The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[CraigyMc]

robinessex said:

PushedDover said:

Robinessex is trying to find a negative point - hence the barb.

Er, no I'm not. When I came into Engineering ages ago, this country was alive and buzzing with manufacturing and technology. Now it's a shadow of its former self. Quite how Germany, the loser in WW2 managed to get where it is now, is a source of constant annoyance to me. Quite obviously, the German government set out to achieve this by setting the right agenda and environment, while ours pissed up the wall and got mesmerised by bloody wkers, bankers.

You might want to consider if any of the people on this thread work in finance there RobinEssex.

[robinessex]

CraigyMc said:

robinessex said:

PushedDover said:

Robinessex is trying to find a negative point - hence the barb.

Er, no I'm not. When I came into Engineering ages ago, this country was alive and buzzing with manufacturing and technology. Now it's a shadow of its former self. Quite how Germany, the loser in WW2 managed to get where it is now, is a source of constant annoyance to me. Quite obviously, the German government set out to achieve this by setting the right agenda and environment, while ours pissed up the wall and got mesmerised by bloody wkers, bankers.

You might want to consider if any of the people on this thread work in finance there RobinEssex.

Overrated in my opinion.

[Condi]

robinessex said:

Er, no I'm not. When I came into Engineering ages ago, this country was alive and buzzing with manufacturing and technology. Now it's a shadow of its former self. Quite how Germany, the loser in WW2 managed to get where it is now, is a source of constant annoyance to me. Quite obviously, the German government set out to achieve this by setting the right agenda and environment, while ours pissed up the wall and got mesmerised by bloody wkers, bankers.

It's a fair point, but fk all to do with renewable energy or this thread...

Mind you, those who ever owned a British Leyland car (or indeed many of Land Rover's current customers) maybe glad that UK companies are less involved with the energy system than you are.

EDIT - I'm not sure what part WW2 has to do with your point either. German engineering excellence goes back to before WW2. Arguably a large part of why the Germans lost was because they prioritised quality over numbers, and so while the Russians were pumping out T34s and the Americans were pumping out Shermans on assembly lines, both with known issues, the Germans were hand crafting Tigers and Panthers at a much much slower rate. There is little argument that the German tanks were not technically better though.

Edited by Condi on Monday 17th May 13:25

[robinessex]

Condi said:

robinessex said:

Er, no I'm not. When I came into Engineering ages ago, this country was alive and buzzing with manufacturing and technology. Now it's a shadow of its former self. Quite how Germany, the loser in WW2 managed to get where it is now, is a source of constant annoyance to me. Quite obviously, the German government set out to achieve this by setting the right agenda and environment, while ours pissed up the wall and got mesmerised by bloody wkers, bankers.

It's a fair point, but fk all to do with renewable energy or this thread...

Mind you, those who ever owned a British Leyland car (or indeed many of Land Rover's current customers) maybe glad that UK companies are less involved with the energy system than you are.

EDIT - I'm not sure what part WW2 has to do with your point either. German engineering excellence goes back to before WW2. Arguably a large part of why the Germans lost was because they prioritised quality over numbers, and so while the Russians were pumping out T34s and the Americans were pumping out Shermans on assembly lines, both with known issues, the Germans were hand crafting Tigers and Panthers at a much much slower rate. There is little argument that the German tanks were not technically better though.

Edited by Condi on Monday 17th May 13:25

Won't reply, wandering of topic. Quiet happy to contribute if a new subject room was opened.

[PushedDover]

robinessex said:

PushedDover said:

Robinessex is trying to find a negative point - hence the barb.

Er, no I'm not. When I came into Engineering ages ago, this country was alive and buzzing with manufacturing and technology. Now it's a shadow of its former self. Quite how Germany, the loser in WW2 managed to get where it is now, is a source of constant annoyance to me. Quite obviously, the German government set out to achieve this by setting the right agenda and environment, while ours pissed up the wall and got mesmerised by bloody wkers, bankers.

