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points by SillyUsername 3 days ago | 0 comments

This kind of makes the UK's double budget overrun Hinkley Point C new nuclear powerstation look even worse as a policy choice.

This was the best bet at the time when it was chosen, but it must be a good case of the sunken cost fallacy by now, given how long it's taken to build, and didn't follow an existing design*

As a risky policy choice, many distributed solar and wind farms with modern sodium-ion batteries would be a safer and more distributed (failure and weather resilient) modern choice.

*If the original design was defective, why are they using it in A and B?

[–] alex_duf 3 days ago

We need it all. All the low carbon sources: The cheap intermittent renewables, the expensive and stable nuclear, the biogas from organic waste etc.

Putting one clean tech against the other is a waste of time we don't have right now.

[–] Veedrac 2 days ago

This is falsely assuming that attention is the primary bottleneck. It's not. If you redirected £50B into solar, wind, and battery subsidies, you would end up with straightforwardly more green energy. Solar and wind are not resource-bottlenecked technologies. You can just buy more.

[–] pjc50 2 days ago

Disappointingly in the West, the primary bottleneck is permitting. Both for sites and grid connections. Not quite the same as "attention", but similar.

The UK is currently building two long offshore DC-DC connections between north Scotland, where all the wind is, and the south of England, where much of the demand is. This is easier than running another line of pylons on land because fewer people will complain.

[–] Zigurd 2 days ago

Misallocation of capital is anti-environmental. If you allocate capital to projects that have decades long delays, you have burned that capital at the start of the project, not at the end of it when you take delivery of a working power plant.

[–] throw-qqqqq 2 days ago

Assuming we have limited time (i.e. that there is a deadline, a “point of no return”) and money to move out of fossil fuels, it makes sense to aim for the cheapest energy source, to optimize the probability of getting there before it’s too late.

So IMO we don’t need all the expensive options, when the cheap ones are already viable.

[–] mschuster91 2 days ago

Nuclear takes far too long (>10 years) to build.

In the same time frame you can build out enough solar, wind and battery storage that you can supply the same amount of continuous power, have money left over and not need worry about nuclear waste and a hefty teardown bill to the tune of billions of dollars.

Nuclear power is on its way out, all you need it for is deep space, marine military applications (i.e. aircraft carriers and submarines that stay submerged for months at a time) and as a byproduct of reactors used for radiotherapy.

I'm not even sure if it is worth it to keep chasing the fusion dream. Sure, as a foundation research into nuclear physics and chemistry (i.e. creating new elements), or for powering interplanetary space travel, it still makes sense, but by the time nuclear fusion can generate power... renewables will have long since taken over.

[–] accidc 2 days ago

Essentially, its a game of capital and solar is accessible to (almost) every human household on the planet.

Additionally, zeroish fuel costs/operational costs, grid connection is optional, capacity to build panels is not controlled technology, raw materials are relatively cheap. So scaling production further or bringing it online is not otherwise constrained.

Nuclear can still can be strategically important as rock solid base load and for grid stability.

In the future, with better understanding and control over nuclear physics, nuclear one day might be as cheap and plentiful as batteries, but for this cycle , solar has essentially ‘won’

[–] chickenbig 2 days ago

> Nuclear takes far too long (>10 years) to build.

Latency and throughput are not the same thing. 10 years to the first result, and less once the planning and construction process is streamlined.

[–] mschuster91 2 days ago

> 10 years to the first result, and less once the planning and construction process is streamlined.

You can't streamline your way out of the need to have to build containments capable of surviving a fully laden Airbus A380 crashing into it from 43.000 ft.

I live near a NPP, these buildings are insanely tough and you need a lot of time, a lot of resources and a lot of people to build them - especially the people part is a huge constraint, construction already isn't an attractive career and the demographic bomb is hitting the trades hard.

[–] chickenbig 2 days ago

> You can't streamline your way out of the need to have to build containments capable of surviving a fully laden Airbus A380 crashing into it from 43.000 ft.

