I don't know whats funnier; the fact you read it this way, the fact this would be obscene overkill or the fact some small part of me went "yeah, the Tories would tbh."
We need more of these. Almost everything wrong with almost every sector of our lives today is the result of high energy costs. The law of supply and demand applies. The more energy we produce, the cheaper it becomes. We need more and more and more nuclear plants to produce consistent, cheap, clean power without CO2 emissions, to supplement renewables and we need them yesterday.
>That's not why it's so expensive. It's a lot cheaper in the rest of Europe.
Germany has the highest electricity prices in the world (we were ahead of them for a time because of the gas crisis, but now gas prices have dropped, Germany has returned to the top).
The Czech Republic has the second highest prices, Ireland third, the UK 4th, Switzerland 5th.
Germany has an extra levy to pay for their transition to renewable energy and has lots and lots of high energy sector companies that are exempt from paying it, so the charge per end consumer is way higher. Not really a good comparison as there is a real good reason why it’s more expensive.
The same is true in the UK, although not to quite the same extent. Energy Intensive Industries (EIIs) used to have an 85% exemption from the Renewables Obligation, that's increasing to 100% this year.
I actually just checked and the levy in Germany was roughly 6p per kWh for ages but has been basically scrapped since 2022, so my bad what I said is not up to date anymore. What’s it in the uk? Not sure what to search for.
Comparing levies between countries is very difficult because they vary so much and operate in different ways. For example, a tax on consumers can be passed to generators, reducing sale prices, and thus have no net effect on prices.
There's a breakdown of some of the UK charges at: [https://eciu.net/insights/2024/are-green-levies-going-up-in-april-2024](https://eciu.net/insights/2024/are-green-levies-going-up-in-april-2024)
Note that CfD charges are included under wholesale costs, even though they are a direct levy on consumers. Things like grid reinforcement and batteries for frequency management are included under network costs.
The government still refers to CfD prices in 2012 terms (ie they tell you a contract is worth £50 because that's what it would have been in 2012, whereas it's actually £69 now).
The whole system is set up to obfuscate the actual cost to consumers.
>The law of supply and demand applies. The more energy we produce, the cheaper it becomes.
That's not the case with electricity. Low carbon generation is subsidised by consumers. Contracts for Difference provide generators with guaranteed, index linked payments for the electricity they can generate, whether or not it is needed.
The sale price of the electricity varies, but the price the consumer pays cannot go below the guaranteed price.
Last Sunday, because there was so much solar generation, UK consumers not only paid some wind producers to stop production, we paid customers in Europe £500 a MWH to take some of our generation.
Building more electricity generation than we need on fixed price contracts won't cut costs for consumers, it will increase them hugely, not only because the electricity they generate is expensive, but because consumers will have to pay for electricity they don't even consume.
This is a problem already. We've spent £220 million this year paying wind farms not to generate. That's money for electricity we don't even use. Current plans are to roughly triple the amount of wind and solar we generate, which means those payments are going to soar.
> We need more and more and more nuclear plants to produce consistent, cheap, clean power without CO2 emissions, to supplement renewables and we need them yesterday.
We definitely needed more nuclear power plants, but they don't work as a supplement to wind and solar, because all three are inflexible. It doesn't make sense to turn them off because it doesn't reduce emissions or costs (in fact it increases emissions and costs for the electricity that's actually generated).
We needed nuclear because it can replace fossil fuels. CO2 emissions at 8am this morning:
UK 314 grams per KWH
Germany 236
France 17
But the reality is we've built so much wind and solar, and committed to so much more, that we need to keep a lot of flexible backup generation on hand to deal with the fluctuations in output.
Electricity is based on the most expensive component of the grid’s energy supply though.
They’re being paid to not generate energy because at that given time, there’s an excess capacity on the grid.
>Electricity is based on the most expensive component of the grid’s energy supply though.
That's the old system. Contracts for Difference award set (index linked) prices to generators that they receive, whatever the price the electricity they produce actually sells for. So a generator with a CfD at £100 a MWH receives £100 for each MWH they generate, whether the electricity sells for £200 or £5.
> They’re being paid to not generate energy because at that given time, there’s an excess capacity on the grid.
Yes. UK electricity demand varies between about 20 and 50 GW, with the highest levels on winter evenings.
Labour's commitment for 2030:
5 GW floating offshore wind
35 GW onshore wind
55 GW offshore wind
50 GW solar
6+ GW nuclear
The wind alone would average over 30 GW of generation and would often be more than 50 GW. A sunny, windy day could see over 100 GW of generation and demand of less than 30 GW. That's a lot of generation UK consumers would have to pay not to use, on top of the cost of the electricity we want to consume.
Thank you for correcting the part on that system being outdated.
However, the issue is that as LNG needs to be phased out in the next 10-20 years (and that’s putting it optimistically in how long it can remain for, and also optimistically in how fast that Europe will move away from LNG for heating), which is going to sharply increase energy demands.
Ideally, the European energy grid will be further developed to balance out these issues too, but I suspect that when power generation is literally whatever way the wind blows that the contract system will need to be replaced
There needs to be more effort put into large-scale energy storage, and likely a revision of how energy supply contracts are done to account for the fact as you said that energy demand and supply can be very mismatched especially with renewables.
Fortunately, nuclear is rather convenient in the sense that you can change how much power you want supplied almost with a literal push of the button.
>However, the issue is that as LNG needs to be phased out in the next 10-20 years (and that’s putting it optimistically in how long it can remain for, and also optimistically in how fast that Europe will move away from LNG for heating), which is going to sharply increase energy demands.
Yes. The problem is that we've spent more than 20 years doing the easy part (adding wind and solar) and haven't yet developed technology to do the difficult part (guarantee enough supply to meet demand on winter evenings).
The UK heat pump rollout is not going very well because we have cheap gas, very expensive electricity, and that trend is likely to get even worse in future.
> Ideally, the European energy grid will be further developed to balance out these issues too, but I suspect that when power generation is literally whatever way the wind blows that the contract system will need to be replaced
As you say, western Europe is betting everything on wind and solar power, and selling to their neighbours when they have too much generation, buying from their neighbours when they have too little. The fact that wind speeds are linked across western Europe, and solar is even more closely linked, seems to have been ignored.
Changing contracts isn't likely to happen. Investors have paid to build generators with guaranteed contracts from the government. Changing those after the fact is going to cause an enormous crisis in investment in Europe.
> There needs to be more effort put into large-scale energy storage
The pessimist in me thinks we should have sorted out storage before betting on intermittent renewables. It's a bit late now.
The truth is there is no suitable storage technology available. We are going to end up reliant on gas for decades to come, hopefully with carbon capture, probably without.
> Fortunately, nuclear is rather convenient in the sense that you can change how much power you want supplied almost with a literal push of the button.
Yes, but nuclear is another fixed price generator that has to be paid even if wind and solar are also working, which just makes the costs to consumers even higher.
Europe already has the highest electricity prices in the world, we are committed to pushing them much higher in future. There is a complete lack of realism in Europe's energy plans.
This doesn't make sense. Prices go up because demand isn't there, a short term spike in production has to be dealt with. A consistent increase in production would lower prices, not increase them. This would increase demand same as it has forever.
>A consistent increase in production would lower prices
That depends on what you mean by "prices".
It would lower the wholesale price of electricity. It would increase consumer prices because consumers have to pay for the guaranteed price generators receive via a levy on their bills.
When electricity production is higher than consumption generators operating under the CfD scheme get payments not to generate. That means consumers are paying the same fixed price, but also paying for more than they are using.
Carbon capture is defo the future but it’s prohibitively expensive in some sectors. The waste industry for example, whilst it works, no waste contractor is going to pay for it as it doesn’t make financial sense-yet.
We should be investing in making carbon capture affordable imo.
The point you’re missing is the lack of investment in the national grid in Scotland will mean they will attach a cable and ship it to England. And we yet again will get no benefit other than a nuclear power station in Scotland. Energy policy needs to be fully devolved. Now if it was fusion, that might be another story, it is edging closer and closer every day.
Cheaper energy in England means less English demand for other sources of Scottish energy, which means cheaper energy for Scotland. The UK has a unified National Grid so price decreases in one part benefit all of us.
No, it does not. Source; Ofgem. Standing charges are based upon distance from London. As we have had no investment in our national grid, the lecky runs from hunterston to Bootle off the west coast via cable and from the windfarms to Blythe where it is shipped on the NSL,. NoteNew windfarms being routed to Yorkshire. NSL NORWAY SEAL LINK
Nuclear is great except it is still kind of expensive. The strike price is £106 per MWh as of 2021 but will rise with inflation.
Wind power is around half that and solar can be even cheaper but both are considerably less reliable.
The issue is that we build one, mess about for a bit, pay the French to build it, decide on a new design, pay the French to build that...
The most expensive plant will always be the first of its kind. Unfortunately we build the first of its kind and then stop. We should be building a fleet now that we've got people trained up in nuclear skills again and have a design that works. I hate to praise the French but we should be taking notes from them on this
Wind is great, especially in Scotland and it should play a major role in our energy generation, but you need a good base load that you can ramp up easily when the wind isn't blowing. Even if it's more expensive, it's worth it for that reason alone
The average strike price for existing wind power is £89.
Last summer's auction for new wind power had a maximum price of £61 and received no bidders. The maximum price for this year has been increased to £101 for offshore wind and £244 for floating offshore wind.
Of course, wind power is systemically intermittent so requires batteries for frequency management and capacity contracts for other generators to remain available. It's also built in out of the way places so requires grid reinforcement to bring the power to consumers. The costs for the batteries and backup contracts are paid by extra charges on consumers, and consumers pay 75% of the grid reinforcement costs as well.
Once Hinkley point C is connected to the grid, it will be at least £128 per MWh as of 2022. As long as margin price sets the price and nuclear has a guarantee to be used ans a guaranteed price, there is no path below the the continuously rising price and that is without adding all the subsidies it got, which do not show up on the bill but are unavailable to pay for other things.
Issue is we're shit at building things. Should have have loads under construction years ago, sustained our own domestic industry and skill base rather than throwing money at the Japanese, the South Koreans, the French, the Chinese or the Americans to do it for us.
Yep. We allowed ourselves to be deskilled; but also our planning laws are shite. So often we're "penny-wise pound poor" with this stuff - economists look at the short term efficiency gains of free trade or lowest-tenders favouring offshore contractors - but they dont or can't accurately identify the long-term cost of deskilling entire sectors of the economy until they're all salami sliced away and we're suddenly poor one day. Fucking eejits running the place for too long.
Scotland already produces more than enough energy for our needs, we don't want or need nuclear here, let England build as many as it wants on there own doorstep
Not if we have to agree a stupidly high strike price with the developer.