Gamesa. dont forget to throw some toys and froth at the Spanish too.

[Evanivitch]

robinessex said:

Er, no I'm not. When I came into Engineering ages ago, this country was alive and buzzing with manufacturing and technology. Now it's a shadow of its former self. Quite how Germany, the loser in WW2 managed to get where it is now, is a source of constant annoyance to me. Quite obviously, the German government set out to achieve this by setting the right agenda and environment, while ours pissed up the wall and got mesmerised by bloody wkers, bankers.

Britain has a huge technological advantage over German engineering. They do volume very well, and some of the heavier engineering (welding) better.

But British engineering is ahead in precision, materials technology and innovation. Just look at our aerospace, defence and motorsports industry.

[CraigyMc]

Evanivitch said:

Britain has a huge technological advantage over German engineering. They do volume very well, and some of the heavier engineering (welding) better.

But British engineering is ahead in precision, materials technology and innovation. Just look at our aerospace, defence and motorsports industry.

+computing. But some people don't think that's "real" even though it controls just about everything. The UK is ahead of every European country in it.

[Talksteer]

wombleh said:

SZB seemed closer to budget and deadline than other builds so maybe something in the complexity argument, haven’t seen anything comparing the overall costs. Given how long we ran the AGRs then cheaper fuel may well have paid off

SZB was very expensive by global comparison, see our "world leading regulator" for that, if they had built the planned 6 plants they would have come down in cost a lot as around £2 billion of the cost of Sizewell was software.

The enrichment costs of nuclear fuel are basically irrelevant when people were worried about the cost of enriching fuel we were using gaseous diffusion, now we use centrifuges which are about an order of magnitude cheaper. Given that AGR has lower burn up of its fuel and a much more highly engineered and low volume fuel pin I doubt that they have ever been cheaper to fuel.

When the USN went for PWR and atoms to peace gave away subsidized enriched fuel doing anything other than a PWR was a waste of time. This has nothing to do with the inherent properties of the technology, in fact if you look at the footprint of the "compact" AGRs at Hartlepool and Heysham 1 they are about the same footprint as an AP1000, you could have got an economic reactor out of an AGR, just not with only 7 stations in one country.

[Talksteer]

Condi said:

robinessex said:

Er, no I'm not. When I came into Engineering ages ago, this country was alive and buzzing with manufacturing and technology. Now it's a shadow of its former self. Quite how Germany, the loser in WW2 managed to get where it is now, is a source of constant annoyance to me. Quite obviously, the German government set out to achieve this by setting the right agenda and environment, while ours pissed up the wall and got mesmerised by bloody wkers, bankers.

It's a fair point, but fk all to do with renewable energy or this thread...

Mind you, those who ever owned a British Leyland car (or indeed many of Land Rover's current customers) maybe glad that UK companies are less involved with the energy system than you are.

EDIT - I'm not sure what part WW2 has to do with your point either. German engineering excellence goes back to before WW2. Arguably a large part of why the Germans lost was because they prioritised quality over numbers, and so while the Russians were pumping out T34s and the Americans were pumping out Shermans on assembly lines, both with known issues, the Germans were hand crafting Tigers and Panthers at a much much slower rate. There is little argument that the German tanks were not technically better though.

Edited by Condi on Monday 17th May 13:25

Google "myths of US armor" by Nick Moran and any one of his numerous video on the subject of US tank design TLDR, Sherman was very effective, better than the most common Panzer the MK IV and perfectly effective against German heavies.

[hidetheelephants]

Talksteer said:

wombleh said:

SZB seemed closer to budget and deadline than other builds so maybe something in the complexity argument, haven’t seen anything comparing the overall costs. Given how long we ran the AGRs then cheaper fuel may well have paid off

SZB was very expensive by global comparison, see our "world leading regulator" for that, if they had built the planned 6 plants they would have come down in cost a lot as around £2 billion of the cost of Sizewell was software.

