Government support for a future role for nuclear energy generation this week finally completed its transformation from Britain’s worst-kept secret to official policy.
And a very good thing too. The Engineer has argued for the best part of five years that not to include nuclear technology as part of the country’s future energy mix would be unwise to say the least.
Unwise but, as we conceded at the time, superficially attractive. After all, in the first few years of the new century nuclear was a distinctly unloved technology.
As a policy, commissioning new nuclear plants appeared to have all the allure of proposing that 12-year-olds should be sent back up chimneys.
It would have been easy enough to consign nuclear to the past and plan an energy policy based on less controversial ‘green’ energy technologies. Indeed, that was pretty much the approach taken by the government in its 1993 Energy White Paper.
Since then, of course, a dose of reality has been applied in the form of spiralling oil and gas prices. The last two years have made it clear that without the consistent, controllable bedrock provided by domestic nuclear generation the UK risked becoming a hostage to events well beyond its ability to control.
We welcome yesterday’s review for many reasons. In the spirit of a long-standing well-wisher, then, it is only right to point out a few of the obstacles which the government and industry must overcome to achieve the goals of its Energy Review.
Skills. Help needs to be given to bring on-stream the skilled engineers and technologists a next-generation nuclear industry needs. A start has been made, but more needs to be done.
Public opinion. The renaissance of nuclear does not mean it has become loved. The nuclear industry must explain clearly, and with the utmost transparency, the benefits and drawbacks of its technology, and how the latter can be minimised or eliminated.
Waste. Without a technically watertight, publicly acceptable resolution to the waste issue, the government might as well file its Energy Review in the bin. This is the single biggest hurdle of all.
Andrew Lee
Editor
The Engineer & The Engineer Online
Yes to Nuclear? No thanks! you mean. Until the issue of waste is resolved this expensive (I didn’t see the taxpayer bailing out any other energy producer) energy source should be put in the bin. My company was involved in the production of this energy review and I can tell you, there is no real watertight solution to nuclear waste and there never will be. This stuff has a half-life of tens of thousands of years! How can any system possibly take care of an ever expanding stockpile of waste for that length of time? The answer is: it can’t, and that should have been the end of the story.
The article quite rightly makes the case for finding a solution to nulcear waste storage. However, it does not quite give the importance to this task that the public believe it to be. Unless there is a solution to permanent storage of the existing detritus of current nuclear power, there is no chance at all of the British electorate accepting a new generation, however expensive oil and gas become. For a start, their cost is still much less than that of nuclear, and we are getting closer to justifying the cost of converting coal into oil. This is already now happening in Canada, and coal is one thing we are not short of. If the government put a tenth of the money into coal development as it will require for nuclear, the energy problem could be shelved for the next 200 years at least, and by then, we will either have solved the nuclear problem, or be harnessing our power sources so much better we won’t need them.
Across the pond we have the same problem to consider. I helped build one of them that was not allowed to go on line because there was no feasible evacuation plan that could be implemented. Power sharing or selected blackouts would be the only alternative if power needs keep on increasing at the rate they are with no planning for future power needs. Wind, geothermal, solar, ocean wave generation and other exotic fuels are all to be considered but when will we see the start of more of these projects? Nuclear power works well and has had a proven past even though there have been a couple of incidents around the world. We had our Three Mile Island incident. Nuclear waste is a big problem but if we put our heads together we just might be able to solve this thing. I felt safe living within a twelve mile zone from a nuclear facility. How much radiation are we getting from our monitors right now?
Your article is ‘spot-on’ and represents the common sense view.
Will you continue to publish informed articles, comments and reviews which can be understood by lay people whose main diet of news is of the ‘sensationalist’ variety ? They are told by the likes of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth that to go nuclear is to court disaster when, in fact, we have lived with it for 40 years !
Why not look at small scale renewables?
Many houses already run almost exclusively off wind and solar power.
Firstly I would like to applaud The Engineer for consistency in supporting the inclusion of nuclear energy as part of a blend of technologies to support our future energy needs. Training and educational support for nuclear engineering, though, is somewhat sparse. Post graduate courses in nuclear engineering are very rare and even rarer still for experienced engineers looking to switch to nuclear from other industries. Unless education is there to support nuclear then it will be another industry exploited by foreign engineering firms.
I am most concerned about waste, however I do not believe that progress should be stopped in pursuing nuclear power generation as progress in engineering the management of nuclear waste will eventually lead to a solution. If we stop now we may never achieve a solution to the waste problem and we will be left with all the waste so far generated. Furthermore it seems to me possible that pursuing the nuclear option will naturally lead us into the nuclear fusion development which could be the long term solution we all need.
What a shame. To go back to nuclear is a backward step. I think that the “I’m alright jack” mentality has won the day. I wonder if those in the government or on the commission are willing to live near those proposed sites or if they are willing to risk their children’s health. I have never heard of a terrorist attack on or fall out from wind farms or solar panels. Why has the government not yet insisted that all new build houses have solar panels built as standard?
I must disagree – this is actually a very bad move for engineering, for the power industry and for the UK.
Basically it is a retreat and will very effectively limit the investment on the radically new solutions we need for a truly balanced and sustainable energy supply industry. I suggest that, as a nation, we would be wiser to create a climate of investment into the alternative solutions, encouraging a number of diverse technologies and creating a much more widely based energy supply industrial sector. This would see a more dynamic and competitive industry and provide scope for a technological revolution, which could see the UK lead the world.
Instead we are moving towards a hug level of investment in just one solution, which will stifle the rest of the industry.
The issue of waste raises a lot of anxiety, but Sweden is about to bring in a repository and America has nearly finished its own repository. Our own research has shown we can store the stuff for 10,000 years safely but going beyond that it is less certain. But imagine the technology improvements in that time span compared to the effects of global warming over a similar span and it is a “no brainer”! Thank goodness someone has had the courage to do the right, if unpopular, thing.
What happened to the green writer from a couple of months ago arguing against nuclear? What about the spiralling cost of nuclear fuel going straight into the pockets of the Americans? Nuclear services are the US’s biggest and most profitable export. Gone are the days when grain used to be their biggest commodity. Maybe we haven’t got the technology this minute to create a greener energy supply for 50% of our power requirements but does that mean we as engineers should roll over and die? No, I say we have to get up off our asses and find that efficient, clean energy source and a new, more efficient way to make hydrogen from water. It’s time to think and think again!
Most of the comments already posted seem to have ignored the major reason why we must move to renewable supplies of power – global warming. Nuclear is included with renewables because the fuel is abundant – though not in our own country, unfortunately. (However, I’d rather be dependent on USA for nuclear fuel than on the Middle East for oil).
Nuclear power will provide our base load continuously without generating masses of CO2, and none of the alternative renewables are in a similar position, with the exception of hydro-electric — which can only supply a small share of the base load of this country, unfortunately.
France is 90% nuclear – they saw the light a long time ago.
Our coal industry has been responsible for way more deaths and major diseases than all the nuclear power in the world, as well as being a major contributor to global warming.
I agree that work must continue on devising the safest possible waste disposal.
Coal, oil, gas or nuclear, we are missing the real point. All are finite resources. Oil and gas are rapidly running out and uranium is also a very limited resource, so unless we crack fusion, nuclear is not a long term option. Coal will give us some time to adapt but even “Renewables” are no solution as the net energy balance over the device life time is very poor.
No, the real challenge is “How do we survive on a fraction of our current energy use?”
There was a report a few months ago, from Groningen University I think, that said nuclear energy would not help global warming because the entire supply chain (refining, enriching, etc) produced too much carbon dioxide, and that global supplies of uranium ore were not enough to fuel existing power stations to the end of their lives. I would like to know if this is correct.
Though it pains me to say it, investment in nuclear technology is needed. I do believe however that we should not be dependant on it entirely. I believe that solar panels mounted on all roof structures that are exposed to light can generate a large amount of power. It also has the advantage of not needing additional space. All of these solar panels could be connected to the national grid using appropriate hardware forming a massive distributed power generation system. Current advances in technology should make it possible to easily monitor such a system. Nuclear power would therefore only be used to augment the solar array at night or during severely overcast days. Using advanced electricity consumption meters, user patterns could also be changed, forcing people to use less and to use it when there is enough.
As usual though, it seems people tend to take the easy way out, for better or worse.
The decision, though ten years too late to continue with nuclear power as a provider of base load is welcomed and necessary.
The people who caution against this clean carbon free source of power are so far away from understanding what we all have to deal with regarding global warming they are rightly ignored.
We must use all options, energy saving devises, renewable energy sources in all forms wave, wind, geothermal, tidal, bio, solar and any I have missed along with nuclear and finally fusion if we are to have any chance of surviving past the next two generations. Our parents and grandparents began what we have accelerated, we have a global problem, it is every bit as serious as if we has identified a meteorite on collision course with Earth. In that circumstance we would all be looking to work together to find a way to reduce or eliminate the impact. Global warming is exactly the same risk and we have been given plenty of notice, we have to act now.
Let’s stop arguing about the dangers of one form of energy real or imaginary that can help solve the problem and concentrate on attacking that problem fast.
Don’t let those with misplaced green credentials orchestrate the debate. The global warming issue is far too serious to allow one of our best options to be called into question.
As a mechanical design engineer, I would never get a design solution to a problem accepted (in this case producing energy from nuclear reactors) without having a complete answer to all the detail from the design, manufacture, through assembly and supply to end of life requirements. Until a safe solution is found to the problem of what to do with the radioactive waste, and the nuclear industry can demonstrate a good safety record (I am also a member of Greenpeace and are well aware that this far from the case), then in my opinion the government should not agree to any more reactors being built. The argument that nuclear energy is the only solution that can meet the country’s needs is not an acceptable answer. I work in the automobile industry and pushing the argument that a car must have brakes because they are the only means we have of stopping even though they’re known to be defective, clearly would not succeed.