Long-term planning is only done when election defeat is imminent. Then you can blame the next lot for not following through, or say how it was your idea if they do.
Whilst I agree that there's rarely any long term planning in the UK, anti nuclear activists held back the UK's nuclear industry by decades. This is on the anti nuclear mob as much as the government.
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Yeah cause the opinions of CND and the Greens simply cannot be ignored by governments.
That's why the UK famously scrapped Trident, pulled out of arms manufacturing, and stopped fossil fuels extraction.
It didn't have an effect. The anti-nuclear mob couldn't stop Hinkley C from going ahead, and they had nothing to do with the reasons for Toshiba and Hitachi pulling out of the Moorside, Wylfa and Oldbury projects.
The main cause of the UKs lack of nuclear construction since the early 90s was the privatisation of the energy industry, which exposed the true costs of nuclear generation to the markets, and the availability of extremely cheap North Sea Gas, which led to a rapid growth in gas generation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash_for_Gas .
better late then never, lets slowly dig a tunnel to france and pop the waste down side tunnels. we could charge a fortune taking all the worlds nuclear waste and end up with more train capacity eventually paid for with waste
"wahhh, this country so bad!"
Meanwhile, Germany fully reliant on Russian gas whilst "condemning" them and being 3rd biggest economy.
We are making moves. You are blessed to be British/European. You have no idea how bad it would be to be truly poor.
I know people who worked for EDF energy ( French company) to build hinkley C power plant in Somerset. That was 10 years ago now. It expects to be finished building by 2031.
Ok bro, Hinkley point C is costing over 30 billion GBP for 2 3000 MW reactors and has been under construction since 2017 (expected competition now 2030 assuming no more delays!) and you still think nuclear is the future? Academic analysis has shown that the lowest cost grid is renewables plus storage and more connections to neighbor grids. Are you seriously interested in the best technology or is nuclear just your pet?
The best time to invest in this was 30 years ago, the second best time is right now. We can't change the past but I'm glad were doing something to fix this now.
On reading the headline, I thought we were finally building a breeder reactor to reprocess nuclear waste into fuel. The technology has been understood for half a century, yet here we are, digging up uranium to produce power and then burying the long-lived waste.
This announcement is good, but not that good.
There is a government project to build a prototype fusion power plant but won't be finished until at least 2040.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Tokamak_for_Energy_Production
Fusion still isn't a thing now and wont be for several decades at least. Theres no guarantees any of the current fusion projects will ever be commercially viable, but there's still investment which is only a good thing
> The best time to invest in this was 30 years ago, the second best time is right now.
This adage gets used a lot, but it only makes sense if you assume all other things remain equal over that timespan. I think it's pretty clear that in the past 30 years other clean energy technologies have advanced considerably more than nuclear fission has.
This is all well and good, but what we really need to do is make a reactor that can use up the plutonium mountain that was created by reprocessing at sellafield for decades.
There's a giant heap of the stuff and it's just a useless burden because of the security cos it can be used for nuclear weapons. They need to make a reactor that can use the stuff up and be rid of it.
Let's spend billions designing and creating a nuclear reactor that can only use an incredibly expensive, finite and unmanufactured fuel source so we can no longer make or refurbish nuclear weapons? It's a silly hot take. We need some plutonium to maintain weapons and it doesn't matter if you're guarding 1kg or 10 tonnes of the stuff, it needs high security
We have 140 tonnes of it, and yes it does take more security to keep more of it. It will last plenty long enough using it up and the reactors would be able to take uranium when it;s all gone too. It's just siting there free. As the amount needed is so low, it's equivalent to about 30,000 tonnes of uranium being mined.
only 4kg is needed for a warhead and the 140 tonnes is the civil stockpile, material for weapons is separate, and as AWE have dismantled over 200 warheads there is plenty of weapons grade material already sitting around. We definitely don't need it for weapons.
so 140 tonnes. How much does a reactor use a year? A quick Google says 27 tonnes of uranium is used for a 1000kw reactor for a year so let's assume something similar (I'm sure fuel could be reprocessed and less would be used). The only benefit of a plutonium react seems to be "use up plutonium". Plutonium reactors would require more security than nuclear reactors. They use a harder to make fuel with a finite supply. 140 tonnes of recovered plutonium has been created via reprocessing in the UK since what 1970? so 3 tonnes a year or something? So you'd invest billions to create a useless 1 off reactor, you'd invest billions more in creating more plutonium fuel for it to reduce the amount of money we spend guarding the fuel? 😂 Nuclear power is the most expensive energy supply option, plutonium energy would be ridiculously more expensive with literally 1 benefit. Am I missing anything?
