The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain
Discussion
hidetheelephants said:
He's been in the business of selling his ideas books and seminars for 8 years, confidently making statements about existing trends and then extrapolating them is not impressive.
we'll agree to disagree. in extrapolating the pace of change, he was looked at as a bit of a whacko.hidetheelephants said:
Amory Lovins made a successful career out of similar prognostications, he was wrong too most of the time.
too? seba hasn't been wrong about renewables, solar in particular. bang on in fact.no idea what other stuff he's been wrong about. doesn't really matter for this topic.
hidetheelephants said:
tamore said:
saw that tony seba reckons nuclear power will be a busted flush by 2030. he hasn't got much wrong about the transition to renewables.
It's almost endearing how all his assumptions are predicated on innovation in the areas he likes but those he doesn't aren't allowed innovation at all.It's also been responsible for the fastest additions of low carbon energy when adjusted for population. The first one takes a while to deploy but once it does you can deploy 1 nuclear plant per year per 5 million population and achieve a full energy transition in a generation.
Nuclear is great but there are very legitimate concerns around cost and time of construction. There is also the risk of a class wide issue affecting all units of a similar design as happened in France 2 years ago. HPC is, what, 3 years behind from it's f'cast delivery date even when construction was started, it's over budget (IMO) because of over-engineering. The price EDF are being paid is £92.50/Mwh in 2012 prices adjusted for inflation, for 35 years from the date of commissioning. Do the maths and that is already £116/Mwh and it's easily 3 years away from first generation. Baseload power at the moment is about half that. Add on 35 years of inflation adjustments and it's going to look exorbitantly expensive vs alternatives. Admittedly half the cost is the finance, which is why SZC will be paid for up front using a RAB finance model, and in which case the power from HPC gets a bit cheaper as well, but SZC is still awaiting final planning approval and a financial decision by EDF, whereas ideally you'd have teams from HPC moving straight over as their work is done. The longer no decision on SZC is made the more staff will be laid off between jobs.
Condi said:
Nuclear is great but there are very legitimate concerns around cost and time of construction.
Those aren't technical issues, they are issues of organisation and will. Vaccines take years to be tested and approved until they don't. The evidence of how quickly a nuclear plant can be built is already there.Condi said:
There is also the risk of a class wide issue affecting all units of a similar design as happened in France 2 years ago.
Excellent example, the French issue was only tertiarily one of technology. Firstly the underlying issue was one of the fish rotting from the head, EDF and the French energy ministry were packed full of greens who wanted to run down nuclear. The career minded young people weren't going into nuclear in EDF, the moral was pretty low in the nuclear generation sector and the maintenance was not done with a vigor necessary.The actual fault on the plants was incredibility minor, a slightly increased chance of an incredibly unlikely thing happening, the fault if it had happened was one against which the plant was protected by both redundant and diverse systems. If you weighed the probability and consequences of the fault against the costs of not running the nuclear plant both financial and also environmental and geopolitical the choice would be between not doing anything but monitoring it and fixing the issue one plant at a time during outages.
Ultimately the reason the plants went down was political and cultural.
Condi said:
HPC is, what, 3 years behind from it's f'cast delivery date even when construction was started, it's over budget (IMO) because of over-engineering. The price EDF are being paid is £92.50/Mwh in 2012 prices adjusted for inflation, for 35 years from the date of commissioning. Do the maths and that is already £116/Mwh and it's easily 3 years away from first generation. Baseload power at the moment is about half that. Add on 35 years of inflation adjustments and it's going to look exorbitantly expensive vs alternatives. Admittedly half the cost is the finance, which is why SZC will be paid for up front using a RAB finance model, and in which case the power from HPC gets a bit cheaper as well, but SZC is still awaiting final planning approval and a financial decision by EDF, whereas ideally you'd have teams from HPC moving straight over as their work is done. The longer no decision on SZC is made the more staff will be laid off between jobs.
It's cost vs the first on-shore and off shore wind projects isn't that bad though is it if we are comparing like with like. Hornsey 1 gets £140/kwh in 2012 prices, though obviously the terms is shorter and it's effective size is smaller 1.2GW x 40% vs 3.3GW x 95%.Talksteer said:
The evidence of how quickly a nuclear plant can be built is already there.
Where? Cost and time over-runs have been a prevalent feature of pretty much all nuclear plants back to the 1970s, almost irrespective of country/design. Even the Chinese took 9 years to build the first reactor at Tashin which will be not far off HPC timescale. Talksteer said:
Firstly the underlying issue was one of the fish rotting from the head, EDF and the French energy ministry were packed full of greens who wanted to run down nuclear. The career minded young people weren't going into nuclear in EDF, the moral was pretty low in the nuclear generation sector and the maintenance was not done with a vigor necessary.
