Hinkley Point C Nuclear Power Plant to be built in 2020. Why is the UK Government so interested? … [+]
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It is an almost universally accepted truth that humanity must stop using fossil fuels to generate electricity in order to have a chance to limit global warming. But how do we deal with it?
In addition to using renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, the UK government is advocating the use of nuclear power to accelerate the decarbonization of the country’s energy supply. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has consistently supported the development of “small and advanced reactors” while the country’s Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change Anne-Marie Trevelyan stated last week: “While renewable energies such as wind and solar power become integral Becoming part of where our electricity will come from by 2050, they will always need a stable, low-carbon base load from nuclear energy. “
This statement, offered as a statement of fact, made some observers scratch their heads: Here was a British minister who claimed that renewable energies always require nuclear power to function. Was that true And why do politicians like to use the word “baseload” anyway?
“Baseload is a concept that is used in traditional energy systems,” said Kang Li, professor of intelligent energy systems at the University of Leeds. “The mass electrification of traffic, industry and heating will likely have a significant impact on electricity operations. One of the measures to cover the significantly increased demand for electricity and at the same time cushion the fluctuations in renewable generation is the construction of a new nuclear power plant. “
With the availability of wind and sun fluctuating, the government argues that if the UK’s coal and gas turbines are shut down, nuclear power will need to provide a constant, stable source of electricity.
But many experts, including Steve Holliday, former CEO of UK National Grid, consider this notion to be out of date. In a 2015 interview, Holliday dismissed the concept of base load, arguing that in a modern, decentralized power system, the usefulness of large power plants has been reduced to coping with demand peaks.
But even to that end, Sarah J. Darby, Associate Professor of the Energy Program at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, told me that nuclear power isn’t doing much. “Nuclear stations are particularly unsuitable for peak loads: They are so expensive to build that it makes no sense to only use them for a short time,” she explains. “Even if it would be easy to adapt your production flexibly – which is not the case – there does not seem to be a business case for nuclear energy, whether large, small, ‘advanced’ or otherwise.”
In a white paper released in June, a team of researchers at Imperial College London revealed that the fastest, cheapest way to meet UK energy needs by 2035 is to dramatically increase the construction of wind farms and energy storage facilities such as batteries. “When solar and / or nuclear power get significantly cheaper, you should build more, but there is no reason to build more nuclear power just because it’s ‘solid’ or ‘base load’,” said Tim Green, co-director of Energy Future Lab from Imperial me. “Storage, demand-side response and international networking can all be used to cope with the variability of the wind.”
Another important issue is time. Because of the well-documented safety and environmental concerns associated with ionizing radiation, it takes many years to design and build even a small nuclear reactor. In 2007, the UK’s large Hinkley Point C nuclear power station was predicted to be operational by 2017. “Estimated completion date is now 2026,” noted Darby. “And Hinkley C used established technology. Given the records of time delays and overspending in the nuclear industry, the claim that ‘the latest nuclear technology will be operational within the next decade’ is not convincing. “
That’s a problem as the UK needs to cut its emissions by 78% by 2035 to stay on track with the Paris Agreement.
According to the independent World Nuclear Industry Status Report, nuclear energy “does not meet any technical or operational need that low-carbon competitors cannot meet better, cheaper and faster”.
So if there is no need for more nuclear power and it is too expensive and too slow to do the job that its proponents say it will do, why is the government so eager to support it?
Andy Stirling, professor of science and technology policy at the University of Sussex, believes the pressure to support nuclear power comes from another British commitment: defense. More precisely, the country’s fleet of nuclear submarines.
The nuclear submarine HMS Vengeance will sail to Devonport before conversion on February 27th, … [+]
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“The US and France have openly recognized this military rationale for building new civilian nuclear weapons,” he told me. “The British defense literature is very clear on this point too. Maintaining civilian nuclear power despite its high cost helps to channel taxpayer and consumer revenues into a common infrastructure, without whose support military nuclear activities alone would become unaffordable. “
This is not a conspiracy theory. In 2018, Stirling and his colleague Philip Johnstone published the results of their research on “Interdependencies between civil and military nuclear infrastructures” in countries with nuclear capabilities. In the US, a 2017 Energy Futures Initiative report that included a 2017 statement from former US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said: “A strong domestic supply chain is required to meet the requirements of the nuclear navy. This supply chain has an inherent and very strong overlap with the commercial nuclear power sector and has a strong presence in states with commercial nuclear power plants. “
In the UK, bodies such as the Nuclear Industry Council, a joint forum between the nuclear industry and the government, have specifically highlighted the overlap between the need for a civilian nuclear sector and the country’s submarine programs. And this week, Rolls-Royce, which builds the propulsion systems for the country’s nuclear submarines, announced that it has secured roughly $ 292 million to develop small modular reactors of the type advertised by the Prime Minister.
In Stirling’s view, these interrelationships help “explain the otherwise grave mystery why official support for civilian nuclear builds should continue at a time when the energy case has become so transparent”.
Stirling and other experts say the energy arguments for nuclear power are weak because there are better, cheaper, and faster alternatives that are readily available.
“When there is too little wind and sun, emission-free generators are needed that can increase their performance flexibly and quickly,” says Mark Barrett, professor of energy and environmental systems modeling at University College London. “That could be renewable energies like biogas or generators that use fuels that are produced with renewable energies like hydrogen. But in contrast to nuclear power, these can be switched off when wind and sun are sufficient. “
In fact, Barrett said, renewables are getting so cheap that excess energy won’t necessarily be that big of a deal.
“Renewable energy costs have dropped 60-80% in the last decade, with more to come, so it’s cheaper to spill some of the renewable generation than it is to store it, and mostly renewable systems are cheaper than nuclear energy. Renewable energies can be built quickly: wind power in the UK has increased to 24% of total generation, mostly in just 10 years. And of course renewable energies do not cause any safety or waste problems. “
Sarah Darby agreed, saying, “A mix of energy efficiency, storage and more flexible demand is much more promising in reducing overall carbon emissions and managing peaks and troughs in power supplies.”
“The UK market for flexibility services is already delivering effective, firm capacity on the order of a large nuclear reactor per year at a cost that is only a fraction of the cost of nuclear energy,” Stirling told me. “Since the flexibility costs drop radically – for batteries, other storage systems, electric vehicles, responsive demand, hydrogen production – the scope for further future cost savings is enormous.”
“There are no foreseeable resource restrictions for renewable energies or smart grids that make the case for nuclear power even remotely credible,” he added. “The ability of the British government to perpetuate such a blatantly flawed case with so few serious questions is a major problem for British democracy.”
In the UK, both the incumbent Conservative Party and the largest opposition party, Labor, support the development of new and advanced nuclear reactors. I reached out to Anne-Marie Trevelyan’s office as well as the office of Edward Miliband, Labor’s shadow secretary of state for economy, energy and industrial strategy, but none had replied by the time of publication.
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