Don’t believe the UK government’s hype about small nuclear reactors and Great British Nuclear.

In response to Energy Security Secretary Grant Shapps’ announcements
relating to ‘Great British Nuclear’, Dr Doug Parr, Chief Scientist for
Greenpeace UK, said – “As the government tries to whip up investment for
the latest generation of reactors, it is striking how many of the nuclear
industry’s speculative claims are being repeated by ministers as fact.

The hype seems to have been enough to convince our government that nuclear’s
last gasp is in fact a new dawn, but at their radioactive cores SMRs remain
the same bad bet. SMRs have no track record, but initial indications are
that the familiar problems of cost overruns and delays will be repeated,
and the accumulation of unmanageable waste will continue.

Maybe the hope is that splitting one big mistake into several smaller mistakes means each
reactor’s inevitable problems receive less scrutiny?

By continually obsessing about nuclear the government is taking its eye off the net zero
ball, which will have to be delivered through a predominantly renewable,
modern electricity grid. No number of SMRs will fix the government’s
lacklustre effort to address issues of delayed connections, smart local
grids and home efficiency.

The government may argue that renewables can
compete in the market unaided, while nuclear still needs state support to
survive, but atomic power has been showered with money and support for the
best part of a century without ever working well enough to pay its way.

This is a technology that has gone straight from adolescence to
obsolescence without passing through maturity.”

Greenpeace 18th July 2023

July 21, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

Great British Nuclear: High on hype, Low on substance

“How is Great British Nuclear meant to take forward the SMR competition when it has no operating budget, no legal powers, no permanent staff team, and no base from which to operate?”

“How is GBN meant to take forward the SMR competition when it has no operating budget, no legal powers, no permanent staff team, and no base from which to operate?”

 https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/great-british-nuclear-high-on-hype-low-on-substance/ 18 Jul 23

Energy Secretary Grant Shapps finally launched ‘Great’ British Nuclear today (18 July), but whilst the minister’s announcement was big on hype, the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities noticed that it was short on substance.

Great British Nuclear was the new body announced by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson in April 2022 as part of his revised energy strategy. GBN is supposed to be front and centre of a ‘rapid expansion of nuclear power at an unprecedented scale and pace’, but the formal launch of the initiative has been put on hold several times, including humiliatingly at the eleventh-hour last week.

Nuclear in the UK has made little progress since April 2022. EDF Energy, which is building the only nuclear plant under construction at Hinkley Point C, has recently announced a further delay in delivery and a huge increase in costs, whilst its reactor design – the EPR-1 – has been beset with serious safety and reliability issues, with an accident at Taishan-1 in China and repeated delays to the start-up of its reactor in Olkiluoto in Finland. And the UK government has so far failed to engender any interest within the financial markets to back its Sizewell C development, meaning that the British and French governments (and ultimately taxpayers) continue to carry the can.

More faith is being placed by ministers on the development of so-called Small and Advanced Modular Reactors, with GBN’s role being to provide oversight to a competition amongst rival designs to select those deemed worthy of government funding to take forward through the regulatory approvals process and onto deployment. Such reactors would be fabricated remotely and then taken in parts for assembly on site, but all is not rosy – developments costs are rising exponentially, none of the designs are proven to be safe or reliable, none have been built, the financial position of some developers is becoming uncertain, and there remains the intractable radioactive waste problem.

NFLA Chair, Councillor Lawrence O’Neill identified some of the remaining challenges following today’s press conference:

“Like much concerning nuclear, once again when we look at GBN there is a noticeable disconnect between the upbeat speech of the Energy Secretary and the actual reality on the ground.

“Mr Shapps announced a further £157 million in government funding for nuclear, but this sum is small beer relative to the billions required to get any plant up and running, and strangely absent, yet again, was any clear indication of where the money to fund the operation of Great British Nuclear would come from. Figures of up to £500 million per year have been bandied about, and the NFLA has previously pointed out that this funding shortfall was also noticeable in the Chancellor’s Spring Budget where much was made of the ‘promise’ of GBN, but with no money to follow it.

