Saturday 29 September 2018

Let's just have a dozen of those, then.

From the BBC:

A nuclear power station being built in Somerset is on track for its next major milestone, the firm behind it has said.

The construction of Hinkley Point C began two years ago after the government signed a deal with French firm EDF and its Chinese partner CGN.

It is expected to provide 7% of the UK's electricity needs for 60 years.


The oldest functioning nuclear power plant will be fifty years old next year. Assuming we've learned more than we've forgotten since 1969, a sixty year life span seems perfectly plausible.

13 comments:

formertory said...

But, but, but some plank somewhere has agreed to pay les Grenouilles £92.50 a MWh, indexed and guaranteed for 35 years production........... frack 'em!

James Higham said...

Go nuclear, young man!!

Mark Wadsworth said...

FT, as per usual, the UK govt signed up to a really shit deal. Separate topic.

JH, indeedy!

benj said...

The EPR will still be running in a 100 years time. 60 years is the minimum design life. This will no doubt be extended.

If we had done a competitive tender for a single design, built a dozen or so 3.2Gw nuclear plants financed by the state, that price would have been halved.

This is more or less what the French did, very successfully.



Mark Wadsworth said...

BJ, yes, in this instance, copy the French.

paulc156 said...

Though this design is based on the French one EDF is still building...6 years after it was due to be completed and still 2 years from completion.

Mark Wadsworth said...

PC, yes, we have to get back into practice, that is all too clear. Having trained up 3000 people, they can rove the country and do another eleven.

Andrew S. Mooney said...


Bad idea: The design is even conceded by EDF itself to be complete rubbish, as in the "New Model EPR Design" that Wikipedia notes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)

Notice how they don't go out of business in France though. "We," in the form of the UK government would studiously put them out of business if they were based in the UK.

Mark Wadsworth said...

ASM, I'm no expert. I assumed that the BBC's claims were true (dangerous, I know).


If not, then why aren't we doing something better/cheaper (genuine question, by the way), and what would that be?

Andrew S. Mooney said...

MW: "If not, then why aren't we doing something better/cheaper (genuine question, by the way), and what would that be?"

Have a Google at "Small Modular Reactor," and if you have the time, have a read of this posting.

http://euanmearns.com/who-killed-the-small-modular-reactor-programme/#more-22539

The post is very long, unfortunately, and I'm no expert either, but this idea of Small Modular Reactors looked briefly like a absolute winner. We could have been doing something better and cheaper, and it matches exactly your idea of economies of scale.

George Osbourne announced a program for a "Small Modular Reactor" as part of his time as Chancellor, and even offered 250 million as seed-finance. The predictable upshot is that the civil service has apparently descended, done it's job, and made a dutifully complete fudge of it. The program has been running for three years now and nothing has been decided.

The envisaged fleet of reactors would need to be larger than the program initially envisaged, but it was not impossible however to get the price of the electricity down to competitive rates by doing exactly as you suggest. It would require though that they actually made a sincere commitment to doing it though, and since this is the British Government, that is not going to happen.

A better and cheaper way than Hinkley point C, that looks like French cast-offs financed by a bunch of Chinese mercantilists.

Mark Wadsworth said...

ASM, yes that makes sense. I had independently come to the same conclusion and forgotten about it :-)

benj said...

ASM,

Out of all the GEN 3 reactors, I always thought the GE Hitachi ESBWR was the best and the UK should simply of built a dozen of those, subject to a pilot plant built on time/budget.

Instead we are building a nuclear zoo, one of which happens to be the ABWR, the previous generation of the above.

While I'm skeptical of the advantages of SMRs, I think this development of the ESBWR looks promising. Too late for the UK now.

https://analysis.nuclearenergyinsider.com/ge-hitachi-chases-gas-plant-displacement-new-300-mw-reactor

Mark Wadsworth said...

BJ, thanks. Following ASM's comment, I re-read your earlier article, saying that EPRs were the worst option. Agreed.