The enrichment costs of nuclear fuel are basically irrelevant when people were worried about the cost of enriching fuel we were using gaseous diffusion, now we use centrifuges which are about an order of magnitude cheaper. Given that AGR has lower burn up of its fuel and a much more highly engineered and low volume fuel pin I doubt that they have ever been cheaper to fuel.

When the USN went for PWR and atoms to peace gave away subsidized enriched fuel doing anything other than a PWR was a waste of time. This has nothing to do with the inherent properties of the technology, in fact if you look at the footprint of the "compact" AGRs at Hartlepool and Heysham 1 they are about the same footprint as an AP1000, you could have got an economic reactor out of an AGR, just not with only 7 stations in one country.

Exactly what the french did not do; they picked an evolutionary design and built a load of them, at least in pairs, often 4 kettles at the same site and at one site 6 kettles. This makes them cheaper because everyone in the value chain knows what the hell they're doing and there's enough longterm work to give leverage over delinquent subbies. They also exported. 3-4 different iterations of AGR was an economic disaster and no-one wanted to buy as the competition was cheaper(and probably offered bribes, then fuel on the Gillette model).

Edited by hidetheelephants on Monday 17th May 22:27

[Gary C]

Talksteer said:

see our "world leading regulator" for that,

I would much prefer our regulator than the US model.

I know of at least one incident of an NRC inspector being dangled over the edge of a reactor building

I attended a shift managers professional development course and one session was studying events on US reactors. It became apparent (to me at least, no so much to the US team) that a lot of the more serious events were at the highest ranked sites and that these sites seem to have a high ranking, not because they are safer, but because they are better at hiding their problems from the inspectors.
The next rank down appear to be more honest and open operators and thus seem to actually be safer.

Our regulation is culturally different in that we tend to demonstrate to the regulator why we are safe rather than the regulator setting rules and regulations to work around. This has tended to make an organisation that works towards over specifying safety cases rather than trying to circumvent rules and restrictions.

[take-good-care-of-the-forest-dewey]

NRC style reg in the UK would need an order of magnitude increase in staff + a research organisation/s (e.g. INL and the others) to develop the prescriptive 10 CFR and Nureg equivalents.

It would be helpful at times if our reg simply stated what they want, but this would add 10s if not 100s of millions per year to the cost of regulation. It's not worth it for such a small nuc programme. Also ONR wouldnt always be right. I'd rather have the flexibility to demonstrate a better, and maybe more cost effective, solution.

NRC are also seeing the problems with prescriptive regs as they only work for traditional npp designs - you've only got to look at the number of exemptions needed for ANT designs e.g. NUSCALE.

[Talksteer]

Gary C said:

Talksteer said:

see our "world leading regulator" for that,

I would much prefer our regulator than the US model.

I know of at least one incident of an NRC inspector being dangled over the edge of a reactor building

I attended a shift managers professional development course and one session was studying events on US reactors. It became apparent (to me at least, no so much to the US team) that a lot of the more serious events were at the highest ranked sites and that these sites seem to have a high ranking, not because they are safer, but because they are better at hiding their problems from the inspectors.
The next rank down appear to be more honest and open operators and thus seem to actually be safer.

Our regulation is culturally different in that we tend to demonstrate to the regulator why we are safe rather than the regulator setting rules and regulations to work around. This has tended to make an organisation that works towards over specifying safety cases rather than trying to circumvent rules and restrictions.

They may be fine operationally but they are a nightmare if you are trying to design a plant particularly if you are actually trying to get the cost down to a sensible level.

Also I shan't go into details but a lot of the safety principles are pretty full of what I would term "copy and paste errors" (this system is class X in the which case you must do x) which impose unnecessary standards. Whether something will be acceptable is often based on individual inspector preference and there is no "court of appeal", everything must be justified from first principles but then they also have the stick of "best practice" to beat you with especially if that best practice is essentially filled with unnecessary cost and in the case of PWR is the best practice extends to just one plant.

Nuclear safety (both regulators, contractors, operators and vendors) by making nuclear power far too expensive!