“Furthermore, Great British Nuclear still does not have all its legal powers to function, including the power to award funding for future nuclear development. Its powers are contained within the Energy Bill currently in its Reporting Stage before the House of Commons in Parliament, and this still needs to clear its final hurdles before receiving Royal Assent and becoming legislation. As the recess is almost upon us, with MPs leaving for their summer holidays, no further progress can be made before the autumn. In addition, GBN only has an interim staff team and no real headquarters.

“How is GBN meant to take forward the SMR competition when it has no operating budget, no legal powers, no permanent staff team, and no base from which to operate?”

Mostly damningly, Emeritus Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Greenwich, Stephen Thomas, has poured scorn on the ‘promise’ of Small and Advanced Modular Reactors in his recent paper:

which includes quotes:

‘The much-hyped Small Modular Reactors are a long way from being commercially available and the claims for them being cheaper than large reactors are not credible’.

‘Advanced Modular Reactors have all been talked about for 50 years or more. However, they have either been built as unsuccessful prototypes or demonstration plants or not been built at all as power reactors. All AMR designs will require major innovations if they are to be technically viable’.

The NFLAs are at one with Professor Thomas in condemning the British Government’s continued foolhardy obsession with unproven, unreliable and potentially unsafe new nuclear, when renewable technologies already exist that can deliver affordable, sustainable electricity far more quickly and far more cheaply.

Councillor O’Neill concluded:

“Every pound spent on the vainglorious pursuit of nuclear power means a pound denied to investment in a national programme of insulation and energy efficiency measures to bring down energy usage and customer bills or a pound denied to investment in solar, wind, hydro, biomass, geothermal, tidal or wave power projects that, in combination with energy storage solutions, can provide more affordable, sustainable electricity to meet our nation’s energy needs right now.”

July 20, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, UK | 1 Comment

UK Government announces fantasy small modular reactor programme as a cover for Sizewelll C failure

By David Toke,  https://100percentrenewableuk.org/government-announces-fantasy-small-modular-reactor-programme-as-a-cover-for-sizewelll-c-failure 19 Jul 23

What is really most significant about the Government’s new announcement for £137 million funding for research into so-called small modular reactors (SMRs), is the failure to move forward with plans to finance Sizewell C. This latest nonsense about SMRs can best be seen as a cover for this lack of movement.

The Government and EDF have both taken small part shares in the Sizewell C project. Most people know that the project cannot move forward unless the Government takes more or less the rest of the equity (with maybe EDF making a token extra small gesture). However the Treasury does not like this since then the Government (read taxpayer/electricity consumer) will be mainly on the hook for the inevitable massive cost overruns that will result.

So the Government continues to go through the motions of encouraging private investment in the project that will never occur. The consultants who advise the pension funds etc on whether such an investment is a good thing feel obliged to live in the real world and tell them that this would be a terrible idea. Only action from the Prime Minister can force the Treasury’s hand, but evidently, the PM feels that this can wait to be implemented after the General Election.

Meanwhile, in the real world, as many people have always known but did not want to say, Hinkley C’s construction becomes later and later and more and more incredibly ruinous for EDF. The Chief Finance Officer of EDF resigned when the company gave the final go-ahead for the project in 2016, fearing that it would become the financial disaster that it has now become. But then maybe people always knew that the French Government would end up paying for the project. As in the UK, the British Government will end up paying for the horrendous costs and incredibly late delivery of Sizewell C, albeit passed on to consumer energy bills.

The French, whose electricity system is collapsing because of nuclear power failure have even abandoned any hope in the EPR design that is being planned for Sizewell C (and which is sinking slowly into the Hinkley mud). They now want a simpler design. But we are still plodding on with the old EPR design for Sizewell C.

Meanwhile the Government distracts people’s gaze with fantasy announcements about small modular reactors. They are throwing good money in the direction of bad technologies (high-temperature reactors, molten salt reactors) that were discarded around 60 years ago. Little will happen as a result of this research. Apparently, according to the press release, investments of £20 billion are to follow. Really? On which planet is this happening? Not this one for sure, and certainly not budgeted by the Treasury.

