Nuclear isn't the worst option if it pushes us to net 0 fast, especially if investment is made in spent fuel processing facilities (government owned).
It is very much a stopgap, but at this point some kind is likely needed.
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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the thing is that it actually has to get built and operational, which is where it gets iffy..
"bah fuck renewables, let's just build nuclear plants! Hm, oh dear, it seems we've ran into some issues with the construction, gonna have to delay them a few years.. Oh no gonna be a few years longer still.. Ah shit we ran out of budget, we'll only build half as many. Wow haha okay so this is awkward, we'll only be able to finish and get online 3 plants, guess we'll just have to stick with fossil fuels since they work so well!"
They're building renewables as well, this isn't a delaying tactic for fossil fules.
In 20+ years when the first reactor is ready to start delivering power. After how much cost over runs?
Oil, coal and LPG ain't the answer either, before the pro-nuclear crowd get their nickers in s knot.
In terms of nuclear power, lessons need to be learned - the first few plants are going to run over both budget and time because they're not going to take any risks. Better it runs over than it's done shoddily.
Remember, the UK power grid is ancient - it's going to need to be rebuilt from the ground up to integrate renewables (a project more than 20 years in the making). Especially so with such "rapidly" fluctuating power as wind.
Again, it's a stopgap that should be used while actively developing grid changes to better shift the load to wind.
But it's not just the first few that take much longer to build and get more expensive, it's all of them. Every recent nuclear project that I'm aware of had these issues, even in countries that keep building them.
I mean, the alternative is you just accept regular grid failures over 1--3 decades while you speedrun towards wind. This sounds great on paper, till you realise UK homes are shifting to electric heating, and those power failures are going to be violent ones doing a lot of damage.
You could mandate lower power use, but that's a recipe for being voted out. Back to fossil fuels you go.
You could tax energy intensive industry, but the UK is trying to revive its manufacturing centers, not kill the survivors off. Likely this will generate enough friction to shift power again.
You're effectively handing the anti-green lobby a golden ticket, which may even mean the issues last more than 3 decades as UK politics flipflops around. In essence, a stopgap is needed due to the sheer state of British energy infrastructure.
I mean, the alternative is you just accept regular grid failures over 1–3 decades while you speedrun towards wind.
No, I reject your premise that only nuclear can prevent grid failures, especially since any reactor will take 2-3 decades to come online. Wind can provide stable power today using storage. Why should we accept regular grid failures for 2-3 decades?
I thought we were fairly behind the curve on storage (ironically, most is stuck in planning or is over budget, or is delayed).
Also, I never said only nuclear could do it. Simply that it's not the worst option.
As much as I'd like to switch everything to renewable today (if only because my bills would drop), it's just not possible with the infrastructure we have.
I thought we were fairly behind the curve on storage (ironically, most is stuck in planning or is over budget, or is delayed).
If this is true (and I haven't come across evidence that it is, but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt) it doesn't mean this can't be improved. What is the trajectory, is this "behind the curve" getting worse or better? For nuclear, it's steadily getting worse, so even if it didn't improve it might still be more effective compared to nuclear.
As much as I’d like to switch everything to renewable today (if only because my bills would drop), it’s just not possible with the infrastructure we have.
But building nuclear won't help you, since it will take 2-3 decades to build and it's far more expensive than renewables (also more expensive than renewables + storage, which is becoming cheaper at an increasing rate, while nuclear is getting even more expensive). I'm not saying that everything but renewables should be torn down right now, but building more nuclear capabilities simply doesn't make sense.
I think, at this point, we're both stood out on very very long planks. There's more "what if" involved than is healthy.
You've made some good points, I can't comment on trajectory (a lot of that is going to be based on future energy usage patterns which are almost impossible to predict). It may well be that the infrastructure for renewables gets put together faster than I anticipate.
On the other hand, nuclear options might arrive faster than your projected timelines and will play a key role in the journey to 100% renewable. It's tough to say what lessons are being learned and how much of an impact on timeline they'll have.
Either way, thanks for the discussion, it's given me some more thinking points.
I guess this is justified by the fact nuclear has a high initial cost, but a very low cost if and when demand increases, whereas most renewables are the opposite?
If we're doing a grid that has a base load, then I'd much rather have that base load supplied by nuclear than by coal, oil or gas. It's a straight swap. Nuclear is clean and safe. And it'll be these same big nuclear companies that pivot to fusion if and when it happens.
Ideal scenario is 100% renewable. I'll take a shift to nuclear from fossil fuel as a positive step even if it's not perfect.
I guess this is justified by the fact nuclear has a high initial cost, but a very low cost if and when demand increases, whereas most renewables are the opposite?
I don't understand that thinking.
Nuclear has a very high incremental cost when demand increases. You need to build another nuclear power station. You're then set for a while.
Wind has a very small incremental cost. You need to build another wind turbine, but that won't last you very long. Maybe you build a wind farm rather than individual turbines. Still a lot cheaper / quicker.