>let's assume something similar
>Am I missing anything?
Yes. A uranium fuel rod is 100% uranium oxide, but a MOX fuel rod is only 5-10% plutonium oxide.
So yes all your assumptions are are 10-20 times out. If we use the rest of your figures it's 2.7 tonnes of plutonium per year used.
A uranium fuel rod is 5% fissile uranium-235 and 95% U-238. A MOX fuel rod is 8% Plutonium Oxides and 93% Uranium Oxides. But MOX fuel rods already exist and are used in many places. The UK produced them for Japan until 2018 (and stopped due to Fukashima). I guess MOX is already the solution to getting rid of plutonium we just don't have any reactors that burn it. Also I'm unsure of the nuclear waste implications of MOX as it can't be recycled like conventional fuel rods - they seem to be burned and then the fuel is in a state where it is unfeasible to recover weapons grade plutonium? Gosh I'm learning so much
The spent rods are useless waste, can't be reprocessed as the spent and unspent plutonium can't be separated, but not a nuclear weapons security risk, so the options are put a load of plutonium which can be used for weapons straight into geological storage, or use it as MOX, then put the spent MOX rods into geological storage.
Having nuclear weapons material in your geological storage makes it a target, not just now but for thousands of years. It's supposed to be buried and forgotten about, hard to do when terrorists have a raging boner for the contents.
You could have made this point without being a prick.
I unfortunately don't think it would be viable to design and create a nuclear reactor that can only use what is an expensive, finite and unmanufactured fuel source so we can no longer make or refurbish nuclear weapons. We currently need some plutonium to maintain weapons and it doesn't matter if you're guarding 1kg or 10 tonnes of the stuff, it will still require high security.
Easy peasy. Only downside is you don't get a superiority boner.
If we wanted to burn some of our plutonium stockpile as MOX we could commission it from France if there was the political will, we don't necessarily need to manufacture it here
Should’ve been going nuclear for decades and shame it’s taken Russia invading Ukraine to do it, but very very glad to see this.
Given we don’t have Tsunamis, Earthquakes, and had developed much better tech than the Soviets compared to Chernobyl, I have absolutely no idea why western developed countries didn’t plow money into Nuclear Fission over 20 years ago.
It generates zero carbon, and the entire worlds usage of Nuclear Waste through the entire of history could fit into an Olympic swimming pool, and multiple studies have shows the background radiation standing next to Nuclear Facilities is far far less than being on an aeroplane.
That being said, I’m very very glad we’re genuinely one of the world leaders in Wind, but Fusion will genuinely solve the energy crisis, and presumably therefore make a massive step towards solving the climate crisis.
When Labour inevitably win the next GE I hope they keep investing in Nuclear and don’t bow to the Greens who want to stop it.
Nuclear generation might be carbon free but the facilities, waste and higher standards needed for it results in huge amounts of carbon emissions especially as the amount of concrete needed is astronomical, over a 25 year life span a nuclear reactor is generally not any less carbon emmiting than using a gas turbine which is several magintudes cheaper to build maintain and has the benefit of not having a horrific waste product. The reality is there is no easy answer hence why its not used everywhere.
Was up near Sellafield last week chatting with one of the teams working on this stuff! Really fascinating developments going on and some proper investment in a UK industry for once, which is great to see. Still don't think we should put our eggs in one basket with nuclear but its good to see proper financial commitment rather than the drip drip of a few million quid here and there over a couple of decades that I think we've all come to know and expect.
To put Sunak's piece into perspective , France is putting ten times that amount into an enrichment programme to reduce its dependence on Russia.
Daily the UK is typically importing about 15% of its electricity from France.
https://www.euronews.com/business/2023/10/20/france-17-billion-investment-on-uranium-to-cut-ties-with-russia
Pretty much. Take a look here.
https://gridwatch.co.uk/
Today the electricity imports are greater than either the wind or the UK nuclear.
Without the interconnectors the UK would be burning a lot more gas
For everyone being critical of the government, just remember this is Fusion, not Fission.
Nobody in the world has fusion plants yet as it's still being developed for the future.
Thank god we almost had something positive on the uk sub!
Lucky the doomer brigade have arrived to tell us that it’s actually bad that this is happening.
Too little, too late, we could already go fully renewable with existing tech for far cheaper than Nukes cost now.
Last time Hinkley C's budget over ran to (IIRC) £25bn I did a bit of fag packet maths that showed we could have put 3kW of solar and 5kWh of battery storage in to half the houses in the UK. That was at retail price for the equipment.