Meanwhile, news about the (rather large) so-called small modular reactors that Rolls Royce was planning has petered out. The Government were supposed to be producing hundreds of millions of pounds to push that boat along. However this earlier (now apparently no longer operative) piece of nuclear fantasy has seemed to disappear to be replaced by a brand new fantasy-packed press release from the Government this very morning.

I never fail to be surprised by how gullible people are when faced by these press releases from the Government when they talk about nuclear power. People obviously have a mixture of very short memories and a huge appetite for wanting to believe wishful thinking about nuclear power.

But the sad thing is that when (let’s assume) Keir Starmer comes in as Prime Minister he will have these fantasy nuclear plans stacked on his desk, or pushed that way by an unwilling Chancellor. How will he deal with them? By pushing much of the funding for otherwise sensible green energy investments into a (Sizerwell C) nuclear black hole?

Read about the 100%RenewableUK energy model and how it compares to the Government’s net zero plan. 100%RE gives lower emissions for much lower overall cost! Our new report concludes that a 100% renewable energy mix for the UK would save well over £100bn in achieving net zero by 2050, compared to the UK Government’s current strategy. It would also mean more than 20% lower cumulative carbon emissions in the process. The study, carried out by renowned energy modelling academics at LUT University in Finland, involves hour-by-hour simulation of different scenarios for reaching net zero for UK energy systems. Click HERE for more information, including links to the report itself and accompanying material

You can see the youtube recording of our seminar on 100percent renewable energy for the UK held in London on April 22nd  HERE

July 20, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

Exposing the lying claims of pro nuclear shill Zion Lights

2 Response to a July 2023 article by Zion Lights:  https://nuclear.foe.org.au/zion-lights/

In Australia, for the same investment we can get three times more firmed renewable power (generation, not capacity) in one-third of the time compared to nuclear. The cost difference between nuclear and renewables is so vast that renewables are still cheaper even when transmission and storage are costed in. Perhaps the comparison is more nuclear-friendly in the UK, but I strongly suspect renewables+storage+transmission is still cheaper given the obscene costs of Hinkley Point (approx. A$50 billion for two reactors).

Specifically in Light’s latest article:

* Lights’ claims about the IPCC supporting nuclear power are dishonest, the IPCC maps out countless scenarios (including scenarios with nuclear reducing to zero) and its ‘analysis’ of pros and cons is generally reduced to dot-points.

* Lights’ claims about a “scientific consensus” in support of nuclear power are dishonest, e.g. the Climate Council, comprising Australia’s leading climate scientists, states that nuclear power reactors “are not appropriate for Australia and probably never will be”.

* Ignores profound impacts of catastrophic accidents.

* Ignores the repeatedly-demonstrated connections between nuclear power and weapons (in the UK and elsewhere).

* Light’s ‘millions of lives saved’ meme is dishonest because it assumes nuclear displaces nothing other than coal.

* Nonsense about warm water around nuclear plants providing a haven for sea-life is dishonest, she surely knows that water intake pipes kill fish by the thousands. (And she should know something about Irish opposition to radioactive discharges from Sellafield.)

* Glib, ignorant and/or dishonest claims about high-level nuclear waste: “spent fuel can be easily transported to another location, and even recycled”. The UK has given up on reprocessing (a polluting, multi-billion-dollar disaster) and has made near-zero progress on a deep underground repository and has wasted billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money in the process. The only operating deep underground repository in the world – WIPP in the US ‒ was disastrously mismanaged and under-regulated resulting in a chemical explosion in 2014.

* The UAE project came in under budget? Either Lights is ignorant or lying. The UAE project was years behind schedule and many billions of dollars over-budget.

And in other articles/interviews, even more unhinged nonsense, e.g.

* Lights saying climate change ‘could be solved overnight’ with nuclear. Seriously?

* Lights lying about her role in Extinction Rebellion.

* Lights getting sucked in by, and collaborating with, lunatic MAGA liar Michael Shellenberger.

Update: Lights deleted the above comments from the comments thread below her article, failed to address any of the substantive energy issues and failed to respond to the accusations of deceit.

July 13, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment