Hinkley C

[VicParticipant @vic]

Why are we even considering a flawed French design:

**LINK**

When this has been offered by a British company:

**LINK**

[VicParticipant @vic]

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Why are you even asking the question ?

.

Seeing as EDF are paying for it they are calling the shots.

If you want them to use the British one then write to your MP

[J HancockParticipant @jhancock95746]

EDF paying for it ?

WE are paying for it.

[JAParticipant @ja]

Quite simple – Hinkley C has become a "vanity" project. It has become too large, too expensive and has too many interested parties. Such projects are hard and costly to stop and even harder to control. Britain seems to do these very well; two enormous aircraft carriers and HS2 come to mind.

Before considering alternatives it is worth remembering that the ERP nuclear power station (same design as Hinkley C) being built in Finland was hailed on British TV as being cheap, on budget and on schedule ten or so years ago.

It should also be remembered some massive projects, Crossrail for example, do get built close to schedule and cost.

JA

Edited By JA on 03/09/2016 14:52:38

Edited By JA on 03/09/2016 14:55:21

Edited By JA on 03/09/2016 14:56:31

[KWILParticipant @kwil]

With luck the Chinese will pull out first.

[VicParticipant @vic]

Three times over budget and behind schedule.

**LINK**

[Michael Cox 1Participant @michaelcox1]

The worlds first commercial nuclear power station was designed for scratch, built and was running in 10 years.

That was the Calder Hall Magnox reactor designed and built in Britain.

We have been talking about Hinkley C for more than 10 years and still have nothing to show despite all the talk.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Michael Cox 1 on 03/09/2016 16:12:34:

The worlds first commercial nuclear power station was designed for scratch, built and was running in 10 years.

That was the Calder Hall Magnox reactor designed and built in Britain.

.

Those were the days !!

Electricity would be "too cheap to meter"

[which was, of course, on the basis that the electricity was a by-product in the production of Plutonium]

MichaelG.

[KWILParticipant @kwil]

Mañana project if ever there was one.

Politicians never make up their minds until they are forced to, no lights this winter might concentrate minds.

[JAParticipant @ja]

Just an observation – Rolls-Royce's Small Modular Reactor, the subject of the Daily Telegraph article (one of Vic's links), produces about the same amount of power as La Rance tidal power plant. It might cost a little bit more though. La Rance cost about E600M at 2009 prices while the SMR is around £1.4 billion at today's prices.

JA

[KWILParticipant @kwil]

RR SMR is UK made with £ paid locally, no need to export to earn the required foreign currency and a little matter of UK jobs.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 03/09/2016 17:02:50:

Posted by Michael Cox 1 on 03/09/2016 16:12:34:

The worlds first commercial nuclear power station was designed for scratch, built and was running in 10 years.

That was the Calder Hall Magnox reactor designed and built in Britain.

.

Those were the days !!

Electricity would be "too cheap to meter"

[which was, of course, on the basis that the electricity was a by-product in the production of Plutonium]

MichaelG.

My brother and I went to the Winscale Sellafield visitor centre over 35 years ago We found it intriguing that in all the diagrams of the reactions various isotopes were produced and then used/disposed of in various ways, except that there was always 1% of plutonium that never seemed to find a use…

Ironically, it does seem that nuclear power will be an important part of dealing with climate change and even FoE are no longer fundamentally opposed to it, though they still have concerns about cost, decommissioning and safety.

Neil

[Phil WhitleyParticipant @philwhitley94135]

All these comments have not mentioned that we do not need this grossly expensive technological white elephant at all. The reason that EDF are faltering is that the French Government has refused to underwrite the project, the demand for electricity in the UK is falling NOT rising, and the fact is that if it is ever completed (which I doubt) it will not provide any extra capacity for the grid, it will only generate 7% of the peak load and it will only replace other reactors which will then be taken off line and scrapped at HUGE cost to the taxpayer The clean up in Cumbria is slated to cost 70 Billion, is three years behind schedule, and the consortium involved in it have admitted that there are parts of the site that they have no ideas as to how, or even IF they can clean it up. If this stupidly large amount of money were put into wind, and tidal energy, we would get a huge amount more generating capacity, and would be feeding it into the grid all over the country, instead of at a few huge power stations, which would help to minimise the 20% grid losses. Anyone repeating the Nuclear industry propaganda which states that "The wind only blows 20% of the time" will be dealt with accordingly. My 6 mile drive to my work in East Yorkshire passes about 30 wind turbines, including some very big ones, and they are running about 90% of the time!

[Andy AshParticipant @andyash24902]

I am not of the view that renewables can provide the balance of energy that we need to keep going.

Core energy supply has to come from somewhere. Especially here in England, at our latitude. We will always need a way to get through the cold winters. We often get them. At a gentle extreme there is staying warm and comfortable. At a more harsh one, there is the need to keep sanitation – nee life support – for our cities going. In extremis they represent a burden for the nation, irrespective of our future willingness to feed them with energy.

I remain a supporter of coal, of which there are still considerable reserves. Coal will not run out in your grandchildren's lifetime. Obviously CO2 is an issue with fossil fuels. Although carbon sequestration is being explored it is not easy or cheap.

We should expect to pay more for our energy; This is not so that some Oligarch can extend his yacht.

Nuclear fuel is readily recycled and reprocessed. Although high grade waste is intensely toxic, unlike CO2 it doesn't escape you. It hangs around. I find it absurd that people see this as a bad thing. Indeed it makes the problem of our hunger for energy manageable. To my mind nuclear energy is ideal. It is honest.

It seems to be a part of the human condition to betray responsibility for our environmental impact. With Nuclear energy it is impossible to hide that impact of energy use without a structured, methodical approach to storage of waste.

