EDF - Hinkley Point 'C'

[Gary C]

Talksteer said:

Or more accurately never viable, even China's own economic modelling never has a gas graphite reactor beating a PWR for levelised cost of electricity.

Fundamentally they are much larger than a PWR of equivalent size.

Nuclear economics isn't a physics question it is a practical engineering and energy policy question.

True, but the AGR fleet was a series of prototypes, hindered by overspending typical of a nationalised industry. I mean, heysham 2 and torness use different turbines to keep GEC & Parsons in business which cost a fortune to build two sort of, but not quite identical reactors.

[Talksteer]

Gary C said:

Talksteer said:

Or more accurately never viable, even China's own economic modelling never has a gas graphite reactor beating a PWR for levelised cost of electricity.

Fundamentally they are much larger than a PWR of equivalent size.

Nuclear economics isn't a physics question it is a practical engineering and energy policy question.

True, but the AGR fleet was a series of prototypes, hindered by overspending typical of a nationalised industry. I mean, heysham 2 and torness use different turbines to keep GEC & Parsons in business which cost a fortune to build two sort of, but not quite identical reactors.

I was meaning Chinese modelling of costs for the HTR-10 indicated that even a series built pebble bed reactor would not be cheaper than a PWR.

Personally I think the AGR represents a better and more pragmatic choice than the helium cooled high temperature reactors which ultimately get tied to steam turbine power conversation systems and don't get any thermal efficiency advantage from running at high temperature. However they do pay a cost in terms of having to use high temperature alloys which are an order of magnitude higher in cost than the basic structural steels used in the AGR.

Those advocating new and clever reactor technologies should read this:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2122817?seq=1#page_sc...

Definitive work on technology lock in in nuclear.

[Gary C]

Talksteer said:

Gary C said:

Talksteer said:

Or more accurately never viable, even China's own economic modelling never has a gas graphite reactor beating a PWR for levelised cost of electricity.

Fundamentally they are much larger than a PWR of equivalent size.

Nuclear economics isn't a physics question it is a practical engineering and energy policy question.

True, but the AGR fleet was a series of prototypes, hindered by overspending typical of a nationalised industry. I mean, heysham 2 and torness use different turbines to keep GEC & Parsons in business which cost a fortune to build two sort of, but not quite identical reactors.

I was meaning Chinese modelling of costs for the HTR-10 indicated that even a series built pebble bed reactor would not be cheaper than a PWR.

Personally I think the AGR represents a better and more pragmatic choice than the helium cooled high temperature reactors which ultimately get tied to steam turbine power conversation systems and don't get any thermal efficiency advantage from running at high temperature. However they do pay a cost in terms of having to use high temperature alloys which are an order of magnitude higher in cost than the basic structural steels used in the AGR.

Those advocating new and clever reactor technologies should read this:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2122817?seq=1#page_sc...

Definitive work on technology lock in in nuclear.

I see what you mean. Let's face it, the AGR was purely developed to provide the same steam conditions of a contemporary coal station.

That said, in core steels were not quite 'basic structural steels', due to the need to removal elements susceptible to neutron activation, but they do only run at max ~670deg C (apart from the stainless steel fuel cans and element pin braces)

AGR costs mind you were never really revealed. Heysham 2's real cost was about twice the published cost and about £5bn-£10bn in today's prices.

People think electricity prices are high today, but in the past the government absorbed a lot of the costs of research into general taxation. I mean, just look at all the research bases the cegb and the grid had, Berkeley, cheddar gorge (dropping AGR flasks !), brickitt wood, cerl, marchwood, and many more I've forgotten or never heard of

but still, sizewell B puts out as much as Heysham, while being much more 'repairable', the real Achilles heel of the AGR fleet is the graphite core, it erodes in co2 and cannot be replaced, once it's below an acceptable structural integrity, the reactor will be shut down. That said, the cores are over built, and should last 40 years.

Edited by Gary C on Sunday 31st July 21:01

Edited by Gary C on Sunday 31st July 21:02

Edited by Gary C on Sunday 31st July 21:09

[hidetheelephants]

Gary C said:

I see what you mean. Let's face it, the AGR was purely developed to provide the same steam conditions of a contemporary coal station.

That said, in core steels were not quite 'basic structural steels', due to the need to removal elements susceptible to neutron activation, but they do only run at max ~670deg C (apart from the stainless steel fuel cans and element pin braces)

AGR costs mind you were never revealed. Heysham 2's real cost was about twice the published cost and about £5bn-£10bn in today's prices

Doing it that way does keep your materials and fabrication costs down, even if it does limit thermal efficiency. AGR's costs could have been trimmed a lot by building in series with one design, parts commonality and a proper grip of the workflow. The basic design is fairly sound and has intrinsic safety that light water reactors can only dream of. The UK does not have nearly as much of a lock-in problem as the US, the fleet is small and of varying designs so whatever solution is chosen there is less need to consider what is already there; that said in the US the lock-in problem is almost more of a psychological or legislative/regulatory one rather than one of eonomics.

