The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[wombleh]

Cheers for links Talksteer, some interesting statements in their RAB paper that are relevant to recent discussions here:

"It is likely that electricity demand will grow significantly by 2050 as other sectors of the economy such as transport and heat are electrified, potentially nearly doubling (or more) from today’s levels. "

"The technologies currently available to provide this large-scale firm, low-carbon power in
2050 are nuclear and gas with carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS)8. While
advances in technologies, system flexibility and energy storage may eventually provide
additional options for fully decarbonising the power sector, it is clear that a significant
capacity of new nuclear power stations and gas-fired power plants with CCUS, alongside
renewables, will also be required."

Seems like a fairly honest appraisal of current status, looking forward to the mass hysteria when the anti science brigade get wind of it!

[s2art]

Talksteer said:

s2art said:

Given that the Yanks built a working prototype in the early 60's. no more than 10 years. (in fact the Canadian CANDU reactor has been able to burn Thorium for decades)

The costs of thorium would be that you need to change your entire fuel cycle from mining to decommissioning and storage.

The benefits of thorium are virtually nothing from an engineering and cost stand point.

All "thorium reactors" will work on a uranium fuel cycle and all thorium reactors burn U233 anyway.

The only time we will need thorium is if we accidentally build the 12,000 reactors required to supply 100% of world electricity. Should this happen the nuclear industry will have all the money to fund this themselves and plenty of time to do it before the uranium runs out.

Thorium is a distraction

mostly wrong. And ask yourself; Why China and India are pouring money into this, and why Norway asked us to work with them on Thorium reactors, (we turned then down, stupidly)

[Talksteer]

s2art said:

Talksteer said:

s2art said:

Given that the Yanks built a working prototype in the early 60's. no more than 10 years. (in fact the Canadian CANDU reactor has been able to burn Thorium for decades)

The costs of thorium would be that you need to change your entire fuel cycle from mining to decommissioning and storage.

The benefits of thorium are virtually nothing from an engineering and cost stand point.

All "thorium reactors" will work on a uranium fuel cycle and all thorium reactors burn U233 anyway.

The only time we will need thorium is if we accidentally build the 12,000 reactors required to supply 100% of world electricity. Should this happen the nuclear industry will have all the money to fund this themselves and plenty of time to do it before the uranium runs out.

Thorium is a distraction

mostly wrong. And ask yourself; Why China and India are pouring money into this, and why Norway asked us to work with them on Thorium reactors, (we turned then down, stupidly)

My source of information is spending the last 10 years designing advanced nuclear reactors, evaluating SMR designs from all the various parties when they pitch them to my employer.

What's your source?

For reference the amounts of money China and India are putting into thorium are considerably less than what they are spending on conventional fuel cycles both in LWRs or even in advanced reactors.

[s2art]

Talksteer said:

s2art said:

Talksteer said:

s2art said:

Given that the Yanks built a working prototype in the early 60's. no more than 10 years. (in fact the Canadian CANDU reactor has been able to burn Thorium for decades)

The costs of thorium would be that you need to change your entire fuel cycle from mining to decommissioning and storage.

The benefits of thorium are virtually nothing from an engineering and cost stand point.

All "thorium reactors" will work on a uranium fuel cycle and all thorium reactors burn U233 anyway.

The only time we will need thorium is if we accidentally build the 12,000 reactors required to supply 100% of world electricity. Should this happen the nuclear industry will have all the money to fund this themselves and plenty of time to do it before the uranium runs out.

Thorium is a distraction

mostly wrong. And ask yourself; Why China and India are pouring money into this, and why Norway asked us to work with them on Thorium reactors, (we turned then down, stupidly)

My source of information is spending the last 10 years designing advanced nuclear reactors, evaluating SMR designs from all the various parties when they pitch them to my employer.

What's your source?

For reference the amounts of money China and India are putting into thorium are considerably less than what they are spending on conventional fuel cycles both in LWRs or even in advanced reactors.

My source? Only what I have read from many sources. You say no benefits, but if they can get a molten salt reactor functioning it means less waste products and the possibility of disposing of all the Plutonium we have accumulated. Should mention the Dutch team who I think are on the way to building a prototype MSTR..

