Time to embrace the nuclear option: Coal’s too dirty, gas too costly, wind and solar too unreliable. So why, asks ROSS CLARK, aren’t we building more low-carbon atomic energy plants instead of closing them?
Time to embrace the nuclear option: Coal’s too dirty, gas too costly, wind and solar too unreliable. So why, asks ROSS CLARK, aren’t we building more low-carbon atomic energy plants instead of closing them?
36 comments
Look, I’m all for nuclear, but the way this country has been over the last 10 years I’m not sure asking the government to sort this out for us is a good idea.
Because it is a mainstream “environmentalist” position to be against nuclear power. Nobody it seems can get past the image of Chernobyl and see the bigger picture with nuclear power. Plus, NIMBYs make it impossible to build them anywhere.
We are building them, rolls Royce is building small modular nuclear power stations.
Even the Guardian knows this
[Gaurdian](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/08/rolls-royce-secures-450m-for-mini-nuclear-reactors-venture)
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/map-of-nuclear-power-stations-in-the-uk
As well as closing, many sites are set to receive new plants but brexit and pandemic has slowed this down.
Don’t forget the clown in front wants hs2 to finish and we can’t forget what happened to the very expensive garden bridge so who knows what this Merry band of clowns in charge will actually do.
Because they won’t make a return on their investment or embedded carbon compared to using the money on renewables/gas within their operational lifetime.
Because they take too long to build and are uneconomic, even apart from the unsolved problems with radiation and waste. Renewable energy and energy storage are getting more efficient and cheaper and will be even more so in the ten years it takes to bring a nuclear station on stream.
Just waiting for the usual totally organic flood of comments saying how great nuclear power is.
I’m a leftie all for nuclear. Problem is that the environmentalism movement has a weirdly puritanical streak to it which prevents pragmatic solutions. We can’t just ‘conserve’ energy. We need to produce more of it and produce it cheaply. Energy is the chief bottleneck in an economy, we think it’s money but it’s not, it’s energy. We are in the midst of a massive energy price hike and it’s because it’s easier not to build power plants and defer decision making than to build them now. Energy price cap was giving an average bill of £1200, by this time next year it could be £2400 and it will only continue to get worse. A shitshow of our own making because we are too scared to build power plants.
We are building new reactors though, hinckley point C is the current project
I don’t have an issue with nuclear power, it’s cleanest of all the non-renewables. My only concern is how long they take to build and the high cost. We need power NOW to be able to turn off coal and gas fired stations. New nuclear will take decades
Expensive and takes ages to start producing energy.
There are cheaper and quicker alternatives.
Its simple economics really.
Because they are incredibly expensive and take a very long time to come on line.
Nuclear power is staggeringly expensive compared to renewables these days and it takes far too long to actually build.
Invest the money into renewables, research and energy storage instead and the returns will be far higher and occur far more quickly.
Wind and solar aren’t unreliable at all. We just need to build more of it.
In Suffolk, the loudest complaints about the construction of the new Sizewell C reactor are about the increased traffic to the area during the construction phase.
There is also some “Think of the children” and “Nuclear catastrophe” like complaints, however it’s not like there has been a nuclear power station on that site for 50-odd years now is it?
Follow the money and you will see who benefits. To me it looks like the benefactors are those who make money selling us coal and gas. Check who the main suppliers are and the picture will become clear.
I watched this movier where excess NUCLEAR waste was poured into the ocean, that combined with a NUCLEAR test explosion caused one of the small island lizards to grow into a gigantic monster.
After several city’s were lost to the monster attacks the scientists then built a NUCLEAR powered mechanical monster to fight off the monster. I think there was also a large moth, then an earthquake, that triggered a Tsunami, and then that damaged the NUCLEAR plant causing a catastrophic NUCLEAR explosion…
So NUCLEAR=BAD. Great movie though…
Provided it is a purely British endeavour. Financed, built and run by us. And none of that sell and lease back shit either.
Gas is too costly?
Well, nuclear power, all things considered, is way more costly than gas so thee is that.
Also wind is pretty reliable if you space its generators out enough and solar is able to help in rare cases of very little wind so that you need only very few backup power plants that can be gas and nuclear.