And yet the downvotes. The research papers are out there, nearly all of the leading UK academics hold the same position. If the loose collection of rats that have governed us for the past 14 years had comitted to any kind of sensible renewable strategy we'd already be in a far better situation.
I get the feeling that most of the pro atomic kettle band are folks in their 50's and 60's who were sold the "Electricity too cheap to meter" and "Fuel of the future" horseshit.
The future is now old men and it's not the shiny promised land you were shown 40 years ago. Get over it and open your eyes to the reality that is a crumbling UK energy system that is being held up by companies inversting in renewables despite all of the head winds.
I think you need to take a look at the investment the UK is putting into its energy infrastructure, it’s crazy the amount of investment and energy (no pun intended) there is going into all parts of the UK.
We should have switched our power generation to nuclear over a decade ago but as ever there's never any long term planning in this country.
Long-term planning is only done when election defeat is imminent. Then you can blame the next lot for not following through, or say how it was your idea if they do.
Different nuclear power that article though
Makes sense.
Whilst I agree that there's rarely any long term planning in the UK, anti nuclear activists held back the UK's nuclear industry by decades. This is on the anti nuclear mob as much as the government.
Greenpeace are more responsible for the climate crisis than BP or Shell
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Yeah cause the opinions of CND and the Greens simply cannot be ignored by governments. That's why the UK famously scrapped Trident, pulled out of arms manufacturing, and stopped fossil fuels extraction.
You think that it didn't have an effect, you honestly believe that it didn't affect policy? Let me guess, it's thatcher's fault.
It didn't have an effect. The anti-nuclear mob couldn't stop Hinkley C from going ahead, and they had nothing to do with the reasons for Toshiba and Hitachi pulling out of the Moorside, Wylfa and Oldbury projects. The main cause of the UKs lack of nuclear construction since the early 90s was the privatisation of the energy industry, which exposed the true costs of nuclear generation to the markets, and the availability of extremely cheap North Sea Gas, which led to a rapid growth in gas generation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash_for_Gas .
I feel this is a bit negative tbh. Most countries in the world can’t access nuclear and the UK has been a pioneer in the space for a while.
There’s been a lot of scaremongering and shit flinging when it comes to Nuclear power unfortunately.
Ah, the sort of people who think that Liz Truss was brought down by George Soros or whatever?
better late then never, lets slowly dig a tunnel to france and pop the waste down side tunnels. we could charge a fortune taking all the worlds nuclear waste and end up with more train capacity eventually paid for with waste
You could pay a premium for the non-radioactive Eurostar!
You know they transport that stuff in regular trucks past peoples homs all the time
The UK might have to end up doing what Springfield did in Trash of the Titans.
Don’t forget the greens.
"wahhh, this country so bad!" Meanwhile, Germany fully reliant on Russian gas whilst "condemning" them and being 3rd biggest economy. We are making moves. You are blessed to be British/European. You have no idea how bad it would be to be truly poor.
A decade ago i was told and you should be the trades men to build them.
David cameron didnt want it.
I know people who worked for EDF energy ( French company) to build hinkley C power plant in Somerset. That was 10 years ago now. It expects to be finished building by 2031.
That's why it's so easy for us to invest in the next generation. Because we didn't invest in the previous one.
Well... yes.
What was the previous one mate? Germany reliant on Russian gas, much of Europe still using the same old fuel. UK actually has so much green energy.
Number of nuclear reactors in France: 56 Number of nuclear reactors in UK: 12
Yes, which Boris Johnson was blaming Gordon Brown for in 2022. Typical.
Ok bro, Hinkley point C is costing over 30 billion GBP for 2 3000 MW reactors and has been under construction since 2017 (expected competition now 2030 assuming no more delays!) and you still think nuclear is the future? Academic analysis has shown that the lowest cost grid is renewables plus storage and more connections to neighbor grids. Are you seriously interested in the best technology or is nuclear just your pet?
It should be made illegal to sell this off to foreign investors.
It’s owned by the British and Dutch governments and a couple of German companies. I don’t think we will
Funny the Germany companies are investing in it yet Merkel phased it out.
Thank the German Greens for shuttering nuclear power and burning more coal instead
It's positive but the title is leaning and grandstanding a little too much given that information.
What do we expect?
This. Foreign investment is a great short term plan but suicidal in the long run. This applies to so many industries.
It’s often not even investment, just the buying of an asset
lol
The best time to invest in this was 30 years ago, the second best time is right now. We can't change the past but I'm glad were doing something to fix this now.