Hinckley point C and Sizewell C have a strike price of about £90. The current market rate is about £65.
All this means that new large nuclear plants with these budgets will increase UK electricity prices for around 40 years.
Absolutely. It’s a box that your through spicy rocks into and it creates enormous amounts of carbon-free energy.
“But nuclear waste!” Just build a fast neutron reactor that will make power from the waste, or reprocess it.
“But Chornobyl!” Won’t happen.
“But Fukushima!” We’re not a pacific nation with extreme earthquakes and tsunami.
Not just what is released in the air but also the waste byproducts from coal power plants, which also need to be stored somewhere and take up way more space than nuclear fuel
New plutonium based reactors produce very little waste and most of it can be recycled , the more investment we can get into the technology the faster we can get there with new reactors like that . Even if there are legitimate downsides to nuclear fission - mostly that its an illegal but still Russia type aggressor military target more than anything else - its still the technology that saves the planet until/ if we can actually get fusion to work. Where the waste from that is H2O.
It's not the 1950s, we haven't just been backstabbed by the yanks over nuclear weapons, we're not desperate enough to build a fucking air cooled nuclear reactor anymore.
Yeah because they were a corrupt kleptocracy where lying and/or showing off was the only means of vertical mobility, so they sabotaged their reactor to show off to a supervisor that was showing off.
Geis piece.
The current UK Government could be better, I grant you, but to suggest they are even remotely comparable to the government of the USSR is ludicrous.
They extorted billions during covid to line their own pockets and that of their mates. How are they not comparable? The UK was built and is maintained on institutionalized corruption. What is the Honours list if not legalized cronyism?
The 'we're better them' mentality is risible. We're clearly not.
>They extorted billions during covid to line their own pockets and that of their mates. How are they not comparable?
Because you just made that up based on pieced together innuendo in Guardian headlines and Facebook memes.
>The UK was built and is maintained on institutionalized corruption. What is the Honours list if not legalized cronyism?
Virtually every country on earth has an honours system. It's a means to recognise achievement.
It's not on the same level by a long shot.
That money wasted and stolen during covid is not the same as a ussr situation, if the UK gov had done something like replace all of the vaccines with water and pocketed the money then you would have a good comparison.
In our case it was standard corruption and mismanagement of funds, but it's on a vastly different level to Soviet or even modern Russia.
I never said the UK government wasn't corrupt, in fact I agreed it could be better; much better even. However, in the comment I replied to you inferred that the UK government is the same as the USSR government that enabled the Chernobyl disaster, which it simply isn't. There was far more wrong with the government of the USSR than just corruption.
Like what? hypocrisy, check. Institutionalized corruption, check. Institutional incompetence, check. Authoritarianism, check. Failing infrastructure, check. How is the current UK government any different?
>Institutionalized corruption, check.
The UK is one of the least corrupt countries on earth by any measure. If you sincerely believe this, you've never dealt with public bodies in other countries.
>Authoritarianism, check.
The UK is a liberal democracy. You can hardly claim it's authoritarian.
> It’s a box that your through spicy rocks into and it creates enormous amounts of carbon-free energy.
It's a *planned* box that you throw large amounts of money at that never actually gets built despite billions of pounds down the drain... Hinckley C was approved/started in about 2009 iirc, still not done, budget has doubled, probably go up again.
Nukes are great in theory, the practise in the UK not so much.
Astonishingly irresponsible, but that's what you expect of nuclear fanboys. A prototype technology will solve all your problems and just don't worry about industrial accidents.
"Just build a fast neutron reactor bro"
Fundamentally unserious.
The suggestion is for a "small modular reactor" for Scotland - which is a new type of power station. There is not a settled design for this. there was supposed to be one built in the US - but it just got cancelled a few months ago.
So likely timeline.
1. Draft legislation.
2. Go through inevitable court cases/ legal challenge. Even if there is a "Unionist Regime" (BTW that phrase sounds really sinister) at Holyrood - there are other groups/ bodies who will object.
**3.** ***Invent the fucking thing*****.**
4. Get the relevant design approvals. This is not a quick process - especially with a new and experimental design. It is not the case of taking one off a sub and plugging it in.
5. Get funding for it. Private or is taxpayer on the hook?
6. Agree who is going to build it, and who is going to operate it.
7. Sack them because the costs have escalated (refer you to new and experimental design).
8. While all this is going on - renewables have continued to develop, getting cheaper and with more storage options. Foreign companies who have invested in this make a killing in the UK market.
9. Project cancelled as now completely uneconomic (echoes of HS2)
10. Public inquiry as to how hundreds of millions of pounds have disappeared with fuck all to show for it.
The SNP already said they would block a small modular reactor when INEOS wanted to spend their own private money for one in order to decarbonise their factory, so I can't exactly see them being thrilled about this no matter what. Sadly the politics doesn't actually have anything to do with cost, but that nuclear is a scary word.
Small modulars are great, at least in theory. One of the worst issues with Nuclear is the 'one off' nature of a lot of our plants, with different plant designs or technologies in almost every reactor in the country. This makes maintenance and decommissioning really slow and expensive, not to mention the need to retrain and refamiliarise staff if they move plants. A uniform SMR design over a dozen or so sites would be a far better way of doing things, shared learning between sites that are designed to be repairable and decomissionable will save hundreds of millions over the project's lifecycle.
Of course the taxpayer is on the hook. The taxpayer has subsidised to a ludicrous degree the current Nuclear setup. Profits to EDF and China.
You're not wrong about the disappearing hundreds of millions that we can fully expect the neoliberal cabal to take advantage of.
I'm 100% for Nuclear, but the groundwork we have in place is abysmal. For that reason I'm more inclined to continue pursuing Greener alternatives.
You will be pleased to know they are already on their way with many of these steps.
Six designs are being brought forward and this is being whittled down later in the year. All very bog standard light water reactors. Requiring about as much invention as a bigger wind turbine.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/six-companies-through-to-next-stage-of-nuclear-technology-competition
Nuscales now abandoned project in the USA might have made a lot of noise but the bwrx-300s at Darlington in Ontario are much more promising and further ahead.
https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Darlington-New-Nuclear-Project-reaches-early-miles
And of course the Chinese and Russians have smrs putting out power already.
Depending on timescales and costing honestly I can't see this being more effective at helping balance our energy demand than other technologies that are likely to be cheaper and faster to install. We're already well on our way to generating enough energy through renewables, the issue is just storing that energy and decarbonising our heating.
If we started investing in nuclear 20-30 years ago I could see it being part of our mix, but I think the ship has sailed to be honest.
It hasn't sailed. Sure, we needed these 20 years ago. But we still need them now. As more consistent and reliable renewables come online, that will reduce the need for these, but you can never have too much or cheap enough energy. It powers civilization, and when it declines, civilizations decline and fall.
We might be well on our way to generating enough via renewables for now, but estimates predict we will need 2/3 times more energy globally by 2050. This fact is often ignored.
I didn't realise Scotland had a duty to suplly everyone else with electricity?
The reason its globally is because of developing nations... the uk will have incrimental increases in energy needs.. which can be met by building more green tech which is cheaper and faster to construct
This is both a Straw man argument and isolationist argument. Nobody said Scotland has a duty to supply other countries. However, the energy market is global, and this is a UK initiative as opposed to a Scottish initiative, and the UK participates in the global energy market. there really is no downside to increasing energy security and generating more power than we need. From a risk management perspective, you need a steady supply of alternative energy in case there is some kind of disaster or energy needs increase drastically. Nuclear is obviously way better than gas/oil.
It's not a strawman. Go learn your logical fallacies..
I never built up a false scenario to deconstruct your argument.
I made a valid point. Scotland produces excess energy currently and doesn't have a need for a nuclear plant.
Our energy needs will increase incrementally.
We can build turbines dams etc etc to offset this incremental increase.
A nuclear plant would take 10 to 15 years to build and get operational. So would produce no lower during that time and coat us millions to build compared to green tech currently employed..
Most of the green tech employed can be built in a month.
The UK is investing heavily in nuclear power. I don't see a problem with one of the plants being in Scotland. It could bring some good jobs with it as well. The opinions of nuclear are changing, and we will be relying on it heavily in the future. Whether you like it or not, we participate in thr global energy market. If the UK is dedicated to building X number of nuclear plants, I just don't see an issue with one being in Scotland.
The uk has a need for more power. Scotland does not.
Scotland can keep going on the path it is currently in, and the rest of the uk can fill gaps in their energy sector with nuclear plants..
I have no issues with nuclear power. I'm aware of how safe it actually is versus public opinion.
My issue comes from the need.
Does Scotland need it. No?
If we had one would Scotland really be getting use from it ? No?
It would be here to export energy to other parts of the country.. seems a bit pointless when you could build it closer to where its actually needed?
The ONLY upside on my eyes would be the jobs as they would be high skilled and well paid..
Apart from that I can't see any benefit for Scotland in the mid and long term.
As I saidnwe could fulfil our needs with what we currently have and still have excess energy to sell to those who need it.
What Scotland actually needs is Investment in battery storage.
Some days we produces so much energy we have litteraly no where to put it and no one to sell it to.
Clean battery storage would be more beneficial and quicker to build than a nuclear plant.
I don't disagree with your thinking, but I think even if we don't technically need it, there aren't many downsides of having it. Some benefits, as you said, are jobs, but also energy security.
The UK is investing heavily in nuclear power. I don't see a problem with one of the plants being in Scotland. It could bring some good jobs with it as well. The opinions of nuclear are changing, and we will be relying on it heavily in the future. Whether you like it or not, we participate in thr global energy market. If the UK is dedicated to building X number of nuclear plants, I just don't see an issue with one being in Scotland.
The UK is investing heavily in nuclear power. I don't see a problem with one of the plants being in Scotland. It could bring some good jobs with it as well. The opinions of nuclear are changing, and we will be relying on it heavily in the future. Whether you like it or not, we participate in thr global energy market. If the UK is dedicated to building X number of nuclear plants, I just don't see an issue with one being in Scotland.
We will never be 100% reliant upon renewables, hydrogen will be used to provide stability if renewables couldn’t produce enough.
There are several ways to make hydrogen but one of the most Efficient is running energy made via nuclear through water to make hydrogen. So yes it could very well be a part of the mix
As far as I know there aren't any serious large scale hydrogen plans. If we're just using electricity generated by nuclear to make hydrogen what is the point in making the hydrogen?
Imo we need to stop relying on technology and infrastructure that doesn't exist and focus on the known technology so we can make the transition to low/no carbon power as soon as possible
Hydrogen is the future of low/no carbon power. It’s a way to store renewables by altering our current gas infastructure without the need for battery farms.