I disagree entirely, but whatever. Suggesting that "maintenance was not done with a vigor necessary" sounds like something which could have come directly from a North Korean dictate. Forward comrades, unto the rusty pipes! Talksteer said:
It's cost vs the first on-shore and off shore wind projects isn't that bad though is it if we are comparing like with like. Hornsey 1 gets £140/kwh in 2012 prices, though obviously the terms is shorter and it's effective size is smaller 1.2GW x 40% vs 3.3GW x 95%.
The cheapest wind CfD's were around £45 and only 15 years of payments. Hornsea 1 was more expensive, but the CfD payments will almost have finished before HPC's has even started! Its a very large premium to pay for dispatchable power. As for nuclear power being dead, China clearly doesn't think so, with 27 reactors under construction. They are also investing massively into solar and wind power, adding over 10 times more solar power in 1 year than the UK has deployed in total.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-many-15...
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-many-15...
Condi said:
As for nuclear power being dead, China clearly doesn't think so, with 27 reactors under construction. They are also investing massively into solar and wind power, adding over 10 times more solar power in 1 year than the UK has deployed in total.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-many-15...
They just want lots of power and right now, in order to facilitate that they can't afford nor care to be partial, plus quite a few of the heidbummers are engineers and can do sums.https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-many-15...
Condi said:
Talksteer said:
The evidence of how quickly a nuclear plant can be built is already there.
Where? Cost and time over-runs have been a prevalent feature of pretty much all nuclear plants back to the 1970s, almost irrespective of country/design. Even the Chinese took 9 years to build the first reactor at Tashin which will be not far off HPC timescale. Talksteer said:
Firstly the underlying issue was one of the fish rotting from the head, EDF and the French energy ministry were packed full of greens who wanted to run down nuclear. The career minded young people weren't going into nuclear in EDF, the moral was pretty low in the nuclear generation sector and the maintenance was not done with a vigor necessary.
I disagree entirely, but whatever. Suggesting that "maintenance was not done with a vigor necessary" sounds like something which could have come directly from a North Korean dictate. Forward comrades, unto the rusty pipes! Talksteer said:
It's cost vs the first on-shore and off shore wind projects isn't that bad though is it if we are comparing like with like. Hornsey 1 gets £140/kwh in 2012 prices, though obviously the terms is shorter and it's effective size is smaller 1.2GW x 40% vs 3.3GW x 95%.
The cheapest wind CfD's were around £45 and only 15 years of payments. Hornsea 1 was more expensive, but the CfD payments will almost have finished before HPC's has even started! Its a very large premium to pay for dispatchable power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Beach_Nuclear_...
Construction started 1967, power 1970.
If it was made a government priority and you had an agency or group empowered to find the root cause of delays and bash heads together you could replicate these previous schedules, especially as while standards have increased in certain areas we also have lots of technology not available in the 70's. The key bit is that this has to be a priority with people empowered to do it, just hoping that it will happen by "learning" on its own isn't well evidenced.
You might need some primary legislation to help this to happen in the UK, I'd suggest that something along the lines of acknowledgement in law of proportionality of environmental impact so you couldn't bring legal challenges on chickens
t small issues like a few tonnes of fish being chewed up per year in the coolant channel of HPC or tiny quantities of water being used during construction at SZC.Re: the French stuff this is stuff I've heard from friends in the industry. Moral and direction matter in engineering institutions and regulators. Regulatory capture works in both directions too, if an industry goes from making its money on construction to making its money from maintenance it actually makes sense to make things difficult, more work for everyone.
My point is to compare like with like, HPC is the first nuclear plant for 30 years so it makes sense to compare with the first large scale windfarm in cost not the most recent one. Otherwise you are comparing and immature technology/industry with a mature one and then stating that this will always be the case. If one industry can cut cost then another one should also be able to, particularly if from a first principles basis that industry uses less resources and equipment per unit of energy (HPC is about equivalent to 9GW of offshore wind or 600 giant turbines, plus converters and miles of HVDC connectors).
It's also not a given that the price of wind generated energy will keep reducing. The best sites will be occupied first. Later ones will either be more expensive to construct and access or provide less wind energy per annum. Thus the cost per kWh may remain at a similar level or even increase.
Nuclear will be different because, wherever constructed, and there are several viable sites available, the operating and maintenance costs are clearly defined and quite predictable and so will be the cost of the energy generated.
Nuclear will be different because, wherever constructed, and there are several viable sites available, the operating and maintenance costs are clearly defined and quite predictable and so will be the cost of the energy generated.
