The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[Parbold milkperson]

Or pumped water storage such as Ben Cruachen or in north wales.

[Condi]

Evanivitch said:

You're correctly stating the reality (which I'm aware of and totally agree with) but it's not the position of many idealists which I've come across.

As I said, many will chant that a 100% renewables grid will be cheaper because of the cheap price of wind and solar. Bit they never put a number on the price of the battery capacity and over capacity required to achieve it.

Talk by idealists is largely irrelevant when the people making the decisions and investing the money are much more pragmatic about what needs to be done and how.

Even the most idealistic person can look and see there are times the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. Irrespective of how many wind farms you build you'll never get round that fundamental problem. We are a long way from "overcapacity" right now I would argue. The biggest issue is not the number of wind turbines, but their location. The Western Link helped with that, as will the Norwegian IC and the proposed Eastern Link. Equally connecting the North Sea wind directly to Europe is another good idea, allowing the power to flow to wherever it is needed most (ie wherever the price is highest).

[Evanivitch]

Parbold milkperson said:

Or pumped water storage such as Ben Cruachen or in north wales.

Which isn't practical with our topography, and even Dinorwig is "only" 10GWh.

[Parbold milkperson]

Evanivitch said:

Which isn't practical with our topography, and even Dinorwig is "only" 10GWh.

you are missing their BIG attribute. That they can go onto the grid just prior to a big demand for power.

they have a real place in the Grid

[Evanivitch]

Parbold milkperson said:

Evanivitch said:

Which isn't practical with our topography, and even Dinorwig is "only" 10GWh.

you are missing their BIG attribute. That they can go onto the grid just prior to a big demand for power.

they have a real place in the Grid

Of course. But that has nothing to do with what we were discussing.

[dickymint]

"The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain" ?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-jersey-569...

[Talksteer]

Condi said:

PRTVR said:

What other option do we have that is carbon free ?
Wind is 0.8 gw at the moment, do we keep building things that are intermittent and require back up?

We can have reliable power which is carbon free, but it's comparatively very expensive. HPC has a CfD of £92 at 2015 (?) prices while offshore wind has a CfD of £45 at 2019 (?) prices. Onshore wind is competitive without any support at all.

SMRs are unproven and while they should be cheaper until someone actually builds one then nobody really knows. It still doesnt get round the problem of flexibility, ie changing output. While going up and down in load is not too bad, it's not great to be turning them on and off, even an SMR.

FYI transmission wind has been up to 14GW today, plus about 3GW of distribution connected wind and we've been importing cheap power from Ireland as a result of their excess wind generation. Nobody has said we should rely on wind 24/7, but you cannot argue it's not a useful source of power, especially given how cheap it is thanks to the support over the last decade or so.

And what were the prices of the first offshore wind farms?

Onshore wind is also somewhat supported by rest of the grid flexing around them putting the cost of accommodating wind on those other assets which is then passed to the consumer. It would make sense to make all contracted fixed firm and thus force intermittent generation to be paired with storage or conventional generation.

Regarding HPC it's not exactly a great data point, conceptually it's stuck in 1974 it has:

• Far too much concrete
• Active safety systems supported by acres of cabling all manually installed on site
• The design is unique and virtually every interaction between the UK regulator and EDF has resulted in additional systems being added or increased in safety significance. Don't get me started on the 8km of class 1 drains
• The design is somewhat profligate on the non nuclear elements, the cooling water system for example I expect actually costs more on its own than a CCGT of equivalent output!. It has a below grade excavation the size of a football stadium and 3.5km of highly engineered tunnels.
• The design wasn't finished before the project was initiated, for example much of the nuclear island wasn't even modeled in 3D CAD they were using 2D plans!
• The whole site is managed as a nuclear installation during construction which imposes a massive overhead on every activity which takes place on site

Hence why EDF suggests a strike price of more like £60/MWh for Sizewell C.

Even then that is nowhere near the ultimate potential to reduce the cost of a nuclear power plant, the plants in Asia have managed to be constructed at between 1/3 to 1/5 the capital cost of HPC that's with relatively conventional large plants. Most of that is simply labour productivity, learning by doing and spreading fixed costs further.

All of that is without really changing the design and modularising, firstly you get a fairly high mediate cost saving just be getting the civils and structural people in during the preliminary design, secondly you get to push modularization and standardization concepts which means that more of your kit is benefiting from economies of volume and thirdly and most importantly factory labour is about 3 times more productive than site labour.

In the longer term there is probably in the region of a 50% size and complexity reduction possible on a PWR plant from basic design improvements independent of the method of manufacture.

Add it all up and you end up with nuclear having an eventual cost somewhere less than $20/MWh, ultimately nuclear should be the cheapest form of energy simply because the amount of material processed per KWh should be the least given the size of the plant and the tiny amount of fuel it consumes.

Hinckley Point C tunnels:

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/innovative-thinki...

Also I one thing that really annoys me about HPC is their pride about things like those tunnels or the fact that they are using the worlds biggest crane. They should be hanging their heads in shame that they need to resort to such measures to build their design!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-496...

[Condi]

Talksteer said:

, the plants in Asia have managed to be constructed at between 1/3 to 1/5 the capital cost of HPC that's with relatively conventional large plants. Most of that is simply labour productivity, learning by doing and spreading fixed costs further.


Add it all up and you end up with nuclear having an eventual cost somewhere less than $20/MWh, ultimately nuclear should be the cheapest form of energy simply because the amount of material processed per KWh should be the least given the size of the plant and the tiny amount of fuel it consumes.

1st generation of offshore wind was £200+, but those costs have come down quickly to where we are now.

Nuclear has been around for 60/70 years and is only getting more expensive. You comparison with Chinese/Asian construction is somewhat pointless really, I doubt they have anywhere near the same oversight from the regulators and government departments, and maybe the fact they pay their staff, what, 20% of what a UK worker would get.. How come the cost is not coming down here, given that the design of HPC was/is a standardised design, with near identical plants built in France, China and something similar in Finland?

The promise of cheap nuclear energy has been waved around for decades, but nobody has achieved it yet.

[Talksteer]

Condi said:

Nuclear has been around for 60/70 years and is only getting more expensive. You comparison with Chinese/Asian construction is somewhat pointless really, I doubt they have anywhere near the same oversight from the regulators and government departments, and maybe the fact they pay their staff, what, 20% of what a UK worker would get.. How come the cost is not coming down here, given that the design of HPC was/is a standardised design, with near identical plants built in France, China and something similar in Finland?

The promise of cheap nuclear energy has been waved around for decades, but nobody has achieved it yet.

Windpower has been around for about 130 years as an electrical generator and the first megawatt class wind turbine predates nuclear power. We have only had ~450 nuclear plants.

HPC isn't standardised with the other EPRs, sure it has the same pressure vessels and fuel but pretty much everything else is either new, site specific or rejustified.

It's the civil engineering that makes up most of the cost and that is all nonstandard, low productivity and occuring on site.

The point about the Asian plants is that with their lower labour costs and more permissive regulator (debatable) this demonstrates how much of the plant cost is labour and specifically a significant amount of that is non value added.

These costs are specially the ones that modularisation and standardisation attack. Eg. Move from a regime where every feature is inspected by a regulator on site to a type approved standardised solution where the process is certified and factory records can be checked. This is basically what they do in aviation which is an example of a highly regulated industry where costs are relatively low.

Finally by involving the civils and manufacturing in the early design process you can design costs out. The HPC example of the cooling tunnels in the article I linked to, why on earth are they built to nuclear standards, because they use the cooling water for a safety purpose.

Don't do retarded st like that enough times and the cost will come tumbling down!

[Condi]

I don't doubt that EDF could build HPC more cheaply, and I don't doubt they are not an inefficient French state owned company, but Siemens (?) who have built the Finnish reactor have gone hugely over budget too (from memory they are charging $1bn and costs are about $7bn), while other countries have gone over budget on their reactors too - USA for one - and so the "challenge" of building nuclear plants in countries with some modern H+S, regulation and labour laws appears to be common across many countries.

And I agree that SMRs should make this cheaper, but that doesn't contradict the fact that HPC and SC if it is built will be more expensive to consumers than wind, even if you include the costs of a backup generation source like gas.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love the UK to have a fleet of cheap, carbon free, and reliable plants of any form. Electricity costs could/would be immaterial and it would do wonders for UK PLC, but at the moment that doesn't seem to be on the horizon.

Edited by Condi on Friday 7th May 00:42

[hidetheelephants]

Condi said:

I don't doubt that EDF could build HPC more cheaply, and I don't doubt they are not an inefficient French state owned company, but Siemens (?) who have built the Finnish reactor have gone hugely over budget too (from memory they are charging $1bn and costs are about $7bn), while other countries have gone over budget on their reactors too - USA for one - and so the "challenge" of building nuclear plants in countries with some modern H+S, regulation and labour laws appears to be common across many countries.

And I agree that SMRs should make this cheaper, but that doesn't contradict the fact that HPC and SC if it is built will be more expensive to consumers than wind, even if you include the costs of a backup generation source like gas.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love the UK to have a fleet of cheap, carbon free, and reliable plants of any form. Electricity costs could/would be immaterial and it would do wonders for UK PLC, but at the moment that doesn't seem to be on the horizon.

In addition to the points outlined by TS there is over-regulation, scientific fraud(historic) and institutional inertia; while the ONR are not quite as hidebound as the NRC too much is based on public acceptability rather than objective risk, LNT is founded on academic fraud but we still have it as a basis for regulation and safety.

[wombleh]

The gen3 reactors were intended to be cheaper by using modular and repeatable patterns. The first one in any given regulatory area will always be more expensive while the finer details are pinned down, however the following ones should benefit more from that efficiency. Which fails miserably when you get multiple different private organisations to build 1-2 of various different designs rather than a fleet of the same type.

There was an interesting book linked from here about the mess the UK govt made of the original reactor fleet, possibly this one: http://waltpatterson.org/goingcritical.pdf

[irc]

"I have been working on developing, constructing, and operating wind and solar projects in Ireland for over two decades now. It has been my life’s work and my endeavours and passion have been rewarded with various senior positions and board seats. I look back now and feel slightly ashamed because the truth is the integration of wind and solar electricity generation onto the grid at scale imposes massive direct and indirect cost to the Irish consumer and divide communities while they are at it. And it is only going to get worse, a lot worse"

"There is now an assumption in the industry that project costs are largely irrelevant, and any increases in cost can simply be hoisted onto the consumer."



https://gript.ie/warning-irelands-obsession-with-r...

[Evanivitch]

irc said:

"I have been working on developing, constructing, and operating wind and solar projects in Ireland for over two decades now. It has been my life’s work and my endeavours and passion have been rewarded with various senior positions and board seats. I look back now and feel slightly ashamed because the truth is the integration of wind and solar electricity generation onto the grid at scale imposes massive direct and indirect cost to the Irish consumer and divide communities while they are at it. And it is only going to get worse, a lot worse"

"There is now an assumption in the industry that project costs are largely irrelevant, and any increases in cost can simply be hoisted onto the consumer."



https://gript.ie/warning-irelands-obsession-with-r...

Ref said:

Texas, like Ireland, is an isolated electricity market with a significant amount of intermittent renewable generation that cannot be called upon exactly when required.

That's not true...

There's two 500MW interconnectors, plus Greenlink is a further interconnector with 500MW. So 1.5GW of 5GW demand is quite healthy.

If Irish wind further grows, there'll be good reason for even more.

[Condi]

The other big difference is that Texas is/was almost entirely unregulated and worked almost entirely on a "free market" system, whereas Ireland is not like that.

The article is a bit odd, tbh. It's not all wrong, but its by no means all correct either.

[PushedDover]

Evanivitch said:

irc said:

"I have been working on developing, constructing, and operating wind and solar projects in Ireland for over two decades now. It has been my life’s work and my endeavours and passion have been rewarded with various senior positions and board seats. I look back now and feel slightly ashamed because the truth is the integration of wind and solar electricity generation onto the grid at scale imposes massive direct and indirect cost to the Irish consumer and divide communities while they are at it. And it is only going to get worse, a lot worse"

"There is now an assumption in the industry that project costs are largely irrelevant, and any increases in cost can simply be hoisted onto the consumer."



https://gript.ie/warning-irelands-obsession-with-r...

Ref said:

Texas, like Ireland, is an isolated electricity market with a significant amount of intermittent renewable generation that cannot be called upon exactly when required.

That's not true...

There's two 500MW interconnectors, plus Greenlink is a further interconnector with 500MW. So 1.5GW of 5GW demand is quite healthy.

If Irish wind further grows, there'll be good reason for even more.

"If" ? ?

Do some Googling......

[Condi]

PushedDover said:

"If" ? ?

Do some Googling......

FWIW Ireland regularly has a stable and functioning system with much higher levels of wind generation (as a % of demand) than GB. They must be doing something right.

[Evanivitch]

PushedDover said:

"If" ? ?

Do some Googling......

Well Greenlink is already planned for 2023 online, so I'm sure more will follow as Welsh wind and possibly tidal will also benefit from that.

[Gary C]

wombleh said:

The gen3 reactors were intended to be cheaper by using modular and repeatable patterns. The first one in any given regulatory area will always be more expensive while the finer details are pinned down, however the following ones should benefit more from that efficiency. Which fails miserably when you get multiple different private organisations to build 1-2 of various different designs rather than a fleet of the same type.

There was an interesting book linked from here about the mess the UK govt made of the original reactor fleet, possibly this one: http://waltpatterson.org/goingcritical.pdf

Its an interesting read, and while I would not necessarily dispute a lot of the information, it was obviously written by someone with a huge chip on both shoulders who set out to write a book to discredit anyone involved right from the start rather then present a real balanced work.

[hidetheelephants]

Gary C said:

wombleh said:

The gen3 reactors were intended to be cheaper by using modular and repeatable patterns. The first one in any given regulatory area will always be more expensive while the finer details are pinned down, however the following ones should benefit more from that efficiency. Which fails miserably when you get multiple different private organisations to build 1-2 of various different designs rather than a fleet of the same type.

There was an interesting book linked from here about the mess the UK govt made of the original reactor fleet, possibly this one: http://waltpatterson.org/goingcritical.pdf

Its an interesting read, and while I would not necessarily dispute a lot of the information, it was obviously written by someone with a huge chip on both shoulders who set out to write a book to discredit anyone involved right from the start rather then present a real balanced work.

There are much better books, it's a diatribe from a radiophobe really. "Nuclear Power" by Pocock is better technically and "Nuclear Power Decisions" by Williams is much better on the politics. Neither attempt to whitewash terrible decision-making, the latter book particularly.