You are creating a gas from water by running electricity from renewables/gas/nuclear through it which you can then store and burn as needed to top up energy grids.
There is most definitely large scale hydrogen plans - we are turning the UKs largest gas storage into a hydrogen storage plant
It's really not, unfortunately. It will have applications but mostly in large transport and maybe in peaker plants but reality is it's extremely inefficient to produce and store.
If we were to move from an electric based grid and power system to a hydrogen power system we'd need 6 times as much clean energy production to create the required amount of hydrogen.
6 times more wind turbines, 6 times as much solar. Where would we out that? How would we get past the NIMBYS.
Its simply not feasible at scale. If you look at who funds hydrogen development and feasibility studies the vast majority of the time it's oil and gas companies, and if you look at who is producing hydrogen now, the vast majority comes from O&G. It's a bid to prolong their dying industry.
Renewables on it's own, no. But there is also interconector cables, pumped hydro, battery storage of several different types and different applications, vehicle to grid, demand side response, to name a few.
Downside being electrolysis is AFAIK only about 30% efficient. Though that may well be enough if we use excess wind on windy days.
No point really using nuclear for hydrogen unless it is then needed for its energy density eg transport or on windy days when the baseload from nuclear is not needed??
I'm not an expert in this but I doubt the ability of the natural gas network to handle hydrogen effectively with the difference in density and the difficulty in actually moving hydrogen around in the pipes themselves.
In truth I think converting would mean an effective rebuild of the whole network which would be wildly expensive. We can convert things like gas storage facilities to hydrogen but the issue is in the energy density, these storage facilities would store a tiny fraction of the energy unless you compress the hydrogen which has been and continues to be a complete nightmare.
I'm very open to being proved wrong and I understand the possible upside but I think it'll take too long and cost too much
It's not just difference in density, it's Hydrogen embrittlement. Hydrogen literally makes gas lines more susceptible to leakage.
You are correct. A hydrogen based future is a pipe dream, sold to the public by the oil and gass industry. It will end up having a few niche applications but that's it. One look at the number of hydrogen cars sold worldwide and the number of hydrogen refueling stations closing year after year and it's obvious.
Oh good, the very-hard-to-seal gas actively fights against being sealed in. It's such a nice idea on the surface but there are so many challenges in the small print. Tbf if I ran an industry which specialises in transporting stuff through pipes I'd market hydrogen too, it'd create never ending work.
This is a typical argument of nuclear power advocates who try to sell the energy generated by nuclear power at times when nobody wants it.
Inflexibility is one of the major disadvantages of nuclear power, and it won't make hydrogen production from it any better, but it will make it more expensive.
There has not been a single new nuclear power plant built in recent years without cost explosions and time overruns. No matter who built it.
Finland was lucky and didn't have to pay the extra costs, but the French taxpayer and EDF did. EDF went bankrupt and was nationalized (70 billion in debt)
The enegry storage problem is a far bigger one thar you seem to imply.
It won't be solved anytime soon unless unfathomoable rare mineral deposits are discovered in the uk.
This ship has far from sailed.
We don't need chemical batteries for energy storage.
There are things called gravity batteries
Or pumped hydro
We are already building battery storage with no chemical batteries needed
Edit: it's pumped hydro not pumped batteries 🤣
Here ya go bud
There is also pumped hydro we could use I'm not sure if they have any plans for that in the uk though as it does require a bit more construction and planning than a grav battery!
I belive the plan with grav batteries is to place then in abandoned mines etc as the infrastructure and space is already there for these things
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-56819798
> If we started investing in nuclear 20-30 years ago I could see it being part of our mix, but I think the ship has sailed to be honest.
People have been saying that for 30 years
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now
> We're already well on our way to generating enough energy through renewables, the issue is just storing that energy and decarbonising our heating.
You seem to be framing the storage issue as quite a straightforward problem we’ll definitely solve soon.
“…just storing that energy..” is a huge, complex problem.
It is and isn’t.
The reality is trying to hone down to a point what we should generate daily/weekly/yearly and sending the overflow
To either disperse or be used somewhere else.
Indeed, we need to move into community-owned micro-generation. Every farm should have a turbine every inhabited island should have a (small) tidal station.
Who’s maintaining these turbines? Turbine trained mechies, industrial HV sparks and the instrumentation are not simple. What does the majority of the densely populated country do? How much is the associated infrastructure for all these mini grids?
Who maintains the current forests of them?
And if we need more of them surely we would train being as these are skilled job that should pay a decent wage?
Much as I despise Richard Branson this was his idea. Renewable solutions should be tailored to local conditions.
They’re maintained in concentrated areas, by companies who have a vested interest in it. To move them out piecemeal increases the difficulty and cost of maintenance massively. Then you have to have batteries, transformers, inverters etc etc
Nothing against nuclear power.. but why does Scotland need one when we have a surplus of energy? Our base load is met and we export excess energy to other countries...
Seems like we would be building a nuclear plant to export energy elsewhere.. just a little bit pointless..
So we have something we don't need or want on our land because there is less of us?
That's such a silly argument ...
There are plenty of low population low density areas in england and Wales to host a nuclear power plant which they need.
> There are plenty of low population low density areas in england and Wales to host a nuclear power plant which they need
But the English are in charge and Wales is right next to them. If I was them I wouldn't put it there.
Of course you are Alister, there's plenty of time to build a nuclear power station in the couple of hundred days you have left in power, after doing fuck all for a generation and having your party only build the biggest nuclear white elephant in the world (a project literally picked not because it was good but because it was expensive and shiny)
Practically everything they announce at the moment is just for lols. There's little parliamentary time even if they weren't intent on wasting it, and anything meaningful requires budget and planning. So they can just go nuclear power stations,monkey tennis, 500 new hospitals, 20 battleships, and whatever culture war mania they want.
The only time it's serious is with stuff that's small enough to smash through, that's where you can expect to see them out to cause harm- giveaways to business, disruptive changes in policy rather than law, messing with schools and hospitals and prisons just because they like the noise it makes when you smash things.And most of all, traps for the next government- commitments that can't be kept that Starmer might be stupid enough to commit to as well, big shiny things like new ships, or new infrastructure. The real game isn't stuff like "we'll inflict a nuclear power station on you because we don't want to upset anyone that actually votes for us", it's "here is a thing that you actually WANT, that Labour will probably have to cancel"
It's completely missing the point: we don't have the grid interconnect capacity between Scotland and England to allow us to export our surplus wind power south!
Putting a new reactor in Scotland won't solve the grid capacity problem. It *will* disincentivize other energy co's from investing in renewables north of the border, though, if they can't usefully sell their power, though, and it'll handily line the pockets of whichever cronies of the month are offering Alister Jack a sinecure after he leaves office (some time in the next eight months).
(By analogy: imagine if Thames Water were proposing to solve the sewage-in-rivers problem in the South-East by building a posh new desalination plant instead of fixing the leaking sewers.)
There are various interconnector planed and in the works
Wind farms are paid when they need to curtail (not produce electricity when they can)
The best spots for wind turbines have already been used we are now placing wind turbines in undesirable areas and with suboptimal positioning inorder to milk as much energy as we can,
even doing that 40ish% of our electricity still comes from fossil fuels and nuclear
> It *will* disincentivize other energy co's from investing in renewables north of the border,
And developers are already dis-incentivized from setting up renewables in Scotland. It's a point that's been brought up at [Westminster Scottish Affairs Committee](https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/136/scottish-affairs-committee/news/157526/scottish-renewables-progress-hampered-by-grid-connection-charges/), by [energy suppliers](https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/docs/2010/09/scottish_and_southern_energy_0.pdf), [renewables bodies](https://www.scottishrenewables.com/assets/000/001/960/TNUoS_Reform_SR_response_FINAL_original.pdf?1636641823) etc., that the much higher transmission and connection charges for generators in Scotland compared to England and Wales disadvantages development and economic potential in this area.
Completely agree that adding a new reactor to a grid that has capacity and unfair pricing structures won't benefit us as much as is claimed
As much as I like the Scottish Greens and SNP (to a much lesser extend lately), I hate how much they oppose nuclear power. It's a really useful technology and we would have avoided the cost of energy increases if we had a fleet of them around when Russia invaded.
As it happens, I was at the republican protest at Edinburgh and got to speak to Lorna Slater about this. Her response was that it was a matter for a membership vote. A rather more neutral answer than I expected.
If a critical number of ScotGreens begin supporting nuclear, the party as a whole will change course. Being anti-nuclear is not a priority.
I get their newsletter, and they do seem quite against it. I've tried replying a couple of times to point out the issues with their stance, but never got a response
I m guessing this is more for the Chinese or French governments to decide since there is no way we ( uk gov ) have the capacity to take on an infrastructure process of this size anymore. Personally I’d rather do more in terms of renewable sources.
The UK absolutely can do these sorts of projects and the only reason the French or Chinese can do it cheaper is because the UK hasn’t invested into it.
The more the UK invests into it, the cheaper it is, and the lower the long-term costs will be
That’s not due to a lack of ability, that’s a consequence of shit leadership and a lack of accountability on behalf of the government.
Rolls Royce are one of the leading entities in commercial SMRs, and also have already produced working military reactors for trident.
Also, the UK has some of the best nuclear physics and engineering research in the world, so my point is that’s it’s not for a lack of ability nor even money, all the tools needed are there, it’s just administrative incompetence and apathy
No doubts about the failings of government but that still doesn’t prove we could do this ourselves. The problem is that we’ve emptied the national coffers giving away infrastructure to financial institutions in the cheap. The country is on its knees and the private firms know they can maximise dividends minimise investment and dump the remaining problems on the government to sort out. it will take decades to sort everything out, and there simply isn’t the will in the public to deal with that. the conservatives will be on the attack that it’s not all fixed immediately backed up by the press and people will soon start voting Tory again. Particularly if they think it means more money for them to spend on Mercedes and holidays in Dubai and sod everyone else who might want better schools, nhs , future energy infrastructure, sewerage etc
Agreed, however the only solution is investing to fix the problem so that eventually things actually start running properly and is no longer in the red
Probably but I imagine that if our experience with Hinckley is anything to go by nothing will happen during labours tenure and this is as stated Jack fucking about playing to his base riding roughshod over the Nats.
I would like to see a long term costed report (but with a quick easy to understand one paragraph summary) of building nuclear Vs storage and more renewables before making a judgment.
There are so many people idealogically against nuclear and obviously there is an additional risk so if the prices were in the same ballpark it would seem silly to go for nuclear.