Most of the plane is not a problem for 6ft of concrete and a steel liner. Planes are built to just about hold together. The main thing to worry about are the jet engine cores.

[–] mschuster91 2 days ago

> Most of the plane is not a problem for 6ft of concrete and a steel liner. Planes are built to just about hold together.

It's still 575 tons of material crashing into the containment at a speed near at or even over the speed of sound. That is a lot of energy to dissipate, on top of that 250 tons of burning jet fuel is a lot of thermal energy that can quickly eat away at steel.

[–] chickenbig 2 days ago

> That is a lot of energy to dissipate

The NRC report states "with regard to the effects of shock associated with aircraft impact, WEC demonstrated that these shock loadings are less than those resulting from a design basis seismic event"

> burning jet fuel is a lot of thermal energy that can quickly eat away at steel

Hmmmm, it does have to get past the concrete. "for the fire aspect of AIA ... WEC demonstrated that the requirements of 10 CFR 50.150 are met."

https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ml1101/ml110170004.pdf

[–] Zigurd 2 days ago

The two most recent reactors built in the US used a modern modular design that was supposed to reduce the chances of construction delays. They weren't late because of planning or permitting.

The modularity was supposed to enable offsite construction of modules in a controlled environment and make it more reliable. What happened in real life is that some modules needed rework and that was only discovered after delivery. That massively fucked the schedule.

[–] chickenbig 2 days ago

The AP1000 was an incomplete design, plus the aircraft impact assessment change happened. Even the Chinese had trouble constructing it.

But now there is a design, and the Chinese construct CAP1000/CAP1400 on a regular basis.

[–] mschuster91 2 days ago

> But now there is a design, and the Chinese construct CAP1000/CAP1400 on a regular basis.

Yeah. The Chinese. A country well known for cutting corners ("chinesium steel" has its name for a reason).

I wouldn't trust a Chinese made design. If they do, it's their choice.

[–] acdha 2 days ago

That’s a pretty massive assumption at the end: you really don’t want to cut corners with safety and unless the government can simply ignore residents, very few people are willing to live near a nuclear plant so you have to anticipate delays or higher transmission costs.

While all of that’s happening, you’re guaranteed to be producing more carbon emissions before anything can be displaced.

[–] rsynnott 2 days ago

> but it must be a good case of the sunken cost fallacy by now, given how long it's taken to build

No, for nuclear plants generally sunk cost is not a fallacy :) Most of the cost for a nuclear plant is upfront, so once you've spent that you may as well use it.

[–] pjc50 3 days ago

A was Magnox and B was AGR. A collectible set of British dead end nuclear technologies.

C is not a great idea but like HS2 failing to finish it would also be a disaster.

[–] SillyUsername 3 days ago

Thanks for the correction, what specifically makes them dead end that we can't re-use the designs - e.g. use modern parts?

[–] pjc50 3 days ago

Long discussion: https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/why-british-nuclear-flopp...

Magnox: un-enriched fuel, designed for weapons, low operating temperature.

AGR: too complicated, can't be refuelled without complete shutdown.

PWR has emerged as the only viable design, and even that is too complicated compared to solar+batteries.

Basically, plumbing is the enemy. Every joint is a potential failure. If what's in the pipe is radioactive or corrosive or explosive (in the case of molten sodium, all three), that's extra bad. So there's tremendous cost of inspections.

[–] rwmj 2 days ago

Molten sodium as a cooling liquid always struck me as a "courageous decision" (to quote Yes Minister). Is there really nothing else that can do the job?

[–] pjc50 2 days ago

It's an annoying tradeoff: if you want something that's liquid at 600C, it pretty much either has to be a metal, or heavily pressurized (i.e. the PWR, the pressurized water reactor everyone has converged on).

Or you go for a gas. But then you're not able to use water as a moderator, so it either has to be a "fast neutron" design (which the few liquid sodium reactors are) or use a graphite moderator (flammable, lifespan issues with neutron cracking).