Talksteer said:
Plants have been built in under 4 years from first nuclear concrete to commercial power generation. Plenty of the Westinghouse 2/3 loop plants in the US have done this as have the ABWRs in the 1990/2000's in Japan. That any plant that takes longer to build is not due to technology but one of organisation and regulation. This isn't like looking at Moors law and predicting future capability this has been done before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Beach_Nuclear_...
Construction started 1967, power 1970.
If it was made a government priority and you had an agency or group empowered to find the root cause of delays and bash heads together you could replicate these previous schedules, especially as while standards have increased in certain areas we also have lots of technology not available in the 70's. The key bit is that this has to be a priority with people empowered to do it, just hoping that it will happen by "learning" on its own isn't well evidenced.
You might need some primary legislation to help this to happen in the UK, I'd suggest that something along the lines of acknowledgement in law of proportionality of environmental impact so you couldn't bring legal challenges on chickenst small issues like a few tonnes of fish being chewed up per year in the coolant channel of HPC or tiny quantities of water being used during construction at SZC.
Re: the French stuff this is stuff I've heard from friends in the industry. Moral and direction matter in engineering institutions and regulators. Regulatory capture works in both directions too, if an industry goes from making its money on construction to making its money from maintenance it actually makes sense to make things difficult, more work for everyone.
My point is to compare like with like, HPC is the first nuclear plant for 30 years so it makes sense to compare with the first large scale windfarm in cost not the most recent one. Otherwise you are comparing and immature technology/industry with a mature one and then stating that this will always be the case. If one industry can cut cost then another one should also be able to, particularly if from a first principles basis that industry uses less resources and equipment per unit of energy (HPC is about equivalent to 9GW of offshore wind or 600 giant turbines, plus converters and miles of HVDC connectors).
You're cherry picking your data there a bit though. The plant you reference is a two loop pwr which would be unlikely to pass NRC approval today. Look at the slightly later PWRs (e.g. SNUPPS... Some of those are nearly 10 years from breaking ground to OTG. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Beach_Nuclear_...
Construction started 1967, power 1970.
If it was made a government priority and you had an agency or group empowered to find the root cause of delays and bash heads together you could replicate these previous schedules, especially as while standards have increased in certain areas we also have lots of technology not available in the 70's. The key bit is that this has to be a priority with people empowered to do it, just hoping that it will happen by "learning" on its own isn't well evidenced.
You might need some primary legislation to help this to happen in the UK, I'd suggest that something along the lines of acknowledgement in law of proportionality of environmental impact so you couldn't bring legal challenges on chickens
t small issues like a few tonnes of fish being chewed up per year in the coolant channel of HPC or tiny quantities of water being used during construction at SZC.Re: the French stuff this is stuff I've heard from friends in the industry. Moral and direction matter in engineering institutions and regulators. Regulatory capture works in both directions too, if an industry goes from making its money on construction to making its money from maintenance it actually makes sense to make things difficult, more work for everyone.
My point is to compare like with like, HPC is the first nuclear plant for 30 years so it makes sense to compare with the first large scale windfarm in cost not the most recent one. Otherwise you are comparing and immature technology/industry with a mature one and then stating that this will always be the case. If one industry can cut cost then another one should also be able to, particularly if from a first principles basis that industry uses less resources and equipment per unit of energy (HPC is about equivalent to 9GW of offshore wind or 600 giant turbines, plus converters and miles of HVDC connectors).
Nuclear has a really challenging economic model. You're creating a supply chain from scratch and it's going to take quite a few plants built to recoup that initial cap & cap investment and by that point the city will have balked at the costs.
AP1000 supply chain issues were instrumental in WEC's chapter 11.
TGCOTF-dewey said:
You're cherry picking your data there a bit though. The plant you reference is a two loop pwr which would be unlikely to pass NRC approval today. Look at the slightly later PWRs (e.g. SNUPPS... Some of those are nearly 10 years from breaking ground to OTG.
Yes, I'm not really sure what relevance a plant which was started nearly 60 years ago is to any discussion about today's nuclear industry. Only 10 years before that operators at Windscale were using scaffolding pipes to knock burning fuel rods out of a reactor while someone else poked their head pretty much through the chimney to check how things were going. The nuclear industry bears little resemblance to 60 years ago. Adjusted for inflation the whole plant was <$1bn in 2023 terms. By comparison the latest nuclear reactor to be finished in Europe took 18 years to build and cost about €11bn, nearly 4 times the original budget. To see the difference you only have to look at what spec HPC is being built to and compare that with what went into SZB. HPC is a totally different level of engineering, cost, safety, etc.
tamore said:
watched an interesting video of thermal plants being converted to thermal storage to drive turbines. all the power infrastructure is there, turbines there, so it makes sense.
Seen a similar concept for nuclear plants, using onsite thermal storage to allow the reactor to run at a fixed load and use thermal storage for peaks and troughs.Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff