Nuclear Power Stations - leadtimes?

[agentsmith]

anyone know why it takes well over 10yrs to build a single nuke powerstation? There must surely be a 'best way to do something' and a list of regular suppliers for such things? Surely they already have a bunch of sites earmarked? Since we sold a lot of nuclear stuff to EDF surely they can deploy something more quickly? This reliance on 'dodgy' countries for oil/gas/power seems to be getting worse and worse.

I just got off the phone with a colleague who was in her house in Bulgaria, and was shivering down the phone at me. Central heating is more or less non-operative since their switch to 'gas storage' yesterday lunchtime.

[TWSTEEL]

Too late to ask that question

[GuinnessMK]

Send me a cheque for a couple of billion and I'll have one up and running in your back garden by the weekend mate!

Have you ever been to a power station? They're big, I mean really big. And expensive. And most stuff is bespoke. It's not like Screwfix do a range of control panels off the shelf for power stations, gas, coal, nuke.

Or we could cut corners if you want. Cheap materials, not testing the installation for leaks etc. What's the worst that could happen?

Mike

[bob1179]

As TWSTEEL says, it is indeed too late, we are at the limit of our energy production capacity and we are losing capacity.

I hope all the envirohippies will enjoy sitting in the dark when we have to shut down one or more powerstations at the same time due to an outage or failure.

The UK has showed a massive lack of foresight and instead of listening to energy companies, decided to prance around and listen to morons who seem to think that electricity comes from a magical land where fairies live.

[bob1179]

GuinnessMK said:

Send me a cheque for a couple of billion and I'll have one up and running in your back garden by the weekend mate!

Have you ever been to a power station? They're big, I mean really big. And expensive. And most stuff is bespoke. It's not like Screwfix do a range of control panels off the shelf for power stations, gas, coal, nuke.

Or we could cut corners if you want. Cheap materials, not testing the installation for leaks etc. What's the worst that could happen?

Mike

That is sort of right, though you can knock up a gas powered station fairly quickly if need be, though the capacity won't be huge (eg. around 60MW per GT6-BEV turbine), they do use a lot of common skidded assemblies which you basically ship in, bolt together and turn on.

Edited by bob1179 on Wednesday 7th January 16:40

[Scuffers]

bob1179 said:

As TWSTEEL says, it is indeed too late, we are at the limit of our energy production capacity and we are losing capacity.

I hope all the envirohippies will enjoy sitting in the dark when we have to shut down one or more powerstations at the same time due to an outage or failure.

The UK has showed a massive lack of foresight and instead of listening to energy companies, decided to prance around and listen to morons who seem to think that electricity comes from a magical land where fairies live.

EXACTLY....

I blame Thatcher et all, the decisions should have been made 20 years ago, the Greens should be all shoot too...

reason we are dependant on imports for Gas is cause we burned it all in gas fired power stations so that Thatcher could shut the coal mines....

we are going to have power outages, no doubt about it....

[Mars]

Wasn't Thatcher an advocate of nuclear power because it reduced the country's reliance on Scargill's coal?

Wasn't it also she that used the CO2 argument against coal-fired stations in an attempt at papering over the country's concerns about adopting more nuclear power?

[dealmaker]

bob1179 said:

The UK has showed a massive lack of foresight and instead of listening to energy companies, decided to prance around and listen to morons who seem to think that electricity comes from a magical land where fairies live.

[10 Pence Short]

Planning laws.

[bob1179]

Scuffers said:

bob1179 said:

As TWSTEEL says, it is indeed too late, we are at the limit of our energy production capacity and we are losing capacity.

I hope all the envirohippies will enjoy sitting in the dark when we have to shut down one or more powerstations at the same time due to an outage or failure.

The UK has showed a massive lack of foresight and instead of listening to energy companies, decided to prance around and listen to morons who seem to think that electricity comes from a magical land where fairies live.

EXACTLY....

I blame Thatcher et all, the decisions should have been made 20 years ago, the Greens should be all shoot too...

reason we are dependant on imports for Gas is cause we burned it all in gas fired power stations so that Thatcher could shut the coal mines....

we are going to have power outages, no doubt about it....

We need to follow the French and Japanese on this one and invest heavily in the construction of nuclear powerstations. like it or not, they are they quickest and easiest way of covering our power generation deficit in the shot(ish) term. We need power and we need it now.

The cost of opening up the old mines and building new coal fired stations would far outweigh the cost of building several new nuclear ones. We have enough coal in the UK to last many, many decades, but unfortunately the cost of getting at it is prohibitive.

There are many stations being shut or that have been mothballed and the UK has an increasing demand, we need to solve the problem quickly or there will be rolling blackouts, it won't happen in twenty years either, this is something that will come about within a decade.

If the government would pull their fingers out and stop wasting money on these ridiculous wind farm and 'alternative' energy schemes, we may actually be able to do something about it.

[bob1179]

dealmaker said:

bob1179 said:

The UK has showed a massive lack of foresight and instead of listening to energy companies, decided to prance around and listen to morons who seem to think that electricity comes from a magical land where fairies live.

I'm here all week...

[David87M3]

I have been telling people the reason PC's crash is becasue of the "cheap" electricity were inporting from China.... One day someone will beleive me.


How the hell did we get into this state in the first place. If only government could be held accountable for the screwups we'd still be "great Britain"

Surely 10 years to build a power stations is madness most of the technology would be obselete by the time its passed design stage and onto build stage wouldn't it?

[bob1179]

David87M3 said:

I have been telling people the reason PC's crash is becasue of the "cheap" electricity were inporting from China.... One day someone will beleive me.


How the hell did we get into this state in the first place. If only government could be held accountable for the screwups we'd still be "great Britain"

Surely 10 years to build a power stations is madness most of the technology would be obselete by the time its passed design stage and onto build stage wouldn't it?

Unfortunately in the UK most of that time is taken up by planning and public enquiries, the actual building process only takes around two to three years.

The other issue with a nuclear power station is the lengthy period of testing and certification required to make sure it is 'safe'.

[dwilkie]

David,

Think about it - I saw the Eurofighter design (indeed flew it in a simulator at Farnborough) in 1995, and it entered service last year, 13 years later. Cutting edgeness is more important there than it is with a power station as far as I could assume. So I don't think it's the case that 10 years is particularly bad. I mean with nuclear power there's a lot of considerations in the construction that you wouldn't have with a gas/oil/coal station.

[Engineer1]

David87M3 said:

I have been telling people the reason PC's crash is becasue of the "cheap" electricity were inporting from China.... One day someone will beleive me.


How the hell did we get into this state in the first place. If only government could be held accountable for the screwups we'd still be "great Britain"

Surely 10 years to build a power stations is madness most of the technology would be obselete by the time its passed design stage and onto build stage wouldn't it?

of course you do want the cutting edge, first generation state of the art nuclear power station, part of the problems with the British Nuclear power stations is that each one was effectively a one off and it's own prototype, a more logical solution is to build the power stations in phases to the same design that way the last one should be back compatible with the first as should a lot of the equipment.

[Sheepy]

There is also a huge lead-time on special steel parts for the reactor core. There are only a handful of companies in the world that can make these bits and their order-books are rather full!

I'll try to find more details to post later

[RedLeicester]

Mars said:

Wasn't Thatcher an advocate of nuclear power because it reduced the country's reliance on Scargill's coal?

Wasn't it also she that used the CO2 argument against coal-fired stations in an attempt at papering over the country's concerns about adopting more nuclear power?

Indeed she was. Further, weren't there 3 or 4 new stations on the order books in '97 which were then subject to "reconsultation".... and have since been canned...

[Sheepy]

Sheepy said:

There is also a huge lead-time on special steel parts for the reactor core. There are only a handful of companies in the world that can make these bits and their order-books are rather full!

I'll try to find more details to post later

There is ONE company in the world that can make the crucial part of the core. "Japanese Steel Works" make part of the pressure-vessel core, and their plant has the capacity to make FOUR forgings per year (they are trying to expand the plant to double this capacity). With about 200 nukes planned to be built (world-wide) between now and 2030, this means that the company will take about 30 years to fulfil its current order book!

[kambites]

It's probably not the kind of project you want people to cut corners on.

[agentsmith]

Sheepy said:

Sheepy said:

There is also a huge lead-time on special steel parts for the reactor core. There are only a handful of companies in the world that can make these bits and their order-books are rather full!

I'll try to find more details to post later

There is ONE company in the world that can make the crucial part of the core. "Japanese Steel Works" make part of the pressure-vessel core, and their plant has the capacity to make FOUR forgings per year (they are trying to expand the plant to double this capacity). With about 200 nukes planned to be built (world-wide) between now and 2030, this means that the company will take about 30 years to fulfil its current order book!

thats some bottleneck... good business to be in!!