[take-good-care-of-the-forest-dewey]

Talksteer said:

They may be fine operationally but they are a nightmare if you are trying to design a plant particularly if you are actually trying to get the cost down to a sensible level.

Also I shan't go into details but a lot of the safety principles are pretty full of what I would term "copy and paste errors" (this system is class X in the which case you must do x) which impose unnecessary standards. Whether something will be acceptable is often based on individual inspector preference and there is no "court of appeal", everything must be justified from first principles but then they also have the stick of "best practice" to beat you with especially if that best practice is essentially filled with unnecessary cost and in the case of PWR is the best practice extends to just one plant.

Nuclear safety (both regulators, contractors, operators and vendors) by making nuclear power far too expensive!

Not trying to offend or start a fight but I'd suggest your 'nightmare' maybe born out a lack of understanding of the regulatory process. Much of what you claim isn't actually true.

For example, it has never been, nor is currently, 'best practice'. The legal test is ALARP... The starting point of which is meeting relevant good practice.

The delta between best practice and RGP is potentially huge... And very very expensive.

In addition, RGP isn't actually defined by the regulator. It is typically established by wider international industry groups... IAEA, ASME, etc. and then once established becomes recognised by ONR. You can't complain it's too expensive to meet as it's industry and professional bodies that create it.

I've seen first hand on an IAEA guide working group I was author on, ONR argue for a change in IAEA guidance wording as it would have moved 'good' to 'best' with a massive cost increase for little safety benefit.

[Gary C]

Talksteer said:

They may be fine operationally but they are a nightmare if you are trying to design a plant particularly if you are actually trying to get the cost down to a sensible level.

Also I shan't go into details but a lot of the safety principles are pretty full of what I would term "copy and paste errors" (this system is class X in the which case you must do x) which impose unnecessary standards. Whether something will be acceptable is often based on individual inspector preference and there is no "court of appeal", everything must be justified from first principles but then they also have the stick of "best practice" to beat you with especially if that best practice is essentially filled with unnecessary cost and in the case of PWR is the best practice extends to just one plant.

Nuclear safety (both regulators, contractors, operators and vendors) by making nuclear power far too expensive!

Cheap and safe, choose one . I can imagine new plant design assessment with the regulator must be really difficult for new plants but maybe thats how it should be ?

Its a really difficult balance, but the Davis Besse reactor head erosion shows what can happen with poor operational regulation and inspection. That accident was about 10mm from an uncontrolled LOCA and exposed cultural and regulatory issues that I don't really trust that INPO and the NRC have successfully dealt with.

[silentbrown]

Gary C said:

Its a really difficult balance, but the Davis Besse reactor head erosion shows what can happen with poor operational regulation and inspection. That accident was about 10mm from an uncontrolled LOCA and exposed cultural and regulatory issues that I don't really trust that INPO and the NRC have successfully dealt with.

Scary. I had to google that. Still, when there are responsible politicians at the helm, there's no worries, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_nuclear_bribery...

[hidetheelephants]

silentbrown said:

Gary C said:

Its a really difficult balance, but the Davis Besse reactor head erosion shows what can happen with poor operational regulation and inspection. That accident was about 10mm from an uncontrolled LOCA and exposed cultural and regulatory issues that I don't really trust that INPO and the NRC have successfully dealt with.

Scary. I had to google that. Still, when there are responsible politicians at the helm, there's no worries, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_nuclear_bribery...

The bribery and corruption seems a feature of states with effective one-party rule, although the subsidy issue is not black and white; earlier legislation to subsidise wind and solar penalised nuclear and made it artificially uncompetitive, which given the objective is to reduce CO2 output is pretty stupid.

[Gary C]

silentbrown said:

Gary C said:

Its a really difficult balance, but the Davis Besse reactor head erosion shows what can happen with poor operational regulation and inspection. That accident was about 10mm from an uncontrolled LOCA and exposed cultural and regulatory issues that I don't really trust that INPO and the NRC have successfully dealt with.

Scary. I had to google that. Still, when there are responsible politicians at the helm, there's no worries, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_nuclear_bribery...

It was a very interesting event. for those that haven't read about it, in quick terms

Given the profit imperative and the ability to terminate the contracts of white collar workers in most states, managers are under serious threat and pressure to always meet production targets or lose their jobs.

The maintenance/engineering manager level knew that the reactor pressure vessel head was leaking due to the build up of boric acid crystals but every maintenance & refuelling shutdown, the required inspections were either minimised until they were ineffective or cancelled to ensure restart occurred on time. But hey, its a top rated INPO level site so their cant be any problems here surely.

Senior exec level would pressure the managers to justify minimum standards to maximise profit with the ever present threat of replacement by someone who could (sounds familiar to the challenger disaster ?)

Each shutdown, they would clean away the acid deposits and have a quick look but never carry out the head overhaul it really needed, until one shutdown a maintenance team 'knocked' one of the penetrations and it fell off !!! FFS. So much of the pressure vessel had corroded away that only the stainless steel vessel liner was holding the coolant in the vessel.

Of course, the exec blamed the managers for not ensuring standards were met and the poor sod in the middle got crucified (sounds familiar to the challenger disaster ?)

Now we are not perfect but that would not happen at our site.

In 2010 we found a distortion in one of the standpipe liners which meant we could not pull out one of the assemblies that only carried samples of metal that are taken out to check corrosion rates as representatives of the rest of the core. Now, we could have left it in and restarted and indeed this was looked at but we could not justify that thermal expansion might not jack against the reactor dome, so we went in and cut it out. Reactor shutdown from March until December.
Because we have to make a safety case to restart, its up to us to tell the regulator why its safe rather than for them to tell us why it isn't and combined with a stronger protection of staff including managers and the ability for execs to be personally held legally responsible for the actions of the company means we tend to be much more open and conservative.
I'm happy with that but I dont design reactors

[Meeten-5dulx]

Anyone have info on the UK ETS scheme?
Starter yesterday below the EU scheme price and ended the day at a premium.
It’s making up a larger and larger portion of the wholesale electricity price.

[take-good-care-of-the-forest-dewey]

Gary C said:

It was a very interesting event. for those that haven't read about it, in quick terms

Given the profit imperative and the ability to terminate the contracts of white collar workers in most states, managers are under serious threat and pressure to always meet production targets or lose their jobs.

The maintenance/engineering manager level knew that the reactor pressure vessel head was leaking due to the build up of boric acid crystals but every maintenance & refuelling shutdown, the required inspections were either minimised until they were ineffective or cancelled to ensure restart occurred on time. But hey, its a top rated INPO level site so their cant be any problems here surely.

Senior exec level would pressure the managers to justify minimum standards to maximise profit with the ever present threat of replacement by someone who could (sounds familiar to the challenger disaster ?)

Each shutdown, they would clean away the acid deposits and have a quick look but never carry out the head overhaul it really needed, until one shutdown a maintenance team 'knocked' one of the penetrations and it fell off !!! FFS. So much of the pressure vessel had corroded away that only the stainless steel vessel liner was holding the coolant in the vessel.

Of course, the exec blamed the managers for not ensuring standards were met and the poor sod in the middle got crucified (sounds familiar to the challenger disaster ?)

Now we are not perfect but that would not happen at our site.

In 2010 we found a distortion in one of the standpipe liners which meant we could not pull out one of the assemblies that only carried samples of metal that are taken out to check corrosion rates as representatives of the rest of the core. Now, we could have left it in and restarted and indeed this was looked at but we could not justify that thermal expansion might not jack against the reactor dome, so we went in and cut it out. Reactor shutdown from March until December.
Because we have to make a safety case to restart, its up to us to tell the regulator why its safe rather than for them to tell us why it isn't and combined with a stronger protection of staff including managers and the ability for execs to be personally held legally responsible for the actions of the company means we tend to be much more open and conservative.
I'm happy with that but I dont design reactors

Besse had a few big events... Complete loss of feed water was another.


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