Great British Nuclear to boost UK energy security, reduce dependence on volatile fossil fuel imports and deliver government priority to grow the economy
Raw materials are not the choke point for nuclear energy independence- enrichment facilities are, of which the UK has three that produce an exportable surplus. Even if it was, Canada and Australia are second and third in the world in Uranium reserves, which is convenient for the country that houses their King.
Nuclear energy is green- it’s the only energy worldwide that internalizes its externalities and is made to cost what it costs to the environment.
Sorry but that’s an absurd way to construe the point I was making. “Energy Independence” when used in a geopolitical context involves essentially fuel-exporting nations exploiting their supply chain position in order to win political concessions from importers- such as Russia holding Northern Europe hostage over oil and fossil gas in response to European resistance to the invasion of Ukraine. Commonwealth nations share close relationships that are unlikely to degenerate to the point where Australia or Canada are invading their neighbors and holding the UK’s electricity hostage.
Unfortunately, renewables cannot do it alone and I wish that wasn’t the case. Pairing renewables with emission free nuclear is the only option we really have to meet current and future demands without fossil fuels.
I took graduate level courses in storage with these technologies at scale. Neat that this knowledge is useful again.
Pumped and compressed require specific geologic formations. Most of the sites for pumped have already been developed in NA. There’s room for growth for compressed, but compressed also suffers from losses when the air that’s pumped into the crust cools. Hopefully, there are undeveloped compressed sites near regions with energy demands.
Flywheels are a neat idea and still just that: an idea. It’s yet to been demonstrated they can reliably do more than grid frequency moderation. The reason it’s not very attractive to investors is that we don’t have materials to match the energy density of other technologies.
Green hydrogen is also just an idea at the present. Nobody’s pursues this because of losses incurred generating hydrogen from water. I want this one to work!
Finally, batteries. Do you think there are enough metals on the planet to build enough batteries for current and future demand?
It’s not. We HAVE to have baseline power generation. Today that comes by either burning fossil fuels, or nuclear, with hydro/geo etc making up a trivial percentage. Only oil industry propaganda conflates nuclear with solar/wind.
You have it backwards. Each new nuclear plant is essentially bespoke, that’s why they cost so much. It’s wind and solar that have an established supply chain.
You can definitely achieve more if you can work the supply-side as well. In theory if the smart grid were well executed then it’d be possible for consumers to modulate their heat, charging, tumble dryers etc… to provide more elasticity.
Unfortunately in a lot of places the incentives aren’t that high. I don’t have that option where I live, but in denver the lowest consumer rate is around 7c and the highest around 17c/kWh. It’s hard to invest in new appliances to exploit that difference, but if the off-peak number were 1c then I think you’d see much more take-up of smart car chargers and people delaying when they do laundry.
So how does modulation work? Does the smart grid turn off dryers until midnight? Does the dryer have to be compatible with the drig? I’ve never heard of this and am interested.
Yeah, you can get electric car chargers where you can set rules something like “Charge whenever power is under 5c/kWh, but try to make sure i’ve 60% charge by 8am each weekday”. Logically you could have a thermostat control AC - we’ve been playing with that at work because our power goes up at 1pm, so we turn down the thermostat at 12:00 and then turn it up at 1:00 so it shunts some of the cooling a little earlier.
I’ve never seen a tumble drier that can do it, for some reason mine has WiFi but can’t do shit like that. But, yeah I imagine the rule I’d want would be : Dry this anytime in the next 4 hours, and try to spend as little as possible.
It’s a bit of a meme that the UK is always rainy. It isn’t always rainy, it does rain a lot but it doesn’t rain anywhere close to all the time and when it’s not raining it can get quite hot, quite unbearably in fact because we don’t have air conditioning.
Anyway heat isn’t really relevant to solar panels, what they really need is just sunlight in general, and we get plenty of that even if it isn’t particularly hot. In fact solar panels don’t actually like being particularly hot so they probably won’t work very well in the Sahara desert. Despite what everyone may think.
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Nuclear power is green energy.
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It’s the only form of energy generation that internalizes all of its own costs- including disposing waste and insuring cleanup.
If we forced oil companies to internalize the cost of fracking casualty and wastewater reinjection alone, gas would be $50/gal.
Raw materials are not the choke point for nuclear energy independence- enrichment facilities are, of which the UK has three that produce an exportable surplus. Even if it was, Canada and Australia are second and third in the world in Uranium reserves, which is convenient for the country that houses their King.
Nuclear energy is green- it’s the only energy worldwide that internalizes its externalities and is made to cost what it costs to the environment.
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Sorry but that’s an absurd way to construe the point I was making. “Energy Independence” when used in a geopolitical context involves essentially fuel-exporting nations exploiting their supply chain position in order to win political concessions from importers- such as Russia holding Northern Europe hostage over oil and fossil gas in response to European resistance to the invasion of Ukraine. Commonwealth nations share close relationships that are unlikely to degenerate to the point where Australia or Canada are invading their neighbors and holding the UK’s electricity hostage.