I personally do not relish the Chinese input to the work being carried out at Hinkley. To my mind Chinese quality control, and indeed outright integrity, is not satisfactory for the standard of work we require in a flagship Nuclear reactor. If Hinkley as it stands today does not complete I will not be sad.

What I am sad about is that we know we need nuclear power. Indeed we need nuclear engineering. We need nuclear engineers. We have chosen not to invest in nuclear technology. Yet again in the UK we have failed to manage the pipeline of expertise and preserve capability, underwritten by integrity and quality.

Stupidly, we now expect other nations to provide excellent solutions to intensely difficult problems. At the same time, we expect those nations to deliver at the level of integrity and quality that we always did in the past. It isn't really surprising that they fail to meet expectations.

"If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well."

"If you want it done well, you'd better do it yourself."

Edited By Andy Ash on 03/09/2016 20:27:50

[Barnaby WildeParticipant @barnabywilde70941]

I'd like one day to research how many KW's of energy were generated by water wheels in the early days of the industrial revolution.

Then follow that with a bit of math on how many we could generate today with modern civil engineering practices & advanced water turbine design !

It might even flip one or two environMENTAList's !.

[Barnaby WildeParticipant @barnabywilde70941]

Posted by Andy Ash on 03/09/2016 20:19:28

I remain a supporter of coal, of which there are still considerable reserves. Coal will not run out in your grandchildren's lifetime. CO2 is an issue with coal and gas. Although carbon sequestration is being explored it is not easy or cheap.

My father was the local area 'explosives' man & worked very closely with the geologists.

Two major things puzzled him when 'she' shut down the mines :-

1. There is 300 yrs worth of coal down there at 1980's levels of consumption.

2. What will happen to the water table? The shut down wasn't planned for, nobody knew & it was nobody's job to think about it . . . But what will happen to the water table?

[Nick HulmeParticipant @nickhulme30114]

Posted by Andy Ash on 03/09/2016 20:19:28:

To my mind nuclear energy is ideal. It is honest.

Not when run by companies with shareholders who know they can milk it for profit then dump the consequences on the tax payer at end of life.

Let's see EDF and the chinese build their reactor in Calais, that way some of the cleanup will be forced where some of the profit goes

It's time for politicians to stop pushing costs into the future at massive expense to the tax payer and massive profit to companies with no vested interest in the UK!

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

Phil Whitley,

While I agree wholeheartedly – more renewables and lots of storage required (pumped, battery, hydrogen and any others) – do remember that those 30 turbineswill not be running at full power, most of the time they are turning. Installed (maximum) power needs to used for sizing the connections to the grid, nothing else, really. Land based turbines, on average, produce about 25- 30% of that maximum figure. They are put up knowing that utilisation factor, and that at times they may even be stationary due to insufficient or excess wind power.

One problem with distribution, especially for off-shore wind installation, is that of curtailment – the grid being too weak to distribute power in the opposite way than historicaly (think here heart/arteries/arterioles/capillaries analogy, where one cannot have a heart feeding directly into a capillary).

As regards coal and leaving it in the ground – good. Dirty, polluting and inefficient (60% + of the energy is lost in the total process, making it inefficient and more polluting. Than other fuels.

Nuclear is uwanted and potentially disastrous. I just remember the fire at Windscale, but only because the milk was poured down the drain and strontium 90 was at the top of the news agenda. Think tsumani, affecting rhe south west only a few hundred years ago! Look it up. It happened.

Borrowing the money from the French and Chinese, at a huge monetary cost for our children and their children, is the typical ploy of politicians. ''Borrow now, pay extortionately after I've left office'' is plainly idiotic (yes, politicians are idiots!). Thatis withoutthe potential cost of clean up, after itceasesto operate!

Renewables are here to stay. We need far more, before transport and heating fuel are replaced by renewablly sourced energy, but it will come. And the sooner, the better – for all.

[MWParticipant @mw27036]

Posted by not done it yet on 04/09/2016 09:21:38:

Phil Whitley,

As regards coal and leaving it in the ground – good. Dirty, polluting and inefficient (60% + of the energy is lost in the total process, making it inefficient and more polluting. Than other fuels.

He isn't lying, there is enough coal left in the ground to keep the country going for hundreds of years. Britain used to be a world leader in coal powerplants til it all came to an abrupt and unhappy end in the late 70's and 80's, it was a political excercise to curtail the unions power, had nothing to do with energy and environment.

I suppose you haven't heard of clean coal burning technology? The chinese picked up the trail where we left off and now they are the world leaders.

Michael W

[roy entwistleParticipant @royentwistle24699]

I always thought that nuclear is a complicated way of boiling water but what do I know ?

Roy

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by not done it yet on 04/09/2016 09:21:38:

Renewables are here to stay.

.

This may sound flippant, but I'm serious:

Could someone please explain to me what defines 'Renewables' ?

I have seen the term applied to wind/water/solar power, to wood-burning, and probably to others that I don't recall.

Are these things really 'Renewable', or is it just that we don't understand the mathematics, and we're fooling ourselves.

For example: A very [very] large number of Wind Turbines would surely extract sufficient energy to change the weather system. [ref. the Butterfly Effect]

MichaelG.

[KWILParticipant @kwil]

Quote

"I suppose you haven't heard of clean coal burning technology? The Chinese picked up the trail where we left off and now they are the world leaders."

How come they are still a major polluter then?

[VicParticipant @vic]

Coal powered power plants don't seem to be a problem for the Germans and they burn a lot of really filthy brown coal.

**LINK**

[MWParticipant @mw27036]

Yes, clean coal technology, google it, not the sort of changes that make the headlines.

Michael W

[Author]

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