BTW did you get involved in evaluating the SMR that Cammel Laird were going to build if selected.

Edited by s2art on Tuesday 23 July 16:29

[Gary C]

s2art said:

............. if .........

The watchword of the nuclear industry !

[StanleyT]

JustALooseScrew said:

WatchfulEye said:

It depends a lot on the technology used to build the plant and its operating history.

In the UK, we have a problem. We used graphite moderated reactors for the 1st and 2nd generations of plants. These are gigantic reactors built from thousands of tons of interlocking graphite bricks, all locked together by intricate locking mechanisms. The graphite becomes contaminated during operation.

These cores took years to hand assemble. The contamination means that human access to the cores is now impossible. The most credible plans for dealing with these, is to allow 70-80 years for radioactive decay, before attempting to dismantle the cores. The cores even then will need to be handled as intermediate level waste requiring large amounts of space in a carefully designed repository.

The real disaster areas are the 1st generation Magnox reactors - these were initially constructed and operated with little thought for decommissioning. The fuel used corroded when stored in water, so the cooling ponds ended up with a radioactive sludge of corrosion products. Little thought was given to activation of metals in or near the core, and works to prepare used fuel for transport to Sellafield have produced large amounts of intensely radioactive debris which has not always been adequately handled or inventoried, or had been swept under the carpet (e.g. dumped, irretrievably into a storage pit - only to find that the pit is in no ways adequate, so methods have had to be devised to retrieve the material).

The AGRs simplified matters quite a bit, so the overall process is expected to be significantly easier - but the large graphite cores are still expected to be a difficult problem.

Any new builds in the UK will likely use PWR technology. These have proven relatively straightforward to decommission elsewhere in the world. There is activation of the reactor vessel and some contamination of piping and steam generators from radioactive byproducts and activation products. However, modern designs go to great lengths to avoid the big problem of cobalt contamination by avoiding cobalt containing materials in structural parts and valves. Additionally, contamination due to fuel failure in modern PWRs (as in the UK) is expected to be low, as fuel pin failures have been largely engineered out. However, older plants (elsewhere) which have had fuel failures may have much higher levels of contamination in pipework, storage tanks, filter beds and steam generators.

Initial PWR decommissioning plans around the world had expected a 25 year "cooling" time to allow contamination to decay, but these days, plans are being revised for "rapid" work. For example, instead of waiting for activity on the reactor vessel to decay before cutting the reactor free of the pipework - the building is flooded with water (as would normally be done for refuelling activity) to provide radiation shielding, and a submersible ROV equipped with a bandsaw clamps onto the pipes and cuts them.

Experience from the US and Switzerland suggests that a typical PWR could be decommissioned to green field for about $500-$1000 million. A number of decommissioning contractors in the US expect that using a rapid methodology costs could be lowered well below that.

Several PWRs around the US have been sold (or are in the process of being sold) to decommissioning firms, because the expected cost to decommission is far lower than the funds in the decommissioning account. As a result decommissioning firms are offering large sums of cash to acquire the plants and decommissioning fund; and due to low electricity prices in the US, the prices being offered to sell the plant are considerably higher than the expected operating cashflow.

In the UK, funding for the legacy nuclear plant decommissioning depends on the technology. The old Magnox stations which were state owned and operated will have decommissioning funded by the government via the nuclear decommissioning authority (NDA). The operator (EDF) of the other stations must pay into a ring-fenced fund. They are required to review their decommissioning provisions and contributions every few years to ensure that their contributions remain adequate for the foreseeable decommissioning costs. Much of the provision has been funded the the govt to this point. Any new stations have to make their own arrangements (this is one of the reasons for the high strike price offered to Hinkley C - the decommissioning fund had to be full within the 35 year duration of the CfD arrangement, so accelerated contributions are required).

Edited by WatchfulEye on Sunday 21st July 17:05

Is all this true?

Private Eye used to have some good "Old Sparky" topics on this.

Magnox decommissioning = employment in generally deprived areas. I once worked on a Magnox site and was told off for walking too fast between meetings "Slow down boy, you're on Dengie (essex) time now".

Research reactors, quite a few gone now, quite a few going.

Windscale AGR, dome still remains, internals pretty empty, just a bit difficult to removed the dome with other works on Sellafield site. Neighbours company did the welding on the steel plates of teh dome, he is having a bet with himself the dome outlasts him (already in his 80s).

AGRs. Should be easy to decommission. No fuel waste build up like the Magnox fleet. Plus, the poor old ladies have been worked so hard and rattled about during their lives we should just need to put a fleet of skips under the reactor vessel, removed the bottom support diagrid and they should fall nicely into the skips. (Copyright Scottish Nuclear, East Kilbride support office, 1993).

Sellafield. 1990. Emptied 4/22nds of "the most hazardous building in Europe" before the Nuclear research laboratory said hydrogen was going to escape and kill everyone. Spent £2 billion and delayed decommissioning by 20 years, when the Nuclear research laboratory said "we've done loads of research, and hydrogen isn't going to kill anyone", so we can save £2 billion and take 20 years off the programme [that 20 years ago that we added £2 billion onto]. 18/22nds of the building remain full.

Add to this the failed Amec & French Nuclear Management Partners, the NDA getting sued by Energy Solutions for £100 million over a failed public procurement exercise and numerous damming reports from the National Audit Office, I think anyone would be hard pressed to say "exactly how much is costs to decommission a nuclear reactor". Though some good Quangos, working groups, steering committees could be set up to help examine the issue.

PWRS / BWRS, there are sites in the USA that are now Brownfield, no nuclear building or materials left. Let us hope Sizewell goes the same way.

But I can't complain too much, five family members benefited at some way in their lives from UK nuclear, from Great Grandad building Dounreay, to a couple of Marra shifties at Sellafield to a couple of us that worked at BNFL in the glory days.

If you want an informed, educated, no-basis, ball-park guess (and it is a big ball-park) I'd say that roughly, the cost to decommission a reactor site is N x the cost to build it, where N is the number of official works cats during the station generation years. (Again, copyright Scottish Nuclear, East Kilbride).

[StanleyT]

WatchfulEye said:

Gary C said:

Essentially, but the concrete pressure vessel reactors, the graphite core can be left where it is, any other place it could be put would need to be a large concrete container and its already in one.

The early magnox used steel pressure vessels and they maybe a bit more risky to just leave due to corrosion and historic embrittlement of the steel. Dry store of the fuel is a much better answer, the fuel was originally put in ponds due to better heat dissipation and shielding but can be stored dry (if its still intact !)

The problem is that politically, there is a basic assumption that the cores will be dismantled - and therefore some method of disassembling the cores will need to be developed (e.g. remote controlled water cutting, torch cutting, plasma cutting or some other method), and then some method of disposing of the graphite will need to be found (deep geological disposal, shallow geological disposal, incineration or other).

A pragmatic choice might well be to just fill entire reactor vessel with concrete, leaving the graphite entombed in a solid concrete block, and then clearing the site around the vessel. I see no way that this could be made politically acceptable.

I suspect that the final AGR plans will follow the magnox plans. Demolish the non-nuclear buildings. Decontaminate the plant outside the reactor vessel as needed. Then board the buildings up for 70-80 years, while the radioactivity subsides and someone comes up with a plan.

Ha - political re the cores is right. About 15 years ago I worked with Carbowaste an EU funded programme, before I left the idea that was gaining momentum was to find a way to drill the cores to bits creating carbon dust akin to coal gasification and burn it to generate electricity. How green is that, buring a power station down in a power station.

I don't know if that continued (Costains), I think the offgas plant to catch the radionuclides inherent in the graphite was "a challenge".

Do you get Wigner energy on an AGR, googling isn't telling me and I wasn't into that physics but that was a bit of an issue for the Windscale core?

[StanleyT]

wombleh said:

Cheers for links Talksteer, some interesting statements in their RAB paper that are relevant to recent discussions here:

"It is likely that electricity demand will grow significantly by 2050 as other sectors of the economy such as transport and heat are electrified, potentially nearly doubling (or more) from today’s levels. "

"The technologies currently available to provide this large-scale firm, low-carbon power in
2050 are nuclear and gas with carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS)8. While
advances in technologies, system flexibility and energy storage may eventually provide
additional options for fully decarbonising the power sector, it is clear that a significant
capacity of new nuclear power stations and gas-fired power plants with CCUS, alongside
renewables, will also be required."

Seems like a fairly honest appraisal of current status, looking forward to the mass hysteria when the anti science brigade get wind of it!

It is alright, by 2050 we will have Fusion. Well European Union will with ITER and DEMO.

[StanleyT]

Talksteer said:

Gandahar said:

Well I don't think it will be nuclear.

No matter how much the government can try and say "well it's good for CO2" whilst we pay through the nose for it and then have to pay through the nose for decommissioning too.

How much does it cost to decommission a nuclear power station? Are the companies building and running the plant to make profit whilst running liable to pay for 100% of the decommissioning costs?

How much does decommissioning cost?

Well in the US it costs around $1 million per MW of installed capacity this equates to around 0.25c per KWh un-discounted; so in practice as close to 0 as is possible.

The the UK we have:

1: A conflation in public debate of the costs of Sellafield with those of decommissioning nuclear plants
2: Weird nuclear plants that are more expensive to decommission than everybody else's
3: An industry which is basically mostly parasitic contractors who have no motivation to do things fast or cheap
4: A regulator who's "first principles methods" essentially play into any contractor who wishes justify gold plated solutions
5: The UK long terms waste storage has not been designed and is being progressed by un-creative people who work in an industry hobbled by points 4-5. (We should a: construct the depository on off shore territorial waters so no local council and b: do it by deep borehole methods so it relatively cheap)

PWR plants are simple to decommission as the vast majority of the radiation is contained in the fuel; the primary plant which is the only other bit to be irradiated is small and easy to cut up.

However given points 3-5 the cost for decommissioning and storing the fuel from Hinkley Point C is £2/MWh which is a vast over estimate of what the cost should be but is still pretty inconsequential.

3: An industry which is basically mostly parasitic contractors who have no motivation to do things fast or cheap - if you want to see how to do gold plated and cheap, please refer to the glory days of BNFL in the 1980s and 1990s on their "cost plus projects" with the CEGB and how they fleeced us then! Think there may still be a bit of that for storage of the British Energy Fuel no longer being reprocessed at Sellafield. Whilst a bit of silver plating goes on, you'd be surprised in the UK contracting industry how much is price driven now. The cost comes because the contracting entities (Dounreay, NDA, Magnox) can't scope functional requirements and then not meddle with them during delivery of fixed price contracts, i.e. the whole top level, won't be a hands off client. Have a look at the recent Sellafield accounts £2billion per annum, £600 million their staff costs, £500 million site "hotel" costs (to just stay still), only around £300 million made it into the supply chain for the supply chain to "Gold plate"!

[wombleh]

Sure I read something recently that the AGR avoids wigner energy build up due to running at higher temperature

[Gary C]

wombleh said:

Sure I read something recently that the AGR avoids wigner energy build up due to running at higher temperature

Yep

quote

The phenomena of energy storage in irradiated graphite (Wigner Energy) is well known
and represents a safety problem in reactors operating with graphite temperatures below
300 °C. In general, the amount of stored energy increases with integrated dose and
decreases with irradiation temperature. The effect is caused by fast neutrons, which
displace atoms from their normal lattice positions. If the graphite temperature is
subsequently raised above the irradiation temperature, some of the displaced graphite
atoms will return to their original positions whereby the stored energy is released. If the
energy release per unit temperature rise exceeds the specific heat of the graphite, a
spontaneous release of energy can occur
However, in AGR's operating with graphite temperatures around 400 °C no large
quantity of stored energy is expected to accumulate

[Talksteer]

s2art said:

My source? Only what I have read from many sources. You say no benefits, but if they can get a molten salt reactor functioning it means less waste products and the possibility of disposing of all the Plutonium we have accumulated. Should mention the Dutch team who I think are on the way to building a prototype MSTR..

BTW did you get involved in evaluating the SMR that Cammel Laird were going to build if selected.

I presume you mean U-Battery, yes I know the Prof. that did the preliminary design pretty well.

Points I'd make would be that the Chinese who are actually building pebble bed reactors believe that it will take them a couple of generations to achieve cost parity with PWRs and their technology is considerably more mature and lower risk.

It's also much larger, U-Battery is really going to struggle simply down to it's size, the cost of regulation spread over such a small reactor will mean that it dominates the cost of the power. Their plan is to operate off existing sites and have multiple units clustered together but I don't think that this will be enough.

I'm a fan of molten salt reactors, though obviously I suspect that they will be later to market than their proponents claim.

The key thing about molten salt reactors is that they do not need a thorium fuel cycle to function and running one is substantially more difficult than just running a burner cycle on plutonium/uranium as you don't need to process the fuel online and the chemistry is much easier.

[wombleh]

StanleyT said:

It is alright, by 2050 we will have Fusion. Well European Union will with ITER and DEMO.

Just saw this, apparently hit some major milestones with ITER and aiming for December 2025 for first plasma:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worlds-...

Or maybe these crazy mofos will have the answer, seems to be a lot of Farnsworth Fusors around these days:
https://www.coultersmithing.com/

Edit: should have included this paper too, the trouble with fusion: http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/0...

Edited by wombleh on Thursday 25th July 09:48

[WatchfulEye]

It's been reported that the gov is looking to invest £18m in R&D for the Rolls Royce "small" reactor (Not really an SMR by any account, as RR are pitching this as a 400-450 MW unit).

https://www.ft.com/content/32ee2100-ad43-11e9-8030...
https://www.rolls-royce.com/~/media/Files/R/Rolls-...

[Talksteer]

WatchfulEye said:

It's been reported that the gov is looking to invest £18m in R&D for the Rolls Royce "small" reactor (Not really an SMR by any account, as RR are pitching this as a 400-450 MW unit).

https://www.ft.com/content/32ee2100-ad43-11e9-8030...
https://www.rolls-royce.com/~/media/Files/R/Rolls-...

Correctly sized modular reactor!

In fairness plenty of the first generation PWR plants were this size and on a cost per MW basis were cheaper than later plants due to dis-economies of scale.

[Gary C]

wombleh said:

Edit: should have included this paper too, the trouble with fusion: http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/0...

Has a pop at D-T fusion reactions as unreliable and expensive then thinks that Fusing Lithium is the answer ! The temperature required to fuse Lithium makes a D-T reactor look like a cold tap !

[turbobloke]

Gary C said:

wombleh said:

Edit: should have included this paper too, the trouble with fusion: http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/0...

Has a pop at D-T fusion reactions as unreliable and expensive then thinks that Fusing Lithium is the answer ! The temperature required to fuse Lithium makes a D-T reactor look like a cold tap !

Fusing a rare-ish element, rare because it's generated by cosmic rays and not so much made in main sequence stars (by fusion) sounds cool
https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/educators/elements/i...

Meanwhile there's more not so good news from Germany, a country with good intentions further down the road to hell than us.

Collapse Of Wind Power Further Threatens German Green Energy Transition
Windkraft-Kollaps gefährdet Deutschlands Energiewende
https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/plus197466063/Energ...

[turbobloke]

From across the pond:

ROBERT BRYCE: A REALITY CHECK FOR U.S. SOLAR AND WIND
Wall Street Journal

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-reality-check-for-s...

[anonymous-user]

turbobloke said:

From across the pond:

ROBERT BRYCE: A REALITY CHECK FOR U.S. SOLAR AND WIND
Wall Street Journal

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-reality-check-for-s...

Actually not from across the pond. From the GWPF offices in London.

Those of us that don’t have a subscription to the Wall Street journal (everyone) can find the article where TB actually found it, in the right wing advocacy blog the GWPF.

https://www.thegwpf.com/robert-bryce-a-reality-che...

[Gadgetmac]

El stovey said:

turbobloke said:

From across the pond:

ROBERT BRYCE: A REALITY CHECK FOR U.S. SOLAR AND WIND
Wall Street Journal

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-reality-check-for-s...

Actually not from across the pond. From the GWPF offices in London.

Those of us that don’t have a subscription to the Wall Street journal (everyone) can find the article where TB actually found it, in the right wing advocacy blog the GWPF.

https://www.thegwpf.com/robert-bryce-a-reality-che...

There’s just no point even checking his sources anymore...I stopped ages ago...it’s always the same old (oil industry funded) names.