As I understand it, reactors are built with a lot of spare overhead, so for a long time, we just need to keep adding uranium to increase the output, until it reaches its absolute maximum.
We need a new wind turbine each time to increase capacity.
Your understanding is incorrect.
Reactors always operate at maximum capacity. It's the only way they are economic to run. Fuel isn't the primary cost for running a reactor. It's staffing and maintenance. These don't become cheaper when you run lower outputs. They are constant. If your costs are constant, generating half the power makes that power cost twice as much per kWh.
Just look at any of the grid dashboards out there. Look at how little nuclear output changes. We only change the output when we power down whole reactors for refuelling or other maintenance.
This is also why partnering nuclear with highly variable source of power like wind doesn't make any sense. Nuclear can't realistically vary it's output in response to what the weather is. Even if it could, it wouldn't make economic sense to do so.
Well your comment is too, reactors do not always run at maximum capacity, that's silly.
But they do have a lower SMRC than renewables.
I don't think you're an expert in the economics of nuclear reactors, and I know I'm not. I clearly made a mistake in the understanding of scaling them up. But, as ever on the internet, you have picked a side and therefore you're not a reliable interlocutor. If and when I want to know more about this subject, I will get my information from a neutral source.
Maybe the terms I used were too absolute, but they always aim to run at their highest sustainable output for the reasons I gave.
I'm not an expert in nuclear economics, but this is knowledge accumulated from reading articles over the years by people who are. Apart from the economics, I'm pretty pro-nuclear, but the economic (and the related time-scale) arguments kill it for me.
I think with the situation we're in, we're much better going all in on technologies that replace fossil fuels today, but in smaller chunks that add up to big numbers over time. Nuclear will take bigger bites out of fossil fuels, but those step changes will take 10-15 years and we're stuck on fossil fuels for all that time.
Fair play to you. I guess that this decision is the result of the nuclear lobby having a bigger say than they should. It's an old story, where the facts are obfuscated by energy companies, for profit. I think the argument that nuclear has an important place in a robust energy grid is hard to debunk. But we should have started building decades ago.
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Are we just hearing / seeing the emotional headline of “nuclear”, but actually it just creates busy work for everyone for the next ~19 years.
By that time the other solutions (wind, geothermal, solar, sea, etc) have proven themselves and the gov just take the credit and show themselves as saving our planet by another 10 years of busy work decommissioning the power stations before the nuclear fuel is actually brought in...?
Keynsian economics? Kenyan economics?
something like that
The rest of the world are about to go all in on geothermal and we're just about to start going in on the stop-gap solution. I wish Starmer had more imagination, we could be world leaders in geothermal and that would generate revenue for decades.
The rest of the world is going all in on geothermal?
Do you have a source for that?
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If we are talking mononuclear renewables, I understand that the UK is in an enviable position regarding wind, being one of, if not, the windiest nations in Europe. If I haven't misremembered maybe we should prioritise wind generation. Leave geothermal to places like Iceland, or maybe the nations around the Pacific Rim.
So on both points:
Recent studies have shown that the intermitency of wind and solar means countries with a high reliance on it are especially prone to gas price shocks, that issue dissapears if the country has a good amount of nuclear or hydroelectric in the mix.
Regarding geothermal the UK, particularly parts of Scotland, are actually rather suited to more modern types of geothermal with a lot of hot dense rock at depths we previously couldn't drill too but are now much more able to.
that issue dissapears if the country has a good amount of nuclear or hydroelectric in the mix.
It also disappears if we have copious energy storage.
Yes but one of those exists and the other is still a work in progress. May as well use what's good rather than sitting around waiting for what's perfect, we can always switch to perfect when it arrives.
There's new geothermal being implemented in the southwest too for what it's worth - so it's not like it's not happening in the UK, it's just going to be at the extreme south and north.
Wind is intermittent. Why can't we go all in on wind AND geothermal?
How dare you. Think of the poor nuclear lobbyist. How are they supposed to exploit a country with people like you meddling in their pitch.
On a good day wind produces ~50% of our electricity at the moment, and there's a new offshore development as part of the Dogger Bank wind farm
Geothermal doesn't need unstable crust conditions anymore.
Why is it stop-gap?
Because nuclear isn't a long-term solution. It shifts problems down the line. Geothermal on the other hand is a clean and neverending resource.
Right, but you haven't really answered the question. Why isn't it a long term solution? Sure geothermal is great, but there's space for both, amongst others.
Uranium supplies aren't particularly abundant, and make you reliant on the same old superpowers.
Nuclear creates waste that we can't dispose of
Sure nuclear waste is a problem, but there are ways to dispose of it. I can't see why it can't be a long term solution.
There's problems and solutions for every type of energy production.
Dumping nuclear waste off the coast of Somalia is not a solution.
Edit: as this seemed to upset people. Read Roberto Saviano's book Gomorrah where he talks about the mafia controlled companies that did exactly this, because it was the cheapest way they found to dispose nuclear waste.
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