[Gary C]

hidetheelephants said:

Doing it that way does keep your materials and fabrication costs down, even if it does limit thermal efficiency. AGR's costs could have been trimmed a lot by building in series with one design, parts commonality and a proper grip of the workflow. The basic design is fairly sound and has intrinsic safety that light water reactors can only dream of. The UK does not have nearly as much of a lock-in problem as the US, the fleet is small and of varying designs so whatever solution is chosen there is less need to consider what is already there; that said in the US the lock-in problem is almost more of a psychological or legislative/regulatory one rather than one of eonomics.

An AGR is quite thermally efficient, it is really an htr, compared to a pwr. Fuel temps are in the region of 1000 deg C with a gas temp of 670 deg c. Clever design keeps most of the graphite at 300 deg c.

U.K. Went graphite/gas when the us denied the uk the Manhattan project bomb and built winscale to make plutonium using an air cooled graphite core ( great idea !) for a british bomb.

It's true that the core is so big that it's thermal capacity means it's very slow to heat up in an accident compared to a pwr.

It's really thi engineering risk, if something breaks in an AGR core, it's game over. In a pwr you can generally fix it.

[Talksteer]

Gary C said:

hidetheelephants said:

Doing it that way does keep your materials and fabrication costs down, even if it does limit thermal efficiency. AGR's costs could have been trimmed a lot by building in series with one design, parts commonality and a proper grip of the workflow. The basic design is fairly sound and has intrinsic safety that light water reactors can only dream of. The UK does not have nearly as much of a lock-in problem as the US, the fleet is small and of varying designs so whatever solution is chosen there is less need to consider what is already there; that said in the US the lock-in problem is almost more of a psychological or legislative/regulatory one rather than one of eonomics.

An AGR is quite thermally efficient, it is really an htr, compared to a pwr. Fuel temps are in the region of 1000 deg C with a gas temp of 670 deg c. Clever design keeps most of the graphite at 300 deg c.

U.K. Went graphite/gas when the us denied the uk the Manhattan project bomb and built winscale to make plutonium using an air cooled graphite core ( great idea !) for a british bomb.

It's true that the core is so big that it's thermal capacity means it's very slow to heat up in an accident compared to a pwr.

It's really thi engineering risk, if something breaks in an AGR core, it's game over. In a pwr you can generally fix it.

The main reason why AGR isn't coming back is that the vendor doesn't really exist and even CEGB lost faith.

The fun one to look at is Sizewell B, the total construction cost for that was £2 billion in 1987, which is between £4.5-6.5 billion today.

It's a shame the nuclear regulator won't just let you pull the old plans out and again the organization that actually built them isn't really around.

[hidetheelephants]

Talksteer said:

The fun one to look at is Sizewell B, the total construction cost for that was £2 billion in 1987, which is between £4.5-6.5 billion today.

On time and on budget; that's how you build infrastructure.

[V8 Fettler]

Rickover ensured that the bloated submarine reactor design has dominated the civil nuclear power generation sector for decades, even with inherent design flaws.

The failure to build the twin reactor Sizewell C in the 1990s (proposed 1995 cost of £3.5billion) highlights the continuing incompetent strategic management of power generation in the UK.

[Gary C]

Talksteer said:

The main reason why AGR isn't coming back is that the vendor doesn't really exist and even CEGB lost faith.

The fun one to look at is Sizewell B, the total construction cost for that was £2 billion in 1987, which is between £4.5-6.5 billion today.

It's a shame the nuclear regulator won't just let you pull the old plans out and again the organization that actually built them isn't really around.

I remember the sizewell project, visited knutsford a few times. Thing is, the cegb was a mix of engineers who got bored of doing the same thing, and exec's who loved big projects

The AGR fleet are only now coming into their own, today one unit at Heysham beat a 22 year old world record for continuous operation set by a candu in Ontario, and a set at torness is not far behind it and may even beat it when the heysham unit comes off for its planned maintenance, but they were always very complicated, and have limited life span.

Thing is, people put the pwr down, but it works and you reap the rewards of known tech, simplicity, known costs and the ability to keep them running for years to come. If Hinckley was an ap1000, it would probably be cheaper and (if we ever get the go ahead) be built on time to cost, not so sure that will be true of the EPR.

Not sure what the best design is for the future, modular are simple, cheapish to scale up, but lots of small reactors are going to be harder to regulate than a few big sites but EDF have indicated that after Hinckley, they will consider modular units rather than sizewell C.