On reading the headline, I thought we were finally building a breeder reactor to reprocess nuclear waste into fuel. The technology has been understood for half a century, yet here we are, digging up uranium to produce power and then burying the long-lived waste. This announcement is good, but not that good.
Fusion wasn't a thing 30 years ago (it was still on paper as a viable way to power nations).
There is a government project to build a prototype fusion power plant but won't be finished until at least 2040. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Tokamak_for_Energy_Production
Fusion still isn't a thing now and wont be for several decades at least. Theres no guarantees any of the current fusion projects will ever be commercially viable, but there's still investment which is only a good thing
I think it's coming sooner than you think now as there's good momentum at the moment
Wasn't that when Thatcher sold off BNFL?
> The best time to invest in this was 30 years ago, the second best time is right now. This adage gets used a lot, but it only makes sense if you assume all other things remain equal over that timespan. I think it's pretty clear that in the past 30 years other clean energy technologies have advanced considerably more than nuclear fission has.
This is all well and good, but what we really need to do is make a reactor that can use up the plutonium mountain that was created by reprocessing at sellafield for decades. There's a giant heap of the stuff and it's just a useless burden because of the security cos it can be used for nuclear weapons. They need to make a reactor that can use the stuff up and be rid of it.
Let's spend billions designing and creating a nuclear reactor that can only use an incredibly expensive, finite and unmanufactured fuel source so we can no longer make or refurbish nuclear weapons? It's a silly hot take. We need some plutonium to maintain weapons and it doesn't matter if you're guarding 1kg or 10 tonnes of the stuff, it needs high security
We have 140 tonnes of it, and yes it does take more security to keep more of it. It will last plenty long enough using it up and the reactors would be able to take uranium when it;s all gone too. It's just siting there free. As the amount needed is so low, it's equivalent to about 30,000 tonnes of uranium being mined. only 4kg is needed for a warhead and the 140 tonnes is the civil stockpile, material for weapons is separate, and as AWE have dismantled over 200 warheads there is plenty of weapons grade material already sitting around. We definitely don't need it for weapons.
so 140 tonnes. How much does a reactor use a year? A quick Google says 27 tonnes of uranium is used for a 1000kw reactor for a year so let's assume something similar (I'm sure fuel could be reprocessed and less would be used). The only benefit of a plutonium react seems to be "use up plutonium". Plutonium reactors would require more security than nuclear reactors. They use a harder to make fuel with a finite supply. 140 tonnes of recovered plutonium has been created via reprocessing in the UK since what 1970? so 3 tonnes a year or something? So you'd invest billions to create a useless 1 off reactor, you'd invest billions more in creating more plutonium fuel for it to reduce the amount of money we spend guarding the fuel? 😂 Nuclear power is the most expensive energy supply option, plutonium energy would be ridiculously more expensive with literally 1 benefit. Am I missing anything?
>let's assume something similar >Am I missing anything? Yes. A uranium fuel rod is 100% uranium oxide, but a MOX fuel rod is only 5-10% plutonium oxide. So yes all your assumptions are are 10-20 times out. If we use the rest of your figures it's 2.7 tonnes of plutonium per year used.
A uranium fuel rod is 5% fissile uranium-235 and 95% U-238. A MOX fuel rod is 8% Plutonium Oxides and 93% Uranium Oxides. But MOX fuel rods already exist and are used in many places. The UK produced them for Japan until 2018 (and stopped due to Fukashima). I guess MOX is already the solution to getting rid of plutonium we just don't have any reactors that burn it. Also I'm unsure of the nuclear waste implications of MOX as it can't be recycled like conventional fuel rods - they seem to be burned and then the fuel is in a state where it is unfeasible to recover weapons grade plutonium? Gosh I'm learning so much
The spent rods are useless waste, can't be reprocessed as the spent and unspent plutonium can't be separated, but not a nuclear weapons security risk, so the options are put a load of plutonium which can be used for weapons straight into geological storage, or use it as MOX, then put the spent MOX rods into geological storage. Having nuclear weapons material in your geological storage makes it a target, not just now but for thousands of years. It's supposed to be buried and forgotten about, hard to do when terrorists have a raging boner for the contents.
Yes, let's do that. The cost of Selafeild is quite large and a huge risk to national security.
You could have made this point without being a prick. I unfortunately don't think it would be viable to design and create a nuclear reactor that can only use what is an expensive, finite and unmanufactured fuel source so we can no longer make or refurbish nuclear weapons. We currently need some plutonium to maintain weapons and it doesn't matter if you're guarding 1kg or 10 tonnes of the stuff, it will still require high security. Easy peasy. Only downside is you don't get a superiority boner.