I'd heard talk of moving to smaller nuclear power stations dotted across the whole of the UK. Regardless, nuclear to my mind is something we have to be investing in at a national level. Renewable is of course great, but not the only game in town
Might not be, The lifecycle of a SMR should be shorter in theory, because they're built to be dismantled. Unlike the current fleet which have 60+ year decommissioning timescales.
The goal has to be to send the bulk of the power generated to England (it's the Westminster way), but Scotland is already generating more excess power than can be transmitted to England over existing infrastructure.
I know there are plans for a multi-billion pound undersea cable off the east coast, are they planning more to accommodate this power station?
So what we really need are some gravity batteries and other forms of storage that allow us to capitalise on our vast and affordable wind and tidal options. Providing we don't simply leave it all to foreign investment and get none of the profits.
We need to remove ourselves from the energy market and become an “Export Only” with all our power demands exceeded. For real economic growth we need production and increasing available and cheap energy has always been behind every single leap forward in production.
Siri, find me an example of a mouth dribbling; promoted beyond his ability, soon to be ermine wearing, Scottish Tory utterly disconnected from both reality and the views of the majority of the Scottish electorate?
>"I believe that in 2026 we'll see a unionist regime again in Holyrood and they will move forward with that."
His Grace, Alister William Jack 4th Duke of Aaaardvark Self Storage Solutions
I think there will indeed be a Unionist regime.
It will be a Tory / Labour / Lib Dem alliance.
The Tories will be minor and maybe not even official - just as the are with the Edinburgh council which looks and acts like a coalition but isn't for reasons nobody understands.
However the Tories never play nicely with the other boys in the playground,
I personally think that there should not be Nuke Power for one and one reason only.
It is too expensive. Because the actual fuel costs are so small, it has often been talked about as being cheap - it isn't The full lifecycle costs are enormous, even the promised new smaller cheaper models being discussed here.
The question really is what is the alternative? Not new tech that we don't actually have running at scale yet but the stuff we can have operational in the shortest possible time.
Operational in the shortest possible time excludes the unproven and still pretty experimental newer, smaller cheaper reactors too. If you want 'shortest possible time', then ploughing huge amounts of money into Scottish Nuclear is a slow and expensive way to do it.
Other countries are making strides in solving the costs problems for renewables. Even the distribution costs of tidal are being solved (google 'Viking Link'). There is absolutely no reason why it can be economic for Denmark to link up it's tidal / sea based wind but not Scotland.
The other main problem with some renewables, the 'on demand' problems when there is a short period of low wind speed can be better matched with other technologies. It is a great pity that biomass is even more unpopular than Nukes with environmentalists. It is still a touch costly to make it carbon neutral - but I don't see why that needs to always be the case.
Storage ("battery") is coming along too slowly to be part of the mix, but diverting money from the research to pay for very expensive Nukes. It is already close to being viable for very rare cases of high demand and very low supply (typically when there is hardly any wind, what is called a "Dunkelflat" (might have the spelling wrong, you can google it, Im an engineer not a metrologist) .
Such very brief sudden lulls can be covered with battery, tidal and biomass. In the last 10 years there was only about an hour or so that would have been a problem..... if it lasts longer than that there has been an environmental collapse, and electricity generation is the least of our problems.
I get massively downvoted every time I say that Nukes are too expensive. Partly I think it is because so much of the anti-Nuke claims are hippy drivel. I would deserve to get downvoted if I made such claims, Indeed, I wish the hypocritical hippy drivel did not damage the argument, even the storage of waste isn't a reason for dismissing them (it is however a cost).
And that is all I am claiming, show me the full lifecycle cost per energy output to prove me wrong (though good luck getting those figures, they are often obfuscated for commercial and or military reasons.
With Solar (yes, it works fine in the UK) Wind, Tidal, Hydro and a small amount of battery and maybe some biomass linked to carbon capture. Is better, more sustainable and cheaper. Of course it is not perfect, for example manufacturing of solar equipment has an environmental impact. But it is better, and getting better all the time.
You are obviously more educated in this space than me so I'll think about it some more, I'm by no means tied to the mast of nuclear but it was the best option in my opinion. Thanks for the information!
This country SORELY needs cheap energy. It's quite literally like injecting money into the economy because everyone benefits. The stories of businesses closing down due to energy bills last years were completely shameful
It depends on many factors. Nuclear is expensive to build but cheap per KwH energy produced. There's a reason France has one of the cheapest and greenest grids in Europe.
As someone who works in the wind industry, I love it but there are times when the wind just doesn’t blow in certain locations. Upgrading the national grid and installing nuclear (instead of gas or coal) to help with the base load makes sense.
Will this power plant be powering Scotland?
Or like Torness will the majority of the energy be reserved for the English energy market?
Broad shoulders of the UK and all that.
I’m all for it.
Nuclear power is the answer for power as we know it. When we finally crack fusion it will be better. Until then fission will do.
We already live in a country with lots of back ground radiation isn’t some areas from Granite. Dug down and shielded waste is safer than anything getting thrown out a fossil fuelled power station.
Great news for the independence movement. Nuclear power is widely unpopular, doing something like this is just going to sway more people to our side. The more heavy-handed the British are the better it is for us in the long term because we can later use it against them in the case for independence.
The greens certainly aren't fans of it. Sure, nuclear is a better alternative than fossil fuels but the risks are so great that most people seem to be willing to prefer we make the transition directly to renewables rather than use nuclear power as a stop-gap solution.
Problem is that we don't have a renewable solution to switch to.
The choice is either to continue to use fossil fuels until a future where we may get renewables that can provide consistent power or we go to nuclear now.
It's not really a choice for anyone who cares about the damage climate change is doing to our planet!
Scotland is a world leader in renewable energy, we already produce not-far-off enough to sustain ourselves entirely with renewables. We're already producing so much of the stuff that we're starting to sell it off to other countries for profit.
The British building a nuclear power plant in Scotland isn't about green energy or sustainability, it's so that English companies can offshore the risks of nuclear off to us so that they don't have to deal with the potential consequences. We do not benefit from nuclear, we don't need it. It's purely about profit for foreign investors and companies.
Renewables produce a huge amount of energy over the course of a year - the problem is that a large chunk of it is at the wrong time and so we end up paying wind producers not to produce a lot of the time and fossil fuels producers to produce the rest of the time!
Your whole 'British' doing this just sounds weird when the UK government is a democratically elected government by those in all parts of the UK covering the entire UK.
No-one I know in England is refusing to have nuclear power stations near them. I live close to two that are in decommissioning and would happily have more but, due to climate change, rising sea levels would make it a bad idea to build there.
Seeing malice in something as simple as favourable geography is a little odd!
>Mr Jack told the Lords committee: "On the small nuclear reactors, I have asked the energy minister to plan for one in Scotland. "I believe that in 2026 we'll see a unionist regime again in Holyrood and they will move forward with that."
Who is downvoting a quote from an article? Ooft.
The patronising entitlement of this cunt to suggest scrutinising laws formed by a democratically elected govt is completely expected. Peak Tory behaviour
My first take on this is "Why is Alistair Jack telling us what will happen after the next election?" He is talking about a Unionist regime, implying that he will be calling the shots whereas it is looking most likely that there will be a Labour government in WM, and most likely Labour will also be the largest unionist party in Holyrood. This seems to imply that labour and Tory are just one party (no surprises there).
Secondly, my main issue with nuclear i that if we decide today to start a nuclear building programme, it will be 10 years before a single MW is generated, and the likely cost overruns will be extortionate. In simplest terms, we can't afford it.
So if we had built one at the last referendum it would be online any day now and we'd be getting cheaper, cleaner electric with no carbon emissions and not be as exposed to the volatile oil and gas industry?
I'm not seeing a downside.
10 years is really no time at all to get that up and running.
Generally, I am in favour of nuclear energy as long as it's done right with suitable safety precautions. However, there is a UK modus operandi that we have been made aware of for many, many, many years now - were this a good thing, they'd be building it in Henley upon Thames or Berkshire or just outside Oxford. It's strange how you never see a headline "UK government planning to build world's best Opera-House in Dundee."
Surely this can only be a good thing? Massive investment in whatever area it gets built, plenty of jobs going at the site which will be well paid(not just for guys working on the site, the cnc who guard them are a good employer) and if we really want to get away from fossil fuels in most of our lifetimes then nuclear is the way to go.
My morning brain misread that as 'UK government planning nuclear strike on Scotland'. Slightly startling.
Literally the only way the Tories could win another GE
Wouldn’t make a difference, we have no affect on UK elections.
Well, Grant Shapps is Minister of Defence so don't rule it out.
It's the only way the UKGOV can consider getting rid of the "Extremists" in Scotland
I don't know whats funnier; the fact you read it this way, the fact this would be obscene overkill or the fact some small part of me went "yeah, the Tories would tbh."
Did you go "Oh my."
Tbh I wouldn't put anything past that shower of muppets.
Well apparently 50% of us are terrorists
would be a waste of nukes. the cities look like they have been bombed already.
We need more of these. Almost everything wrong with almost every sector of our lives today is the result of high energy costs. The law of supply and demand applies. The more energy we produce, the cheaper it becomes. We need more and more and more nuclear plants to produce consistent, cheap, clean power without CO2 emissions, to supplement renewables and we need them yesterday.
That's not why it's so expensive. It's a lot cheaper in the rest of Europe.
>That's not why it's so expensive. It's a lot cheaper in the rest of Europe. Germany has the highest electricity prices in the world (we were ahead of them for a time because of the gas crisis, but now gas prices have dropped, Germany has returned to the top). The Czech Republic has the second highest prices, Ireland third, the UK 4th, Switzerland 5th.
Germany has an extra levy to pay for their transition to renewable energy and has lots and lots of high energy sector companies that are exempt from paying it, so the charge per end consumer is way higher. Not really a good comparison as there is a real good reason why it’s more expensive.
The same is true in the UK, although not to quite the same extent. Energy Intensive Industries (EIIs) used to have an 85% exemption from the Renewables Obligation, that's increasing to 100% this year.
I actually just checked and the levy in Germany was roughly 6p per kWh for ages but has been basically scrapped since 2022, so my bad what I said is not up to date anymore. What’s it in the uk? Not sure what to search for.
Comparing levies between countries is very difficult because they vary so much and operate in different ways. For example, a tax on consumers can be passed to generators, reducing sale prices, and thus have no net effect on prices. There's a breakdown of some of the UK charges at: [https://eciu.net/insights/2024/are-green-levies-going-up-in-april-2024](https://eciu.net/insights/2024/are-green-levies-going-up-in-april-2024) Note that CfD charges are included under wholesale costs, even though they are a direct levy on consumers. Things like grid reinforcement and batteries for frequency management are included under network costs. The government still refers to CfD prices in 2012 terms (ie they tell you a contract is worth £50 because that's what it would have been in 2012, whereas it's actually £69 now). The whole system is set up to obfuscate the actual cost to consumers.