The unexplored corner is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas-cooled_fast_reactor : plumbing is "safe" apart from being incredibly hot, but you still have to deal with fast neutrons smashing up the reactor from the inside on an atomic level.

[–] metal_am 2 days ago

Radiation damage is no joke!

[–] speed_spread 2 days ago

> PWR

CANDU works fine too.

[–] justincormack 3 days ago

Something about AGR in this great Stross piece https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/rants/nothing-l...

[–] chickenbig 2 days ago

> didn't follow an existing design

https://www.onr.org.uk/publications/regulatory-reports/other... is an interesting read; the ONR claims it was not them, and EDF/Framatome claim it was not them either.

The Fingleton Review goes into this and other design changes required by other agencies. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/taskforce-calls-for-radic... .

Sizewell C has an approved design, so the risks are much reduced, and the political/regulatory environment is behind simplification.

[–] MisterMunchkin 3 days ago

If we save money by cutting every single project and never delivering anything then we’ll save a fortune sure, except we won’t have anything.

And then you’ll have us buy Russian gas and Iranian oil to save money… and oopsie woopsie looks like we’re dependent on the evil countries again.

[–] pjc50 2 days ago

I've converged on "it's a bad idea to _start_ a nuclear project in 2026, but the sunk cost fallacy doesn't quite apply, so once significantly invested it should be finished and run to its operational lifetime".

[–] MentalM 2 days ago

That is not how it works.

First, you for decades pay 5-10 times more for energy to subsidize every single green energy project... and then oopsie woopsie you still buy Russian gas and dependent on the evil coutries.

[–] belorn 2 days ago

Please become political and get party platforms to invest into massive sodium-ion batteries farms for northern Europe like Denmark, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Finland and so on. There are no political party that has that as a strategy, and those that reject nuclear are instead promoting thermal power plants as the solution to the problem of variability in energy production from renewables. Even the green party, or to be precise the strategy that they pioneered and others on the left adapted, is to build thermal power plants today that burn natural gas and bio fuels, and then wait for green hydrogen. There is no political interests to change that strategy to sodium-ion batteries farms. To make just one such example, south of Sweden strated construction this spring for a fresh new thermal power plant and CCS, owned by local government that is run by a coalition of left and green. Instead of putting millions into emission producing thermal power plants they could build that cheaper and better sodium-ion batteries.

I know multiple people who would have voted for the green party, but decided to not do that because of their investments and political drive towards thermal power plants. The only political alternative to parties pushing for thermal power plants is those that want nuclear power.

[–] motionlessveloc 3 days ago

While I don't disagree, Britain is hardly in the sweet spot for efficient, year-round solar production.

[–] dkdbejwi383 3 days ago

Surely the real sweet spot is diversity? Solar for when it's sunny (which is more often than many think in lots of parts of the UK, especially SE England), wind (reliable most of the year in other parts of the UK), tidal/wave/hydro, etc.

[–] pebbly_bread 2 days ago

At least for nuclear, no. The cost is overwhelmingly in the construction rather than the operation so it makes sense to run it all the time. With diverse green sources while their fluctuations are less correlated than just adding more solar you still have the potential for all of them to have a lull at the same time.

[–] ErroneousBosh 2 days ago

It was an obsolete design before they even started.

A modern nuclear power plant using a pebble bed reactor could be the size of a couple of Portakabins, with a third Portakabin to contain the wellies and gardening gloves you'd need to handle the fuel.

[–] tim333 2 days ago

When I was in South Africa their pebble bed reactor was the thing. They were working on it from 1993 until 2009 then gave up. Not totally sure why. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_Bed_Modular_Reactor

There was a German one too:

>constructed in 1960, grid connected in 1967 and shut down in 1988. It was a 15 MWe, 46 MWt test reactor used to develop and test a variety of fuels and machinery. ... Over its lifetime the reactor had many accidents, earning it the name "Shipwreck".