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I don’t know if that’s true lol, this is reddit we’re talking about.
But yeah, I missed that you were pisstaking; my b.
And if the royal decree doesn’t work I suppose we could pay them for it but it’s better to not try that one out of the box just in case it works.
Unfortunately, renewables cannot do it alone and I wish that wasn’t the case. Pairing renewables with emission free nuclear is the only option we really have to meet current and future demands without fossil fuels.
Google search found some uranium in England: https://www.nature.com/articles/246180a0.pdf
They absolutely can when paired with storage. Nuclear is not needed.
Storage? Like battery storage? Lead? Lithium? Go on, tell me more.
Or will we flood river valleys? What are you thinking?
Batteries of all kinds, compressed air, green hydrogen, pumped storage, flywheels, etc.
I took graduate level courses in storage with these technologies at scale. Neat that this knowledge is useful again.
Pumped and compressed require specific geologic formations. Most of the sites for pumped have already been developed in NA. There’s room for growth for compressed, but compressed also suffers from losses when the air that’s pumped into the crust cools. Hopefully, there are undeveloped compressed sites near regions with energy demands.
Flywheels are a neat idea and still just that: an idea. It’s yet to been demonstrated they can reliably do more than grid frequency moderation. The reason it’s not very attractive to investors is that we don’t have materials to match the energy density of other technologies.
Green hydrogen is also just an idea at the present. Nobody’s pursues this because of losses incurred generating hydrogen from water. I want this one to work!
Finally, batteries. Do you think there are enough metals on the planet to build enough batteries for current and future demand?
Is your contention that a combination of all the methods I listed is insufficient for a renewable future that doesn’t include nuclear?
It’s not. We HAVE to have baseline power generation. Today that comes by either burning fossil fuels, or nuclear, with hydro/geo etc making up a trivial percentage. Only oil industry propaganda conflates nuclear with solar/wind.
It’s base load, not base line and we don’t have to have it.
https://cleantechnica.com/2022/06/28/we-dont-need-base-load-power/
Yes, nuclear is the only one that’s sufficiently developed, with a supply chain that’s sufficiently developed, that’s ready for deployment right now.
The others could get there some day, and I hope they do, but we cannot wait for that.
You have it backwards. Each new nuclear plant is essentially bespoke, that’s why they cost so much. It’s wind and solar that have an established supply chain.
Iron-air batteries seem rather promising for being cheap and scalable
Another person who doesn’t understand power-grids being anti-nuclear, wow!
So educate me, if you can. Your comment contributed nothing of value.
You can definitely achieve more if you can work the supply-side as well. In theory if the smart grid were well executed then it’d be possible for consumers to modulate their heat, charging, tumble dryers etc… to provide more elasticity.
Unfortunately in a lot of places the incentives aren’t that high. I don’t have that option where I live, but in denver the lowest consumer rate is around 7c and the highest around 17c/kWh. It’s hard to invest in new appliances to exploit that difference, but if the off-peak number were 1c then I think you’d see much more take-up of smart car chargers and people delaying when they do laundry.
So how does modulation work? Does the smart grid turn off dryers until midnight? Does the dryer have to be compatible with the drig? I’ve never heard of this and am interested.
Yeah, you can get electric car chargers where you can set rules something like “Charge whenever power is under 5c/kWh, but try to make sure i’ve 60% charge by 8am each weekday”. Logically you could have a thermostat control AC - we’ve been playing with that at work because our power goes up at 1pm, so we turn down the thermostat at 12:00 and then turn it up at 1:00 so it shunts some of the cooling a little earlier.
I’ve never seen a tumble drier that can do it, for some reason mine has WiFi but can’t do shit like that. But, yeah I imagine the rule I’d want would be : Dry this anytime in the next 4 hours, and try to spend as little as possible.
I mean, we can’t even build a rail line on time or to budget, I can’t see us being able to build nuclear reactors any time soon.
Starmer Voice Where I come from, we’re not great at building rail lines because we’re too busy railing lines from the bosom of this beautiful nation
UK, plenty of sunlight? Edit: for the down voter, this is what the UK thinks of the sun https://lemmy.tf/post/538103
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It’s a bit of a meme that the UK is always rainy. It isn’t always rainy, it does rain a lot but it doesn’t rain anywhere close to all the time and when it’s not raining it can get quite hot, quite unbearably in fact because we don’t have air conditioning.
Anyway heat isn’t really relevant to solar panels, what they really need is just sunlight in general, and we get plenty of that even if it isn’t particularly hot. In fact solar panels don’t actually like being particularly hot so they probably won’t work very well in the Sahara desert. Despite what everyone may think.
Oh no, we will have to buy it from that evil super state Australia!!!
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