One thing in favour of modular is that it will sit better with the future grid. It's a nightmare at the moment, NISM's and NRAPM's on the same day, all because of solar and wind, which is so variable.

Interesting times

[V8 Fettler]

AGRs came into their own when Three Mile Island went into meltdown, even more so following Chernobyl and Fukushima. Perhaps someone could price that safety factor per MW.

Hinkley Point B and Hunterston B should reach an operational life of 47 years, perhaps stretched to 50.

Would be a brave decision to re-start the AGR construction programme even if the resource and capability was available, the media would be continually referring to Dungeness B.

Do any AGRs achieve re-fuelling under full operating load? As per the original design

[Gary C]

V8 Fettler said:

AGRs came into their own when Three Mile Island went into meltdown, even more so following Chernobyl and Fukushima. Perhaps someone could price that safety factor per MW.

Hinkley Point B and Hunterston B should reach an operational life of 47 years, perhaps stretched to 50.

Would be a brave decision to re-start the AGR construction programme even if the resource and capability was available, the media would be continually referring to Dungeness B.

Do any AGRs achieve re-fuelling under full operating load? As per the original design

No. Heysham/torness refuel at ~ 240mw and cycle up and down from a parking load of about 450mw for each exchange. Hartlepool, heysham 1 and dungeness fuel offload and hunterston/Hinckley refuel at part load but can't remember at what load.

The AGR design only was successful at heysham 2 torness, Hinckley, hunterston, heysham 1 and Hartlepool are all restricted to less than design load due to various problems.

As said, they are VERY complicated !, however the radiation doses to workers are the lowest in the world due to the design , which counts for a lot. If heysham 2, torness were the first to be built then we might have got a big fleet of them by now, but no one could afford to build one now. As I said, heysham 2 was costed at the same as sizewell b but 8 years later, and it is wid.ey understood that that cost was actually 50% light.

Anyway, off to work. We are refuelling heysham 2 tonight

[BlackLabel]

"Plans to build the first new UK nuclear plant in 20 years are expected to be approved by the UK government, the BBC understands."

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.bbc.co.uk/news/am...

[turbobloke]

BlackLabel said:

"Plans to build the first new UK nuclear plant in 20 years are expected to be approved by the UK government, the BBC understands."

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.bbc.co.uk/news/am...

Breaking News banner on BBC webpages says "Approved".

The deal includes enhanced security.

Radio news bulletins say the same thing, with first sparks in 2025.

[Matthen]

Not surprised after yesterday: Day price of electricity shot up to over £200 a MWh thanks to the heat wave. Someones finally woken up and realised if we don't build something, we're going to be firing up the backup plants more and more.

[sirtyro]

Matthen said:

Not surprised after yesterday: Day price of electricity shot up to over £200 a MWh thanks to the heat wave. Someones finally woken up and realised if we don't build something, we're going to be firing up the backup plants more and more.

Does that mean the £90 strike price with EDF is a bargain?

[Matthen]

sirtyro said:

Matthen said:

Not surprised after yesterday: Day price of electricity shot up to over £200 a MWh thanks to the heat wave. Someones finally woken up and realised if we don't build something, we're going to be firing up the backup plants more and more.

Does that mean the £90 strike price with EDF is a bargain?

Only whilst this heatwave lasts. Problem is purely the timing of it. Base load is offline/reduced for annual maintenance, and every office in the south has powered up the A/C, spiking demand.

[sirtyro]

I don't get why we would do this deal. Why would we want any foreign state have power over something like a nuclear power station in our country!?!? Are we just that desperate for an energy policy that we are stuck with this.

[Einion Yrth]

sirtyro said:

Are we just that desperate for an energy policy that we are stuck with this.

Well, effectively, yes: all our nuclear engineering died of neglect.

[turbobloke]

sirtyro said:

I don't get why we would do this deal. Why would we want any foreign state have power over something like a nuclear power station in our country!?!? Are we just that desperate for an energy policy that we are stuck with this.

We are that desperate. Although it's years off, it's also much-needed.

How does a foreign state have power over the nuke? Which part of the Hinkley Point C agreement did you see that gave away the lack of control?

[don4l]

sirtyro said:

I don't get why we would do this deal. Why would we want any foreign state have power over something like a nuclear power station in our country!?!? Are we just that desperate for an energy policy that we are stuck with this.

I think that we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

£92.00 per MegaWatt hour is utterly insane. As far as I am aware we could build a gas powered station for about 10% of the cost which would produce electricity for £26.00 a MWH.

This winter there will be power cuts.

Makes you feel nostalgic for the good old 1970's.