Not quite sure what goes wrong but they seem problematic.

[–] pjc50 2 days ago

This is clearly not true because nobody is building one of those? Not just in the West. The one that's actually getting built is PWR.

[–] metal_am 2 days ago

There are startups. See Standard Nuclear making TRISO or X-Energy

[–] ZeroGravitas 3 days ago

It was the third of its type in Europe built by roughly the same people, fifth if you include Chinese models built separately, so not a totally new design.

[–] Nursie 3 days ago

The last chance to stop that particular albatross was lost under Theresa May, who was advised that it was already over-budget and wouldn't deliver value for money, and had to guarantee a pretty eye-watering price per kWh at the taxpayer's expense.

I can only think that the UK must need the reactor products for something defence related, because little else makes sense.

[–] tialaramex 3 days ago

> I can only think that the UK must need the reactor products for something defence related, because little else makes sense.

Obviously as a country with nuclear weapons that's an ingredient.

However Hinkley C's strike price £2012 92.50 is lower than was renegotiated for Drax £2012 109.90. Those are £2012 which means they're inflation adjusted as if you were being paid in the year 2012 not in current pounds. For a real world comparison, AR6 Solar got a strike price of about £2012 50 and that translates into about £75 right now today. Inflation is a hell of a thing.

Drax burns imported trees ("waste wood") so it requires some creative Green accounting to come up with the idea that this is carbon neutral so even if it's not quite as trivially friendly as a solar panel Hinkley is obviously less stupid. Both Hinkley and Drax run happily in the still dark, so to compare solar or wind you need to factor in a lot of storage. Today the government does not fund storage, that's a free market opportunity, so we can interpret the significant discount from Hinkley or Drax to a solar farm as a sign that the market thinks storing enough power is quite expensive actually.

[–] ZeroGravitas 3 days ago

They worked around the CfD and shifted nearly 2 billion of the costs to the next nuclear build by paying the first project out of the new budget for "lessons learned"!

Apparently the main lesson learned was, don't use a CfD because you'll be contractually bound to your initial bid and be responsible for cost overruns. Instead consumers are paying upfront for construction, with no cap on costs for the next one.

Though of course that's not really a lesson learned. Their CFO knew enough at the time the deal was originally signed to resign over it.

[–] pm3003 3 days ago

One crucial point is that military nuclear know-how (engines and weapons) needs a civilian industry for continuity of knowledge and betterment of practices and procedures.

I'm not sure how essential Hinckley Point C would be in this regard (probably not really), but I don't think this is about nuclear fuel.

[–] gadders 2 days ago

Not really. Solar is improving, but in terms of area required it's not even close to comparable to nuclear. You'd need 668 sq kilometres of solar panel (67k hectares) to match the same generation capability as Hinkley C (175 hectares).

[–] MichaelNolan 2 days ago

I’m not convinced that solar’s land requirements matter. Almost no country is small enough that the land usage is a serious constraint. The UK is 244,376 km2.

In 2010 Hinkley C was the right choice. But if starting today, that £48 billion could buy you a whole lot of wind, solar, and batteries.

[–] jayflux 2 days ago

You are still going to need an energy source that you can “switch on” and balance the grid at times of low wind/solar.

You know it’s not sunny all the time, you don’t need me to tell you that, but it’s not windy all the time either. Batteries are a good investment but they can only hold hours worth of capacity right now not days.

So you have 2 options. Either invest in long term storage, or have enough nuclear around that can kick in when other generators don’t have much, or ideally both, which the UK is doing.

Both Hinkley and Sizewell are the right choice. They’re an upfront cost but once running are cheap.

https://storelectric.com/dunkelflaute-energy-storage/

[–] gadders 2 days ago

I guess people can have different views. I'd rather have power generation concentrated in a few spots and have more fields and forests.

For reference, the Birmingham/West Midlands conurbation is 671 sq km.