A daily mail article by someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about, there’s a surprise. Energy storage is what we need to buffer intermittent renewables. That can be gravitational ( pumped hydro, kinetic storage), thermal ( repurpose turbines etc in fossil fuel stations) and electrical ( batteries, flow batteries and others). Look at r/energy storage and you’ll see that this is all coming right now. The carbon cost to build nuclear stations is massive and there’s no ‘green concrete’ yet to put them up. It takes decades to overcome that CO2 generation and they won’t be in place in time to deal with the crisis that Is happening Right Now. On top, the commitment in staff/security/management is enormous. That doesn’t apply to renewables. Nuclear is the last refuge of people with limited knowledge, imagination or sense of urgency.
If only there was a clean predictable power source right on our island’s doorstep that was powered by the moon and sun.
I can’t imagine what that [could be](https://www.windy.com/-Show—add-more-layers/overlays?currentsTide,54.073,1.912,6,m:e5Uagc8)
Oh, here it is. [Tidal power](https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Tidal_power#:~:text=Tidal%20power%20harnesses%20the%20energy%20from%20water%20moving,energy%20because%20tides%20occur%20at%20expected%20times.%20%5B1%5D)
The real reason is that we don’t have a large scale nuclear power industry in this country, so most of the money spent building the plants goes to companies overseas. No British companies are lobbying for it.
This is also why the Rolls Royce SMR might be a solution. Not because it’s technically a better design than EPR etc, but it’s small enough that we can design and build in the UK.
Anti nuclear power, anti science types cursed our future. We should have been building nuclear stations years ago. We should start building them today. We are stuck playing catch up because of the people who decided to side with fossil fuels they claimed to hate.
It would be great to have a mix of nuclear, wind and solar. Can’t rely completely on just 1 resource
Because they’re more expensive than renewables, generate radioactive waste that lasts for thousands of years, periodically explode in radioactive clouds, the fuel refinement plants can be trivially turned into nuclear weapon plants, and we’ll run out of uranium in another century or so anyway.
So why are you still pushing radioactive waste over renewables?
Just dam the Bristol Channel and tell people to STFU about mudflats and birds. We can’t always have our cake and eat it
Wind is reliable. It’s predictable hours in advance. What’s unreliable is demand.
Because we’re broke and incompetent, and literally can’t without the French building them and the Chinese paying for them.
Wind and solar isn’t that unreliable tbh. Also one of the cheapest sources of power iirc.
We were warned about cc almost 150 years ago and then scientists double checked the logic 50 years ago and found it was solid. If we had begun even the most basic of changes towards nuclear/renewables then this would be a non issue.
Instead we got addicted to dirty energy to cause massive overshoot in human population and stock market line go up.
Fucking fossil fuel industry and lobbyists, now their trying to say give us even more money for carbon capture to clean up the mess they created. I don’t like the death penalty but I’ll make an exception for these cunts and their attempted genocide.
Well if the government let companies put any old shit in the rivers… well, nuclear waste would be next. Also who the fuck is ROSS CLARK and why should we care?
I would say that the core Conservative voters are not keen.
The Conservative will do ANYTHING to get into power. They just massively undermined the UKs economy by leaving the EU and not having anything else to replace it. Failure to plan for energy generating needs is rather mild in comparison.
We don’t build them any more, we merely pay for them.
The French and Chinese Governments build them.
Who, the fuck, is ROSS CLARK?
Why should anybody care what ROSS CLARK thinks?
If ROSS CLARKE is reading this; you are not a journalist or a scientist.
Because it’s the most expensive form of electricity generation and it costs a mint to clear up. Duh.
The problem with Nuclear is that it takes too long to build. Traditional designs take a decade to get up and running. There are more modern “micro” designs which might be feasible. The biggest hurdle is actually dedicating people to getting the job done. The designs don’t have to take 10 years to build once the expertise has grown. Trouble is we can’t retroactively grow expertise.
I completely agree with this. Nuclear is one of the most efficient forms of electricity generation that can operate 24/7. Wind and solar aren’t always reliable and depend on factors like wind speed and sunlight. The only major drawback is the cost of building reactors and their supporting infrastructure however the operating costs are low as modern plants don’t require much maintenance. Nuclear power has massive potential to help get to a zero carbon electric grid along with other renewables.