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'Build baby build', says Keir Starmer as he sets out nuclear plan (www.bbc.co.uk)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Interesting gamble the government is taking here. Unusually the environmentalists are right to be cautious, SMRs have been designed since the 90s and not a one of them has ever come to anything.

Also not completely sure why we'd need it. By the governments own plans we can expect our wind power to jump from 10gw to 50gw by 2035, which would mean being 100% renewable powered for months at a time.

Which will make it very very expensive, the research I've seen recently says nations that manage that transition can expect electric price falls of a quarter to a half, and that Hinckley plant is already going to be selling at over twice the unit price of any other source. I would expect SMR plans to collapse for that reason by itself.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

I'd say we don't understand enough about secondary and tertiary effects of supply chains to know which is better environmentally. Certainly both are far better than fossil fuels, but our supply and construction worlds are so dependent on fossil fuels we can't really tell the impact of constructing them.

What you can absolutely say is that the time scale of nuclear is too slow. Wind power in the UK has basically gone from ~0 to 80TWh annually in 15 years. 32 megatonnes of CO2 didn't get emitted because of wind generation last year (Vs combined cycle gas generation). When Dogger Bank comes on line this year that will be closer to 100TWh and 40 MT of CO2. I haven't even considered the 5 MT saved from solar.

(Loose annual numbers based off grid.iamkate.com)

Hinckley point C is looking at a construction time of 13 years (2017-2030). That'll generate 28TWh annually. It'll save 11 MT of CO2 annually Vs gas, but up until 2030 it's saving a big fat zero. All whist our other nuclear plants age out and we have to resort to gas for the shortfall.

People can say we should of / would of / could of done things better with nuclear in the past, but we didn't. Renewables are saving CO2 emissions today because they can be brought on-line bit by bit. Nuclear is all or nothing and a long way in the future.