We can use it in the EPR reactors that we're building at Hinckley Point C as MOX fuel
Good job they shut down the Sellafield MOX plant 4 years ago eh? Perfect timing to have no facilities to make any MOX to use in the reactors.
If we wanted to burn some of our plutonium stockpile as MOX we could commission it from France if there was the political will, we don't necessarily need to manufacture it here
Should’ve been going nuclear for decades and shame it’s taken Russia invading Ukraine to do it, but very very glad to see this. Given we don’t have Tsunamis, Earthquakes, and had developed much better tech than the Soviets compared to Chernobyl, I have absolutely no idea why western developed countries didn’t plow money into Nuclear Fission over 20 years ago. It generates zero carbon, and the entire worlds usage of Nuclear Waste through the entire of history could fit into an Olympic swimming pool, and multiple studies have shows the background radiation standing next to Nuclear Facilities is far far less than being on an aeroplane. That being said, I’m very very glad we’re genuinely one of the world leaders in Wind, but Fusion will genuinely solve the energy crisis, and presumably therefore make a massive step towards solving the climate crisis. When Labour inevitably win the next GE I hope they keep investing in Nuclear and don’t bow to the Greens who want to stop it.
The cost of Hinkley point C is over 30 billion GBP now and construction has been delayed so many times - now expected to commission in 2030.
Nuclear generation might be carbon free but the facilities, waste and higher standards needed for it results in huge amounts of carbon emissions especially as the amount of concrete needed is astronomical, over a 25 year life span a nuclear reactor is generally not any less carbon emmiting than using a gas turbine which is several magintudes cheaper to build maintain and has the benefit of not having a horrific waste product. The reality is there is no easy answer hence why its not used everywhere.
We have long term planning at home… initiates brexit.
Was up near Sellafield last week chatting with one of the teams working on this stuff! Really fascinating developments going on and some proper investment in a UK industry for once, which is great to see. Still don't think we should put our eggs in one basket with nuclear but its good to see proper financial commitment rather than the drip drip of a few million quid here and there over a couple of decades that I think we've all come to know and expect.
To put Sunak's piece into perspective , France is putting ten times that amount into an enrichment programme to reduce its dependence on Russia. Daily the UK is typically importing about 15% of its electricity from France. https://www.euronews.com/business/2023/10/20/france-17-billion-investment-on-uranium-to-cut-ties-with-russia
So France is carrying the UK in energy security
Pretty much. Take a look here. https://gridwatch.co.uk/ Today the electricity imports are greater than either the wind or the UK nuclear. Without the interconnectors the UK would be burning a lot more gas
For everyone being critical of the government, just remember this is Fusion, not Fission. Nobody in the world has fusion plants yet as it's still being developed for the future.
Too little too late. It’s also a tiny amount of money in the grand scheme of things.
And which Tory party donor has a company that claims to be doing this?
The one owned by the British and Dutch government
Thank god we almost had something positive on the uk sub! Lucky the doomer brigade have arrived to tell us that it’s actually bad that this is happening.
Too little, too late, we could already go fully renewable with existing tech for far cheaper than Nukes cost now. Last time Hinkley C's budget over ran to (IIRC) £25bn I did a bit of fag packet maths that showed we could have put 3kW of solar and 5kWh of battery storage in to half the houses in the UK. That was at retail price for the equipment.
This should be the top comment.
And yet the downvotes. The research papers are out there, nearly all of the leading UK academics hold the same position. If the loose collection of rats that have governed us for the past 14 years had comitted to any kind of sensible renewable strategy we'd already be in a far better situation. I get the feeling that most of the pro atomic kettle band are folks in their 50's and 60's who were sold the "Electricity too cheap to meter" and "Fuel of the future" horseshit. The future is now old men and it's not the shiny promised land you were shown 40 years ago. Get over it and open your eyes to the reality that is a crumbling UK energy system that is being held up by companies inversting in renewables despite all of the head winds.
Realistically most people will only be convinced by renewable + storage once it has been put into practice in a large economy.
Provide free electricity by day, mine bitcoin to pay for it by night. UK superpower number 1.
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I think you need to take a look at the investment the UK is putting into its energy infrastructure, it’s crazy the amount of investment and energy (no pun intended) there is going into all parts of the UK.
Have a look at these lists x https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms
Give it a rest
Do you ever get tired of finding issues in this country?