelflaute too. Every day's a school day.

Absolutely agree. The uk has a poor infrastructure and we can’t rely on power from other countries, noting we have the most expensive electricity in Europe, wind energy is pitiful and it’s all part of Britain being the worlds biggest joke.

It becomes exponentially harder to move electricity as the distance increases. Otherwise we'd all be getting our electricity from an girdle of solar around the equator.

Until it's privatised. Let's have some fracking as well. No way are the enthusiasts on here letting a nuke be built in their area. People go crazy over parking so the idea of a nuclear power generator down the street would make you all sell up.

Privatisation or nationalisation wouldn’t affect the international regulations around ionising radiation at all. The regulations on where facilities can be built mean that they can’t just be built down your street.
If you think there’s a connection between fracking and nuclear power, you may wish to find out a bit more about both.
It’s possible to understand the risks factually without being an enthusiast — personally I don’t feel very strongly either way and still don’t care whether I live near a nuclear facility. It’s also possible to raise factually accurate objections against nuclear power, but there’s not much point in listing myths and feelings about it, as many posters on
the thread have done.

Mmm. Interestingly, the BBC news website has an article about this today. Worth a look. www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c86ey5n9vx9o

"... The hidden cost of clean power: The issue is that while generating renewable electricity can be cheap, the system needed to deliver it is not. When I ask Sir Dieter Helm, professor of economic policy at Oxford University, for his definitive answer on the cost of renewables, he laughs.

"It all depends what you choose to measure," he says. Sir Dieter says focusing only on the cost of generating electricity misses a larger issue: the cost of the system as a whole..."

Completely agree OP.

it’s the only way to achieve a balanced energy mix

but there will be lots of uninformed hysteria about it

Privatisation or nationalisation has a very strong effect on whether regulations are followed, and followed to the letter or the spirit.

Remember Grenfell anybody?

Diversity of energy solutions is important. We can have solar, wind, wave, hydro as well as nuclear and the Rolls Royce SMRs are a great step forward in the nuclear market. The UK have expertise in the handling, and more importantly, decommissioning of nuclear sites.
A wind turbine blade only has a 20-30 year lifespan and question of how we re-use, recycle or otherwise handle that vast amount of waste is one that is easily overlooked. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do wind power though, it just means there’s more than just the cost of building it in the first place.

You say this like we've made progress on food security. Our food security is absolutely fucked and it gets nowhere near the attention energy does.

Sure, but coal and oil have effected changes in our climate that will get worse and also be felt for a long time...

I absolutely agree, OP.

We are way too reliant on others for our vital utilities. If this new power station can be built & operated by British companies, even better. I hope there will be more.

Hmmm, too much science.

The other Great White Hope (cf. nuclear fusion etc etc) is room temperature superconductors. If we can crack those (again engineering and materials rather than hard science) then we can contemplate global electricity distribution. Which would also be much more efficient.

Here's some lighter science around them. Notice the "already here" undertones from (checks notes) nearly 2 years ago ....

The problem with nuclear is this. On every team in every workplace there is a lazy, stupid idiot. Do you want him running a plant? Or even working in one. He can barely find his arse with both hands.

Can’t wait for this. Should’ve been done years ago

Thats the button you click on to see the french version

If you had free energy, you can grow food hydroponically ...