Aberthaw Power Station and Decarbonisation

[whole diary]

[TonyK]

I am very doubtful as to the merits of transporting charged batteries to near the place where electricity is required.

It would almost certainly make more sense to send the electricity via existing or newly built transmission lines than to transport batteries.
One of the original reasons for building the national grid was to facilitate the burning of coal in large, modern power stations near the coal mines, and to avoid transporting coal to distant power stations.

That went well for a number of years, although as we began to export our pollution, coal was shipped in from nearby Columbia via Royal Portbury Dock. Drax developed the idea, and now imports forests from Canada to burn here to make greed subsidies green power. Every little helps on the road to net zero.

[broadgage]

I agree that the large scale burning of imported wood chips is not in fact green, despite claims to the contrary made by HMG. I am not opposed to the modest use of firewood for domestic heating provided that this is obtained from local sustainably managed woodlands, or from trees blown down in gales/removed for public safety reasons.

Wood chips imported  from thousands of miles away, by oil burning ships, are not green and I have little faith in claims made regarding sustainable management/replanting.

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckkg0wl7dkro

Power station's last coal delivery arrives by rail



A power station's final order of coal has arrived by rail, marking the end of an era for the site, and bringing a new name to the locomotive pulling the load.

Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire is home to the UK^▸ (United Kingdom)'s last remaining coal-fired power station, which is set to shut at the end of September.

The 1,650 tonnes of coal delivered on Friday is expected to be the last ever fuel shipment sent there.

To mark the occasion, the rail operator GB^▸ (Great Britain) Railfreight (GBRf) has named one of its locomotives "Ratcliffe Power Station".

BBC article continues.

[broadgage]

The UK^▸ (United Kingdom) continues to make good progress on decarbonisation of electricity generation, with coal burning almost eliminated and wind/solar increasing.
Progress on transport and domestic heating has been less impressive.

[stuving]

The UK^▸ (United Kingdom) continues to make good progress on decarbonisation of electricity generation, with coal burning almost eliminated and wind/solar increasing.
Progress on transport and domestic heating has been less impressive.

And decarbonising what is not yet electric calls for superelectrification (or summat like that) - a slow process, as regards new nuclear generators and new transmission lines. So it's perhaps worth noting that the Flamanville EPR is in its final stages of commissioning (or "setting to work"). Grid connection is due this summer.

It was fuelled in May, and has done cold testing and is now doing hot testing. Despite what you might expect, no nuclei are harmed in this process - it's done by heating the water and running the pumps, pressurisers, etc. In fact, I think that big steam generators, not just nuclear ones, are heated externally before full power is unleashed. For one thing, it's very important that the turbine shaft and casing heat and cool at the same rate, as the running clearances are much smaller than the overall thermal expansion.

[broadgage]

I am rather doubtful as to the deliverability of nuclear power. The French nuclear power station referred to above is many years behind schedule, and opportunities remain for yet more delays.
Hinckley point is also years behind and costs are still increasing.

Wind and solar power are available "off the shelf" for prompt installation.

International interconnectors are increasing in both numbers and capacity and can be most useful. We should however avoid becoming too reliant on importing electricity, the aim should be to be a net exporter of electricity.

[TonyK]

We missed a chance in 2001 to get nuclear moving again, but it's here again and should be taken. Part of the high cost of Hinkley C was the need to start from scratch again, training an army of people in the many skills needed to build a nuclear power station. The first reactor building for Hinkley C is nearly ready for the real guts of the job, the reactor core, to be installed. Building of the second unit is progressing more quickly than the first. Sizewell C is almost a copy of HPC, and should be even quicker when the workforce moves to there. Flamanville should have been the first, but will be the third, of the type to open. The reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland, also a European Pressurised Reactor, started commercial operations last April, but was beaten by the Taishan EPR in China. Solar and wind are obviously quicker to build, but with the disadvantage of being weather dependent as the snapshot from Gridwatch shows. The 2.1 GW^▸ (Great Western) of wind power is being produced by 28 GW of installed capacity. Solar looks good, although it's getting dark now. Demand is very low tonight, which is why nuclear is doing better than gas. Building more wind and solar will do us fine so long as we are prepared as a nation for long periods without enough power to go around or (more likely) keep plenty of gas plants in reserve.
Interconnectors are great for helping balance our grid. We can also export some of our pollution so long as the other side has spare power to send. Tonight's net 18% import of electricity, whilst still burning lots of gas to make electricity, doesn't look like what one could call sustainable throughout the year.

[broadgage]

I can the see merits of nuclear power, but the delays and ever increasing costs are a significant concern.
Building more nuclear power stations to an already existing design should indeed be much cheaper and quicker, but would this be achieved ?
Or will each new plant have to be different include the latest advances and new safety features.

Remember the mantra of designers and consultants "if it works it is obsolete"

[TonyK]

I can the see merits of nuclear power, but the delays and ever increasing costs are a significant concern.
Building more nuclear power stations to an already existing design should indeed be much cheaper and quicker, but would this be achieved ?
Or will each new plant have to be different include the latest advances and new safety features.

Remember the mantra of designers and consultants "if it works it is obsolete"

When I was first looking to buy a PC many years ago, I realised the truth in that mantra. A friend fed me lots of doorstep-thick computing magazines, most of the content of which was 4-page adverts for computers featuring pictures of people dressed as Roman gods. I still don't know why, but I did spot that the prices went down and the specification up every month, meaning that I would have to jump on the roundabout one day in the knowledge that anything I ordered would be obsolete before it arrived.

Nuclear power stations aren't exactly like that, because there aren't as many small companies developing their own rapidly advancing technology. Changes in plans during construction cause delay and expense while sometimes adding nothing to the safety or efficiency to the plant, but in response to lobbying by laymen. Once built, the plants (or at least the nuclear parts) stay as they are as a rule, and I recall being surprised at how antiquated the instruments in the control room at Hinkley B looked. They were state of the art when building commenced, a bit dated when it began generation, and state of the ark by the time it closed, but they worked. EDF have said that construction of the second Hinkley C reactor is going much faster than the first because everyone now knows what to do, more parts are being engineered under factory conditions, and new techniques in putting it all together have evolved. The plan is to take that expertise to Sizewell and possibly elsewhere to build what will be in essence a copy of Hinkley C. The design has been approved by our nuclear watchdog after a few adaptations seen as over-zealous, but which may yet save our bacon - who knows?

China has taken this a bit further, with 22 nuclear power stations under construction and over 70 planned, now mainly standardised on their own Hualong 1 design. That design has been certified as compliant with both UK^▸ (United Kingdom) and EU^» (European Union - about) standards. The ones already running took between 5 and 8 years to build and commission, probably helped by what I shall call charitably a simplified planning regime. Like Hinkley C, it is a pressurised water reactor design, aimed to maximise "burnup" of fuel. Unlike our earlier Magnox fleet, they are not designed to make bomb material.

It rather looks as though our new government will back small modular reactors. That is a step into the unknown to a degree, but I believe the Rolls Royce design recently submitted is a scaled-down pressurised water reactor. The plan is certainly to have them deployed quickly, with a construction time of 500 days, and start to finish build under 4 years. I shall watch developments with interest.

[broadgage]

I would support the Rolls Royce small modular reactors, one of those would supply about 1% of UK^▸ (United Kingdom) peak demand, and a fleet of 25 would supply most of the non peak demand.

Not keen on chinese involvement for both quality control reasons and national security.

Not keen on hitachi either, if they cant build a decent train, who wants a nuke from them ?

[didcotdean]

Rolls-Royce, in association with various partners along the way, has been proposing small modular nuclear power stations since the late 1980s, largely to indifference from all governments, of whatever colour.

[TonyK]

Rolls-Royce, in association with various partners along the way, has been proposing small modular nuclear power stations since the late 1980s, largely to indifference from all governments, of whatever colour.

They have actually been building one form of small nuclear reactor since 1966, to power nuclear submarines. These are smaller, but have the added complication of being carried around underwater in a confined steel tube, accompanied by 135 submariners, 16 space rockets, and up to 192 (usually 48) nuclear warheads.

Governments tend not to act unless and until they have to. Coal was fine for a long time. Our early Magnox nuclear power station were built to make plutonium for the bombs, with electricity as a good selling point and a means of getting rid of all the pesky heat. Gas and wind turbines were the order of the day in 2002, but coal and gas are now A Bad Thing, wind turbines don't work to demand, solar suffers from night time, and so suddenly nuclear is back in vogue with the two biggest parties. The question is no longer if, but how big. SMRs will appeal to the government of the day because they tick the green, sustainable and independent boxes with minimal fiction, and could be planned and delivered within the lifetime of a government. They'll be built in a factory in somewhere like Derby, then when the protests die down at the proposed sites, a lorry will pull up and a man in a cloth cap will ask "Where do you want this SMR?"

I know it won't be quite like that, but they could become commonplace fairly quickly, so paving the way for acceptance of new bigger plant as well. Among all the froth and bluster, it is easy to forget that civil nuclear power have provided us with very low carbon electricity for almost 68 years without harm to the population outside, and with fewer accidents resulting in harm to workers than in wind farms in the past 20 years.

[broadgage]

Before any undue optimism breaks out regarding small modular reactors, do remember that "small" is a relative term when comparing them to existing designs.
The expected output is 500 MW or thereabouts. A 500 MW steam turbine and alternator is a very substantial piece of equipment. Consider also the step up transformer, switchgear, cooling tower, feed water pumps, condenser water pumps.

Smaller than Hinkley point, but still substantial.

[TonyK]

Before any undue optimism breaks out regarding small modular reactors, do remember that "small" is a relative term when comparing them to existing designs.
The expected output is 500 MW or thereabouts. A 500 MW steam turbine and alternator is a very substantial piece of equipment. Consider also the step up transformer, switchgear, cooling tower, feed water pumps, condenser water pumps.

Smaller than Hinkley point, but still substantial.

Yet another good selling point! A small modular nuclear plant producing 300 MWe will need as little as 7 ha and some designs are cooled without lots of water. Hinkley C has a site covering 174 ha to produce 3.2 GW^▸ (Great Western) when finished, so it's big, but so is the output. There's an 18 MW wind farm a few miles up the road with an area of about 144 ha in total, and a 49.9 MW solar farm covers 61 ha, to put the land use into context. The latter two operate on a purely part-time basis.

[broadgage]

The space taken up by wind farms is in my view a non issue, most of the land between the turbines can still be used for farming, and the access roads built to access the wind turbines are also useful.

The space occupied by solar farms is of greater concern as agricultural use is considerably reduced. Sheep can graze between the racks of solar panels, and indeed sheep are almost a requirement  to keep vegetation under control as this would otherwise shade the modules.
Sheep like solar farms ! when the sun is too hot  or the winter snow/wind too cold  they can shelter under or behind the panels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PXKnwvDnqwvideo about sheep grazing on a solar farm