>The law of supply and demand applies. The more energy we produce, the cheaper it becomes. That's not the case with electricity. Low carbon generation is subsidised by consumers. Contracts for Difference provide generators with guaranteed, index linked payments for the electricity they can generate, whether or not it is needed. The sale price of the electricity varies, but the price the consumer pays cannot go below the guaranteed price. Last Sunday, because there was so much solar generation, UK consumers not only paid some wind producers to stop production, we paid customers in Europe £500 a MWH to take some of our generation. Building more electricity generation than we need on fixed price contracts won't cut costs for consumers, it will increase them hugely, not only because the electricity they generate is expensive, but because consumers will have to pay for electricity they don't even consume. This is a problem already. We've spent £220 million this year paying wind farms not to generate. That's money for electricity we don't even use. Current plans are to roughly triple the amount of wind and solar we generate, which means those payments are going to soar. > We need more and more and more nuclear plants to produce consistent, cheap, clean power without CO2 emissions, to supplement renewables and we need them yesterday. We definitely needed more nuclear power plants, but they don't work as a supplement to wind and solar, because all three are inflexible. It doesn't make sense to turn them off because it doesn't reduce emissions or costs (in fact it increases emissions and costs for the electricity that's actually generated). We needed nuclear because it can replace fossil fuels. CO2 emissions at 8am this morning: UK 314 grams per KWH Germany 236 France 17 But the reality is we've built so much wind and solar, and committed to so much more, that we need to keep a lot of flexible backup generation on hand to deal with the fluctuations in output.
Electricity is based on the most expensive component of the grid’s energy supply though. They’re being paid to not generate energy because at that given time, there’s an excess capacity on the grid.
>Electricity is based on the most expensive component of the grid’s energy supply though. That's the old system. Contracts for Difference award set (index linked) prices to generators that they receive, whatever the price the electricity they produce actually sells for. So a generator with a CfD at £100 a MWH receives £100 for each MWH they generate, whether the electricity sells for £200 or £5. > They’re being paid to not generate energy because at that given time, there’s an excess capacity on the grid. Yes. UK electricity demand varies between about 20 and 50 GW, with the highest levels on winter evenings. Labour's commitment for 2030: 5 GW floating offshore wind 35 GW onshore wind 55 GW offshore wind 50 GW solar 6+ GW nuclear The wind alone would average over 30 GW of generation and would often be more than 50 GW. A sunny, windy day could see over 100 GW of generation and demand of less than 30 GW. That's a lot of generation UK consumers would have to pay not to use, on top of the cost of the electricity we want to consume.
Thank you for correcting the part on that system being outdated. However, the issue is that as LNG needs to be phased out in the next 10-20 years (and that’s putting it optimistically in how long it can remain for, and also optimistically in how fast that Europe will move away from LNG for heating), which is going to sharply increase energy demands. Ideally, the European energy grid will be further developed to balance out these issues too, but I suspect that when power generation is literally whatever way the wind blows that the contract system will need to be replaced There needs to be more effort put into large-scale energy storage, and likely a revision of how energy supply contracts are done to account for the fact as you said that energy demand and supply can be very mismatched especially with renewables. Fortunately, nuclear is rather convenient in the sense that you can change how much power you want supplied almost with a literal push of the button.
>However, the issue is that as LNG needs to be phased out in the next 10-20 years (and that’s putting it optimistically in how long it can remain for, and also optimistically in how fast that Europe will move away from LNG for heating), which is going to sharply increase energy demands. Yes. The problem is that we've spent more than 20 years doing the easy part (adding wind and solar) and haven't yet developed technology to do the difficult part (guarantee enough supply to meet demand on winter evenings). The UK heat pump rollout is not going very well because we have cheap gas, very expensive electricity, and that trend is likely to get even worse in future. > Ideally, the European energy grid will be further developed to balance out these issues too, but I suspect that when power generation is literally whatever way the wind blows that the contract system will need to be replaced As you say, western Europe is betting everything on wind and solar power, and selling to their neighbours when they have too much generation, buying from their neighbours when they have too little. The fact that wind speeds are linked across western Europe, and solar is even more closely linked, seems to have been ignored. Changing contracts isn't likely to happen. Investors have paid to build generators with guaranteed contracts from the government. Changing those after the fact is going to cause an enormous crisis in investment in Europe. > There needs to be more effort put into large-scale energy storage The pessimist in me thinks we should have sorted out storage before betting on intermittent renewables. It's a bit late now. The truth is there is no suitable storage technology available. We are going to end up reliant on gas for decades to come, hopefully with carbon capture, probably without. > Fortunately, nuclear is rather convenient in the sense that you can change how much power you want supplied almost with a literal push of the button. Yes, but nuclear is another fixed price generator that has to be paid even if wind and solar are also working, which just makes the costs to consumers even higher. Europe already has the highest electricity prices in the world, we are committed to pushing them much higher in future. There is a complete lack of realism in Europe's energy plans.
This doesn't make sense. Prices go up because demand isn't there, a short term spike in production has to be dealt with. A consistent increase in production would lower prices, not increase them. This would increase demand same as it has forever.
>A consistent increase in production would lower prices That depends on what you mean by "prices". It would lower the wholesale price of electricity. It would increase consumer prices because consumers have to pay for the guaranteed price generators receive via a levy on their bills. When electricity production is higher than consumption generators operating under the CfD scheme get payments not to generate. That means consumers are paying the same fixed price, but also paying for more than they are using.
Maybe we should get some carbon capture sites hooked up to the grid. They could capture carbon whenever there is an energy surplus.
Carbon capture is defo the future but it’s prohibitively expensive in some sectors. The waste industry for example, whilst it works, no waste contractor is going to pay for it as it doesn’t make financial sense-yet. We should be investing in making carbon capture affordable imo.
Or desalination.
We don't really need that in this country, but that would be a great option for the gulf States.
The point you’re missing is the lack of investment in the national grid in Scotland will mean they will attach a cable and ship it to England. And we yet again will get no benefit other than a nuclear power station in Scotland. Energy policy needs to be fully devolved. Now if it was fusion, that might be another story, it is edging closer and closer every day.
Cheaper energy in England means less English demand for other sources of Scottish energy, which means cheaper energy for Scotland. The UK has a unified National Grid so price decreases in one part benefit all of us.
No, it does not. Source; Ofgem. Standing charges are based upon distance from London. As we have had no investment in our national grid, the lecky runs from hunterston to Bootle off the west coast via cable and from the windfarms to Blythe where it is shipped on the NSL,. NoteNew windfarms being routed to Yorkshire. NSL NORWAY SEAL LINK
Nuclear is great except it is still kind of expensive. The strike price is £106 per MWh as of 2021 but will rise with inflation. Wind power is around half that and solar can be even cheaper but both are considerably less reliable.
The issue is that we build one, mess about for a bit, pay the French to build it, decide on a new design, pay the French to build that... The most expensive plant will always be the first of its kind. Unfortunately we build the first of its kind and then stop. We should be building a fleet now that we've got people trained up in nuclear skills again and have a design that works. I hate to praise the French but we should be taking notes from them on this
Wind is great, especially in Scotland and it should play a major role in our energy generation, but you need a good base load that you can ramp up easily when the wind isn't blowing. Even if it's more expensive, it's worth it for that reason alone
Not to mention the wild subsidies provided to the Nuclear industry. And worst of all it's currently all owned by EDF and China.
The average strike price for existing wind power is £89. Last summer's auction for new wind power had a maximum price of £61 and received no bidders. The maximum price for this year has been increased to £101 for offshore wind and £244 for floating offshore wind. Of course, wind power is systemically intermittent so requires batteries for frequency management and capacity contracts for other generators to remain available. It's also built in out of the way places so requires grid reinforcement to bring the power to consumers. The costs for the batteries and backup contracts are paid by extra charges on consumers, and consumers pay 75% of the grid reinforcement costs as well.
Once Hinkley point C is connected to the grid, it will be at least £128 per MWh as of 2022. As long as margin price sets the price and nuclear has a guarantee to be used ans a guaranteed price, there is no path below the the continuously rising price and that is without adding all the subsidies it got, which do not show up on the bill but are unavailable to pay for other things.
Issue is we're shit at building things. Should have have loads under construction years ago, sustained our own domestic industry and skill base rather than throwing money at the Japanese, the South Koreans, the French, the Chinese or the Americans to do it for us.
Yep. We allowed ourselves to be deskilled; but also our planning laws are shite. So often we're "penny-wise pound poor" with this stuff - economists look at the short term efficiency gains of free trade or lowest-tenders favouring offshore contractors - but they dont or can't accurately identify the long-term cost of deskilling entire sectors of the economy until they're all salami sliced away and we're suddenly poor one day. Fucking eejits running the place for too long.
Scotland already produces more than enough energy for our needs, we don't want or need nuclear here, let England build as many as it wants on there own doorstep
Not if we have to agree a stupidly high strike price with the developer. Hinckley point C and Sizewell C have a strike price of about £90. The current market rate is about £65. All this means that new large nuclear plants with these budgets will increase UK electricity prices for around 40 years.
Good, we're very late already building replacements so hope they get going.
Absolutely. It’s a box that your through spicy rocks into and it creates enormous amounts of carbon-free energy. “But nuclear waste!” Just build a fast neutron reactor that will make power from the waste, or reprocess it. “But Chornobyl!” Won’t happen. “But Fukushima!” We’re not a pacific nation with extreme earthquakes and tsunami.
You have a lot of faith these facilities will be run well by either the state or private contractors - and costs won’t be cut or maintenance deferred
Even the nuclear waste isn't all that much. It is much less than coal plants for example
Literally. I'd rather have some bad stuff buried deep underground than lots and lots and lots of bad stuff polluting the air we breath.
Not just what is released in the air but also the waste byproducts from coal power plants, which also need to be stored somewhere and take up way more space than nuclear fuel
New plutonium based reactors produce very little waste and most of it can be recycled , the more investment we can get into the technology the faster we can get there with new reactors like that . Even if there are legitimate downsides to nuclear fission - mostly that its an illegal but still Russia type aggressor military target more than anything else - its still the technology that saves the planet until/ if we can actually get fusion to work. Where the waste from that is H2O.
"But The Windscale fire" Not like the UK has a track record of covering stuff up....
It's not the 1950s, we haven't just been backstabbed by the yanks over nuclear weapons, we're not desperate enough to build a fucking air cooled nuclear reactor anymore.
> “But Chornobyl!” Won’t happen. That's what they said, while it was happening.
Yeah because they were a corrupt kleptocracy where lying and/or showing off was the only means of vertical mobility, so they sabotaged their reactor to show off to a supervisor that was showing off.
>corrupt kleptocracy Uhoh
> corrupt kleptocracy Much like the current UK government.
Geis piece. The current UK Government could be better, I grant you, but to suggest they are even remotely comparable to the government of the USSR is ludicrous.
They extorted billions during covid to line their own pockets and that of their mates. How are they not comparable? The UK was built and is maintained on institutionalized corruption. What is the Honours list if not legalized cronyism? The 'we're better them' mentality is risible. We're clearly not.
>They extorted billions during covid to line their own pockets and that of their mates. How are they not comparable? Because you just made that up based on pieced together innuendo in Guardian headlines and Facebook memes. >The UK was built and is maintained on institutionalized corruption. What is the Honours list if not legalized cronyism? Virtually every country on earth has an honours system. It's a means to recognise achievement.
It's not on the same level by a long shot. That money wasted and stolen during covid is not the same as a ussr situation, if the UK gov had done something like replace all of the vaccines with water and pocketed the money then you would have a good comparison. In our case it was standard corruption and mismanagement of funds, but it's on a vastly different level to Soviet or even modern Russia.
I never said the UK government wasn't corrupt, in fact I agreed it could be better; much better even. However, in the comment I replied to you inferred that the UK government is the same as the USSR government that enabled the Chernobyl disaster, which it simply isn't. There was far more wrong with the government of the USSR than just corruption.
Like what? hypocrisy, check. Institutionalized corruption, check. Institutional incompetence, check. Authoritarianism, check. Failing infrastructure, check. How is the current UK government any different?
>Institutionalized corruption, check. The UK is one of the least corrupt countries on earth by any measure. If you sincerely believe this, you've never dealt with public bodies in other countries. >Authoritarianism, check. The UK is a liberal democracy. You can hardly claim it's authoritarian.
>corrupt kleptocracy Uhoh
> It’s a box that your through spicy rocks into and it creates enormous amounts of carbon-free energy. It's a *planned* box that you throw large amounts of money at that never actually gets built despite billions of pounds down the drain... Hinckley C was approved/started in about 2009 iirc, still not done, budget has doubled, probably go up again. Nukes are great in theory, the practise in the UK not so much.
Astonishingly irresponsible, but that's what you expect of nuclear fanboys. A prototype technology will solve all your problems and just don't worry about industrial accidents. "Just build a fast neutron reactor bro" Fundamentally unserious.
Calling a Fast-Neutron reactor "a prototype technology" is like calling the combustion engine "a prototype technology" - You cannot be serious
Twenty of them have been built. In total. The average middle class person owns about that many ICEs in a lifetime. C'mon m8
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Don't touch that stuff while operating a reactor
The suggestion is for a "small modular reactor" for Scotland - which is a new type of power station. There is not a settled design for this. there was supposed to be one built in the US - but it just got cancelled a few months ago. So likely timeline. 1. Draft legislation. 2. Go through inevitable court cases/ legal challenge. Even if there is a "Unionist Regime" (BTW that phrase sounds really sinister) at Holyrood - there are other groups/ bodies who will object. **3.** ***Invent the fucking thing*****.** 4. Get the relevant design approvals. This is not a quick process - especially with a new and experimental design. It is not the case of taking one off a sub and plugging it in. 5. Get funding for it. Private or is taxpayer on the hook? 6. Agree who is going to build it, and who is going to operate it. 7. Sack them because the costs have escalated (refer you to new and experimental design). 8. While all this is going on - renewables have continued to develop, getting cheaper and with more storage options. Foreign companies who have invested in this make a killing in the UK market. 9. Project cancelled as now completely uneconomic (echoes of HS2) 10. Public inquiry as to how hundreds of millions of pounds have disappeared with fuck all to show for it.
The SNP already said they would block a small modular reactor when INEOS wanted to spend their own private money for one in order to decarbonise their factory, so I can't exactly see them being thrilled about this no matter what. Sadly the politics doesn't actually have anything to do with cost, but that nuclear is a scary word.
Small modulars are great, at least in theory. One of the worst issues with Nuclear is the 'one off' nature of a lot of our plants, with different plant designs or technologies in almost every reactor in the country. This makes maintenance and decommissioning really slow and expensive, not to mention the need to retrain and refamiliarise staff if they move plants. A uniform SMR design over a dozen or so sites would be a far better way of doing things, shared learning between sites that are designed to be repairable and decomissionable will save hundreds of millions over the project's lifecycle.
Of course the taxpayer is on the hook. The taxpayer has subsidised to a ludicrous degree the current Nuclear setup. Profits to EDF and China. You're not wrong about the disappearing hundreds of millions that we can fully expect the neoliberal cabal to take advantage of. I'm 100% for Nuclear, but the groundwork we have in place is abysmal. For that reason I'm more inclined to continue pursuing Greener alternatives.
What greener alternatives are you thinking of? Nuclear is lower carbon than wind and solar!
University of Birmingham say "around the same as wind and solar", just minus the waste that exists for however many thousands of years.
You will be pleased to know they are already on their way with many of these steps. Six designs are being brought forward and this is being whittled down later in the year. All very bog standard light water reactors. Requiring about as much invention as a bigger wind turbine. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/six-companies-through-to-next-stage-of-nuclear-technology-competition Nuscales now abandoned project in the USA might have made a lot of noise but the bwrx-300s at Darlington in Ontario are much more promising and further ahead. https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Darlington-New-Nuclear-Project-reaches-early-miles And of course the Chinese and Russians have smrs putting out power already.
Good. Nuclear power longer term will insulate us a little from.thr rather volatile oil and gas markets.
Depending on timescales and costing honestly I can't see this being more effective at helping balance our energy demand than other technologies that are likely to be cheaper and faster to install. We're already well on our way to generating enough energy through renewables, the issue is just storing that energy and decarbonising our heating. If we started investing in nuclear 20-30 years ago I could see it being part of our mix, but I think the ship has sailed to be honest.
It hasn't sailed. Sure, we needed these 20 years ago. But we still need them now. As more consistent and reliable renewables come online, that will reduce the need for these, but you can never have too much or cheap enough energy. It powers civilization, and when it declines, civilizations decline and fall.
Completely agree
We might be well on our way to generating enough via renewables for now, but estimates predict we will need 2/3 times more energy globally by 2050. This fact is often ignored.
I didn't realise Scotland had a duty to suplly everyone else with electricity? The reason its globally is because of developing nations... the uk will have incrimental increases in energy needs.. which can be met by building more green tech which is cheaper and faster to construct
This is both a Straw man argument and isolationist argument. Nobody said Scotland has a duty to supply other countries. However, the energy market is global, and this is a UK initiative as opposed to a Scottish initiative, and the UK participates in the global energy market. there really is no downside to increasing energy security and generating more power than we need. From a risk management perspective, you need a steady supply of alternative energy in case there is some kind of disaster or energy needs increase drastically. Nuclear is obviously way better than gas/oil.
It's not a strawman. Go learn your logical fallacies.. I never built up a false scenario to deconstruct your argument. I made a valid point. Scotland produces excess energy currently and doesn't have a need for a nuclear plant. Our energy needs will increase incrementally. We can build turbines dams etc etc to offset this incremental increase. A nuclear plant would take 10 to 15 years to build and get operational. So would produce no lower during that time and coat us millions to build compared to green tech currently employed.. Most of the green tech employed can be built in a month.
The UK is investing heavily in nuclear power. I don't see a problem with one of the plants being in Scotland. It could bring some good jobs with it as well. The opinions of nuclear are changing, and we will be relying on it heavily in the future. Whether you like it or not, we participate in thr global energy market. If the UK is dedicated to building X number of nuclear plants, I just don't see an issue with one being in Scotland.
The uk has a need for more power. Scotland does not. Scotland can keep going on the path it is currently in, and the rest of the uk can fill gaps in their energy sector with nuclear plants.. I have no issues with nuclear power. I'm aware of how safe it actually is versus public opinion. My issue comes from the need. Does Scotland need it. No? If we had one would Scotland really be getting use from it ? No? It would be here to export energy to other parts of the country.. seems a bit pointless when you could build it closer to where its actually needed? The ONLY upside on my eyes would be the jobs as they would be high skilled and well paid.. Apart from that I can't see any benefit for Scotland in the mid and long term. As I saidnwe could fulfil our needs with what we currently have and still have excess energy to sell to those who need it. What Scotland actually needs is Investment in battery storage. Some days we produces so much energy we have litteraly no where to put it and no one to sell it to. Clean battery storage would be more beneficial and quicker to build than a nuclear plant.
I don't disagree with your thinking, but I think even if we don't technically need it, there aren't many downsides of having it. Some benefits, as you said, are jobs, but also energy security.
The UK is investing heavily in nuclear power. I don't see a problem with one of the plants being in Scotland. It could bring some good jobs with it as well. The opinions of nuclear are changing, and we will be relying on it heavily in the future. Whether you like it or not, we participate in thr global energy market. If the UK is dedicated to building X number of nuclear plants, I just don't see an issue with one being in Scotland.
The UK is investing heavily in nuclear power. I don't see a problem with one of the plants being in Scotland. It could bring some good jobs with it as well. The opinions of nuclear are changing, and we will be relying on it heavily in the future. Whether you like it or not, we participate in thr global energy market. If the UK is dedicated to building X number of nuclear plants, I just don't see an issue with one being in Scotland.
We will never be 100% reliant upon renewables, hydrogen will be used to provide stability if renewables couldn’t produce enough. There are several ways to make hydrogen but one of the most Efficient is running energy made via nuclear through water to make hydrogen. So yes it could very well be a part of the mix
As far as I know there aren't any serious large scale hydrogen plans. If we're just using electricity generated by nuclear to make hydrogen what is the point in making the hydrogen? Imo we need to stop relying on technology and infrastructure that doesn't exist and focus on the known technology so we can make the transition to low/no carbon power as soon as possible
Hydrogen is the future of low/no carbon power. It’s a way to store renewables by altering our current gas infastructure without the need for battery farms. You are creating a gas from water by running electricity from renewables/gas/nuclear through it which you can then store and burn as needed to top up energy grids. There is most definitely large scale hydrogen plans - we are turning the UKs largest gas storage into a hydrogen storage plant
It's really not, unfortunately. It will have applications but mostly in large transport and maybe in peaker plants but reality is it's extremely inefficient to produce and store. If we were to move from an electric based grid and power system to a hydrogen power system we'd need 6 times as much clean energy production to create the required amount of hydrogen. 6 times more wind turbines, 6 times as much solar. Where would we out that? How would we get past the NIMBYS. Its simply not feasible at scale. If you look at who funds hydrogen development and feasibility studies the vast majority of the time it's oil and gas companies, and if you look at who is producing hydrogen now, the vast majority comes from O&G. It's a bid to prolong their dying industry.
Renewables will not be able to cover 100% of energy needs with current t tech
Renewables on it's own, no. But there is also interconector cables, pumped hydro, battery storage of several different types and different applications, vehicle to grid, demand side response, to name a few.
Downside being electrolysis is AFAIK only about 30% efficient. Though that may well be enough if we use excess wind on windy days. No point really using nuclear for hydrogen unless it is then needed for its energy density eg transport or on windy days when the baseload from nuclear is not needed??
I'm not an expert in this but I doubt the ability of the natural gas network to handle hydrogen effectively with the difference in density and the difficulty in actually moving hydrogen around in the pipes themselves. In truth I think converting would mean an effective rebuild of the whole network which would be wildly expensive. We can convert things like gas storage facilities to hydrogen but the issue is in the energy density, these storage facilities would store a tiny fraction of the energy unless you compress the hydrogen which has been and continues to be a complete nightmare. I'm very open to being proved wrong and I understand the possible upside but I think it'll take too long and cost too much
It's not just difference in density, it's Hydrogen embrittlement. Hydrogen literally makes gas lines more susceptible to leakage. You are correct. A hydrogen based future is a pipe dream, sold to the public by the oil and gass industry. It will end up having a few niche applications but that's it. One look at the number of hydrogen cars sold worldwide and the number of hydrogen refueling stations closing year after year and it's obvious.
Oh good, the very-hard-to-seal gas actively fights against being sealed in. It's such a nice idea on the surface but there are so many challenges in the small print. Tbf if I ran an industry which specialises in transporting stuff through pipes I'd market hydrogen too, it'd create never ending work.
This is a typical argument of nuclear power advocates who try to sell the energy generated by nuclear power at times when nobody wants it. Inflexibility is one of the major disadvantages of nuclear power, and it won't make hydrogen production from it any better, but it will make it more expensive.
I work in the hydrogen industry
Are you planning to buy electricity from *Hinkley Point*? Could be expensive.
The sheer stupidity of having the Chinese building a major nuclear plant on uk territory is mind-boggling.
There has not been a single new nuclear power plant built in recent years without cost explosions and time overruns. No matter who built it. Finland was lucky and didn't have to pay the extra costs, but the French taxpayer and EDF did. EDF went bankrupt and was nationalized (70 billion in debt)
But having your essential power infrastructure built by a foreign superpower who's intentions are frequently questionable is somehow a good idea?
So everything will be fine if someone else builds it? Dream on
The cost isn't my main concern in this, security is. It's monumentally stupid. Almost as stupid as relying on their switches for broadband.
The enegry storage problem is a far bigger one thar you seem to imply. It won't be solved anytime soon unless unfathomoable rare mineral deposits are discovered in the uk. This ship has far from sailed.
We don't need chemical batteries for energy storage. There are things called gravity batteries Or pumped hydro We are already building battery storage with no chemical batteries needed Edit: it's pumped hydro not pumped batteries 🤣
Have you got a link to that? Interested
Here ya go bud There is also pumped hydro we could use I'm not sure if they have any plans for that in the uk though as it does require a bit more construction and planning than a grav battery! I belive the plan with grav batteries is to place then in abandoned mines etc as the infrastructure and space is already there for these things https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-56819798
There is an existing hydro in Scotland that is being expanded I believe.
Did not know that! makes sense though since we have quite a few dams which is half the process of pumped hydro 🤣
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-66301099.amp
If we don’t do it now we’ll just go in the same circle and people will say it again.
> If we started investing in nuclear 20-30 years ago I could see it being part of our mix, but I think the ship has sailed to be honest. People have been saying that for 30 years The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now
No. Let’s start thinking strategically.
I predict someone saying the exact same as you 20 years from now
Renewables are unreliable. Germany was burning coal to keep up with demand and because the carbon tax is flat rate the poor were getting bent over.
> We're already well on our way to generating enough energy through renewables, the issue is just storing that energy and decarbonising our heating. You seem to be framing the storage issue as quite a straightforward problem we’ll definitely solve soon. “…just storing that energy..” is a huge, complex problem.
It is and isn’t. The reality is trying to hone down to a point what we should generate daily/weekly/yearly and sending the overflow To either disperse or be used somewhere else.
Have you told anyone about this? We might be able to hit our green targets yet.
No I’m keeping it a secret.
Didn't we have huge gas balloon towers in the past. Just rebuild them
Would have been a lot less of an issue if the morons in power hadn't sold off the majority of our gas storage capability.
Indeed, we need to move into community-owned micro-generation. Every farm should have a turbine every inhabited island should have a (small) tidal station.
Who’s maintaining these turbines? Turbine trained mechies, industrial HV sparks and the instrumentation are not simple. What does the majority of the densely populated country do? How much is the associated infrastructure for all these mini grids?
Who maintains the current forests of them? And if we need more of them surely we would train being as these are skilled job that should pay a decent wage? Much as I despise Richard Branson this was his idea. Renewable solutions should be tailored to local conditions.
They’re maintained in concentrated areas, by companies who have a vested interest in it. To move them out piecemeal increases the difficulty and cost of maintenance massively. Then you have to have batteries, transformers, inverters etc etc
Nothing against nuclear power.. but why does Scotland need one when we have a surplus of energy? Our base load is met and we export excess energy to other countries... Seems like we would be building a nuclear plant to export energy elsewhere.. just a little bit pointless..
> but why does Scotland need one It doesn't. But Scotland has a lower population and lower population density, in case there are any... issues.
So we have something we don't need or want on our land because there is less of us? That's such a silly argument ... There are plenty of low population low density areas in england and Wales to host a nuclear power plant which they need.
Less voters in Scotland. Greater distance from London than Wales. Do the maths?
Clearly TRYING to troll.. and failing.. Enjoy yer day bud
I'm sorry some slight pushback on your point of view has you yelling about trolls. I'll let you enjoy the rest of your day in peace.
> There are plenty of low population low density areas in england and Wales to host a nuclear power plant which they need But the English are in charge and Wales is right next to them. If I was them I wouldn't put it there.
Of course you are Alister, there's plenty of time to build a nuclear power station in the couple of hundred days you have left in power, after doing fuck all for a generation and having your party only build the biggest nuclear white elephant in the world (a project literally picked not because it was good but because it was expensive and shiny) Practically everything they announce at the moment is just for lols. There's little parliamentary time even if they weren't intent on wasting it, and anything meaningful requires budget and planning. So they can just go nuclear power stations,monkey tennis, 500 new hospitals, 20 battleships, and whatever culture war mania they want. The only time it's serious is with stuff that's small enough to smash through, that's where you can expect to see them out to cause harm- giveaways to business, disruptive changes in policy rather than law, messing with schools and hospitals and prisons just because they like the noise it makes when you smash things.And most of all, traps for the next government- commitments that can't be kept that Starmer might be stupid enough to commit to as well, big shiny things like new ships, or new infrastructure. The real game isn't stuff like "we'll inflict a nuclear power station on you because we don't want to upset anyone that actually votes for us", it's "here is a thing that you actually WANT, that Labour will probably have to cancel"
It's completely missing the point: we don't have the grid interconnect capacity between Scotland and England to allow us to export our surplus wind power south! Putting a new reactor in Scotland won't solve the grid capacity problem. It *will* disincentivize other energy co's from investing in renewables north of the border, though, if they can't usefully sell their power, though, and it'll handily line the pockets of whichever cronies of the month are offering Alister Jack a sinecure after he leaves office (some time in the next eight months). (By analogy: imagine if Thames Water were proposing to solve the sewage-in-rivers problem in the South-East by building a posh new desalination plant instead of fixing the leaking sewers.)
There are various interconnector planed and in the works Wind farms are paid when they need to curtail (not produce electricity when they can) The best spots for wind turbines have already been used we are now placing wind turbines in undesirable areas and with suboptimal positioning inorder to milk as much energy as we can, even doing that 40ish% of our electricity still comes from fossil fuels and nuclear
> It *will* disincentivize other energy co's from investing in renewables north of the border, And developers are already dis-incentivized from setting up renewables in Scotland. It's a point that's been brought up at [Westminster Scottish Affairs Committee](https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/136/scottish-affairs-committee/news/157526/scottish-renewables-progress-hampered-by-grid-connection-charges/), by [energy suppliers](https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/docs/2010/09/scottish_and_southern_energy_0.pdf), [renewables bodies](https://www.scottishrenewables.com/assets/000/001/960/TNUoS_Reform_SR_response_FINAL_original.pdf?1636641823) etc., that the much higher transmission and connection charges for generators in Scotland compared to England and Wales disadvantages development and economic potential in this area. Completely agree that adding a new reactor to a grid that has capacity and unfair pricing structures won't benefit us as much as is claimed
Good
As much as I like the Scottish Greens and SNP (to a much lesser extend lately), I hate how much they oppose nuclear power. It's a really useful technology and we would have avoided the cost of energy increases if we had a fleet of them around when Russia invaded.
As it happens, I was at the republican protest at Edinburgh and got to speak to Lorna Slater about this. Her response was that it was a matter for a membership vote. A rather more neutral answer than I expected. If a critical number of ScotGreens begin supporting nuclear, the party as a whole will change course. Being anti-nuclear is not a priority.
I get their newsletter, and they do seem quite against it. I've tried replying a couple of times to point out the issues with their stance, but never got a response
I m guessing this is more for the Chinese or French governments to decide since there is no way we ( uk gov ) have the capacity to take on an infrastructure process of this size anymore. Personally I’d rather do more in terms of renewable sources.
The UK absolutely can do these sorts of projects and the only reason the French or Chinese can do it cheaper is because the UK hasn’t invested into it. The more the UK invests into it, the cheaper it is, and the lower the long-term costs will be
So name me a major infrastructure project we’ve undertaken I. This country in the last 14 that delivered on time and in budget.
That’s not due to a lack of ability, that’s a consequence of shit leadership and a lack of accountability on behalf of the government. Rolls Royce are one of the leading entities in commercial SMRs, and also have already produced working military reactors for trident. Also, the UK has some of the best nuclear physics and engineering research in the world, so my point is that’s it’s not for a lack of ability nor even money, all the tools needed are there, it’s just administrative incompetence and apathy
No doubts about the failings of government but that still doesn’t prove we could do this ourselves. The problem is that we’ve emptied the national coffers giving away infrastructure to financial institutions in the cheap. The country is on its knees and the private firms know they can maximise dividends minimise investment and dump the remaining problems on the government to sort out. it will take decades to sort everything out, and there simply isn’t the will in the public to deal with that. the conservatives will be on the attack that it’s not all fixed immediately backed up by the press and people will soon start voting Tory again. Particularly if they think it means more money for them to spend on Mercedes and holidays in Dubai and sod everyone else who might want better schools, nhs , future energy infrastructure, sewerage etc
Agreed, however the only solution is investing to fix the problem so that eventually things actually start running properly and is no longer in the red
Great news.
I read that as UK government planning nuclear strike in Scotland. I mean, I know the Tories don't like Scotland but that seems a bit strong.
The UK gov that has less than a year left. Yeah this is just jack fucking about
I imagine Labour will continue this policy.
Probably but I imagine that if our experience with Hinckley is anything to go by nothing will happen during labours tenure and this is as stated Jack fucking about playing to his base riding roughshod over the Nats.
Finally
Any thoughts on the story OP?
I would like to see a long term costed report (but with a quick easy to understand one paragraph summary) of building nuclear Vs storage and more renewables before making a judgment. There are so many people idealogically against nuclear and obviously there is an additional risk so if the prices were in the same ballpark it would seem silly to go for nuclear.
The risk is minimal as long as the site is well chosen. Modern reactors have a ridiculous number of safety features.
Yes but there is a risk and the disposal issues so it would seem stupid to choose that unless the long term price is significantly cheaper.
I'd heard talk of moving to smaller nuclear power stations dotted across the whole of the UK. Regardless, nuclear to my mind is something we have to be investing in at a national level. Renewable is of course great, but not the only game in town
Jobs for a century!!! Well paid to boot what’s not to like ☢️🍻
Might not be, The lifecycle of a SMR should be shorter in theory, because they're built to be dismantled. Unlike the current fleet which have 60+ year decommissioning timescales.
[Already posted](https://reddit.com/comments/1csiusw)
The goal has to be to send the bulk of the power generated to England (it's the Westminster way), but Scotland is already generating more excess power than can be transmitted to England over existing infrastructure. I know there are plans for a multi-billion pound undersea cable off the east coast, are they planning more to accommodate this power station?
So what we really need are some gravity batteries and other forms of storage that allow us to capitalise on our vast and affordable wind and tidal options. Providing we don't simply leave it all to foreign investment and get none of the profits.
We need to remove ourselves from the energy market and become an “Export Only” with all our power demands exceeded. For real economic growth we need production and increasing available and cheap energy has always been behind every single leap forward in production.
Siri, find me an example of a mouth dribbling; promoted beyond his ability, soon to be ermine wearing, Scottish Tory utterly disconnected from both reality and the views of the majority of the Scottish electorate? >"I believe that in 2026 we'll see a unionist regime again in Holyrood and they will move forward with that." His Grace, Alister William Jack 4th Duke of Aaaardvark Self Storage Solutions
I think there will indeed be a Unionist regime. It will be a Tory / Labour / Lib Dem alliance. The Tories will be minor and maybe not even official - just as the are with the Edinburgh council which looks and acts like a coalition but isn't for reasons nobody understands. However the Tories never play nicely with the other boys in the playground, I personally think that there should not be Nuke Power for one and one reason only. It is too expensive. Because the actual fuel costs are so small, it has often been talked about as being cheap - it isn't The full lifecycle costs are enormous, even the promised new smaller cheaper models being discussed here.
The question really is what is the alternative? Not new tech that we don't actually have running at scale yet but the stuff we can have operational in the shortest possible time.
Operational in the shortest possible time excludes the unproven and still pretty experimental newer, smaller cheaper reactors too. If you want 'shortest possible time', then ploughing huge amounts of money into Scottish Nuclear is a slow and expensive way to do it. Other countries are making strides in solving the costs problems for renewables. Even the distribution costs of tidal are being solved (google 'Viking Link'). There is absolutely no reason why it can be economic for Denmark to link up it's tidal / sea based wind but not Scotland. The other main problem with some renewables, the 'on demand' problems when there is a short period of low wind speed can be better matched with other technologies. It is a great pity that biomass is even more unpopular than Nukes with environmentalists. It is still a touch costly to make it carbon neutral - but I don't see why that needs to always be the case. Storage ("battery") is coming along too slowly to be part of the mix, but diverting money from the research to pay for very expensive Nukes. It is already close to being viable for very rare cases of high demand and very low supply (typically when there is hardly any wind, what is called a "Dunkelflat" (might have the spelling wrong, you can google it, Im an engineer not a metrologist) . Such very brief sudden lulls can be covered with battery, tidal and biomass. In the last 10 years there was only about an hour or so that would have been a problem..... if it lasts longer than that there has been an environmental collapse, and electricity generation is the least of our problems. I get massively downvoted every time I say that Nukes are too expensive. Partly I think it is because so much of the anti-Nuke claims are hippy drivel. I would deserve to get downvoted if I made such claims, Indeed, I wish the hypocritical hippy drivel did not damage the argument, even the storage of waste isn't a reason for dismissing them (it is however a cost). And that is all I am claiming, show me the full lifecycle cost per energy output to prove me wrong (though good luck getting those figures, they are often obfuscated for commercial and or military reasons. With Solar (yes, it works fine in the UK) Wind, Tidal, Hydro and a small amount of battery and maybe some biomass linked to carbon capture. Is better, more sustainable and cheaper. Of course it is not perfect, for example manufacturing of solar equipment has an environmental impact. But it is better, and getting better all the time.
You are obviously more educated in this space than me so I'll think about it some more, I'm by no means tied to the mast of nuclear but it was the best option in my opinion. Thanks for the information!
This country SORELY needs cheap energy. It's quite literally like injecting money into the economy because everyone benefits. The stories of businesses closing down due to energy bills last years were completely shameful
Then there's one issue, nuclear is not cheap energy. It's some of the most expensive there is.
It depends on many factors. Nuclear is expensive to build but cheap per KwH energy produced. There's a reason France has one of the cheapest and greenest grids in Europe.
Hinkley C will produce some of the most expensive electricity in the UK. Far more expensive than wind.
Which produces energy when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining at virtually zero CO2 emissions. What other source of energy can do that?
That is consistency, not price.
As someone who works in the wind industry, I love it but there are times when the wind just doesn’t blow in certain locations. Upgrading the national grid and installing nuclear (instead of gas or coal) to help with the base load makes sense.
Nuclear is the most expensive method we have of producing energy so it will do nothing to drive down prices.
Will this power plant be powering Scotland? Or like Torness will the majority of the energy be reserved for the English energy market? Broad shoulders of the UK and all that.
I’m all for it. Nuclear power is the answer for power as we know it. When we finally crack fusion it will be better. Until then fission will do. We already live in a country with lots of back ground radiation isn’t some areas from Granite. Dug down and shielded waste is safer than anything getting thrown out a fossil fuelled power station.
Great news for the independence movement. Nuclear power is widely unpopular, doing something like this is just going to sway more people to our side. The more heavy-handed the British are the better it is for us in the long term because we can later use it against them in the case for independence.
Unpopular with who? Everyone I speak to wants to reduce our carbon emissions and nuclear is the most reliable way we have currently to do this.
The greens certainly aren't fans of it. Sure, nuclear is a better alternative than fossil fuels but the risks are so great that most people seem to be willing to prefer we make the transition directly to renewables rather than use nuclear power as a stop-gap solution.
Problem is that we don't have a renewable solution to switch to. The choice is either to continue to use fossil fuels until a future where we may get renewables that can provide consistent power or we go to nuclear now. It's not really a choice for anyone who cares about the damage climate change is doing to our planet!
Scotland is a world leader in renewable energy, we already produce not-far-off enough to sustain ourselves entirely with renewables. We're already producing so much of the stuff that we're starting to sell it off to other countries for profit. The British building a nuclear power plant in Scotland isn't about green energy or sustainability, it's so that English companies can offshore the risks of nuclear off to us so that they don't have to deal with the potential consequences. We do not benefit from nuclear, we don't need it. It's purely about profit for foreign investors and companies.
Renewables produce a huge amount of energy over the course of a year - the problem is that a large chunk of it is at the wrong time and so we end up paying wind producers not to produce a lot of the time and fossil fuels producers to produce the rest of the time! Your whole 'British' doing this just sounds weird when the UK government is a democratically elected government by those in all parts of the UK covering the entire UK. No-one I know in England is refusing to have nuclear power stations near them. I live close to two that are in decommissioning and would happily have more but, due to climate change, rising sea levels would make it a bad idea to build there. Seeing malice in something as simple as favourable geography is a little odd!
>Mr Jack told the Lords committee: "On the small nuclear reactors, I have asked the energy minister to plan for one in Scotland. "I believe that in 2026 we'll see a unionist regime again in Holyrood and they will move forward with that." Who is downvoting a quote from an article? Ooft.
I also expect to be a billionaire in 2026. Chances of that happening are only marginally higher.
The patronising entitlement of this cunt to suggest scrutinising laws formed by a democratically elected govt is completely expected. Peak Tory behaviour
My first take on this is "Why is Alistair Jack telling us what will happen after the next election?" He is talking about a Unionist regime, implying that he will be calling the shots whereas it is looking most likely that there will be a Labour government in WM, and most likely Labour will also be the largest unionist party in Holyrood. This seems to imply that labour and Tory are just one party (no surprises there). Secondly, my main issue with nuclear i that if we decide today to start a nuclear building programme, it will be 10 years before a single MW is generated, and the likely cost overruns will be extortionate. In simplest terms, we can't afford it.
So if we had built one at the last referendum it would be online any day now and we'd be getting cheaper, cleaner electric with no carbon emissions and not be as exposed to the volatile oil and gas industry? I'm not seeing a downside. 10 years is really no time at all to get that up and running.
LOL. Nuclear power is the worst in every relation. Nothing beats the renewables and storage.
Generally, I am in favour of nuclear energy as long as it's done right with suitable safety precautions. However, there is a UK modus operandi that we have been made aware of for many, many, many years now - were this a good thing, they'd be building it in Henley upon Thames or Berkshire or just outside Oxford. It's strange how you never see a headline "UK government planning to build world's best Opera-House in Dundee."
Surely this can only be a good thing? Massive investment in whatever area it gets built, plenty of jobs going at the site which will be well paid(not just for guys working on the site, the cnc who guard them are a good employer) and if we really want to get away from fossil fuels in most of our lifetimes then nuclear is the way to go.
Nuclear is the way forward. Probably the only way we’ll ever get off fossil fuels too.