Hitachi buys Horizon to save UK's nuclear future Japanese tech giant Hitachi has swooped in to rescue the UK’s foundering Horizon nuclear energy project with a commitment to generating thousands of new jobs and knock-on benefits for the local supply chain. Horizon Nuclear Power was put up for sale by its German owners E.On and RWE in the spring without having built a single …
A step forwards for E.ON and RWE, who sold a few fields to Hitachi for £700m, having paid less than half of that in the first place. Because the Horizon JV was not looking to use the Hitachi plant, nothing that the JV did in terms of planning or approvals will have any transferrability to Hitachi's proposals. By my reckoning this adds £0.4bn to the outturn price of any reactors eventually built, before anybody has even started to design or plan anything. Smooth..
To overpay by this amount suggests that Hitachi don't have a clue, which is a bit worrying for us plebs, since they're going to have to recover these costs through the electricity bill, and our equally clueless politicians and even more clueless civil servants are busy working to ensure that our power bills go up by whatever ti takes to buy DECC's toys.
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So the japanese come over one day on the ferry from france and go into the UK Government building and the person behind the desk is all like "oh hi i didnt know you were coming this week" and the japanese say "yeah we thought we'd crack on with that nuclear plant we were discussing" and the UK government man says "well okay there's some land for it in Gloucestershire, do you want a lift?" and the japanese say "no we have our own cars" and the uk government man says "okay make sure you put the nuclear waste in a hole when you are done" and the Japanese agree. and then the japanese go to Gloucestershire and build a nuclear plant in 12 months and then turn it on and there is green electricity in Gloucestershire in 2013.
While they've built on time/budget in Japan, I expect the Swampy's of this fine country shall unite in digging in under/around the prospective site, increasing costs.
Not forgetting the Gloucestershire Nimby's (caveat, I live there and I'm not in that set - but there are enough rich folk dotted around).
The years 2020-2025 will be interesting indeed...
More likely just taxpayers hacked off with seeing their hard-earned pissed up the wall by the usual mob of itinerant rebels without a clue.
They serve no purpose other than to make these large infrastructure projects take longer and cost more, due to the interminable and expensive processes involved in getting rid of them so construction can proceed.
"government need to grow up a bit more like China and just imprison anyone who protests at national building projects"
Yeah that democracy thing's a PITA.
IIRC there was a bit of trouble when an Austrian proposed something similar a few decades ago.
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"I've just been to my family home with wattle and daub walls that are 350 years old. I bet in 350 years time there wont be any modern homes still standing."
Care to guess what proportion of the wattle & daub housing stock actually survived? The few we've still got were the tiny handful that were (by chance) competently built, and then maintained across the intervening few hundred years. The same durability plus some would apply to modern houses, in the unlikely event that they were properly maintained.
I don't see any obvious 'incidents' in the sense of dangerous problems, but the 4 Japanese reactors of this type don't seem to have a particularly high uptime compared to other modern designs. Maybe they're hoping that the new builds will have dealt with some of the reliability issues experienced by the early ones.
>Additionally the car parks at these new plants should have speed limits of 88mph.
They have been around 15 MPH. The Head of Security at Berkeley Site took it upon himself to install a radar 'display your speed' which when approached at twenty miles an hour would show almost any number between 0 and 99.
Later, he installed a speed-bump but no warning sign, causing one driver's old neck injury to flare up again. The irony is that this speed bump was immediately in front of sharp 90º turn through some concrete barriers designed to stop terrorists ram-raiding the fence- you couldn't go fast if you wanted to.
Take a look at the Fukushima Daichi 4 cooling pond sometime soon....over 400 tonnes of fuel rods, with over 6000 fuel rods in the common spent fuel pool 50 feet away...and sinking....since the earthquake the cooling "pond" has sunk nearly 2 metres, and unevenly.
If that collapses and the fuel is exposed nobody will be going near the place for many decades.
No joke, it is in a BAD way.
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> Fukushima killed nobody.
2 bodies found in the wreckage (although probably drowned, considering the wording of the write up):
http://abcnews.go.com/International/bodies-found-fukushima-dai-ichi-nuclear-complex-japan/story?id=13286621
I agree. If it wasn't for the fact the backup diesel generators were located below the water line, my understanding is that there wouldn't have been a problem at all. The building survived and the reactors shut down as they should, but the cooling system failed. Seems a bit knee-jerk to do away with all nuclear power because some prat put the diesel generators in the basement.
Actually that should be: "..because some prat put the diesel generators in the basement, next to the sea and in a country that invented the ruddy word 'tsunami'.".
Nothing wrong with gennies in the basement, as long as you can be 100% certain that it isn't going to get filled with water.
"Nothing wrong with gennies in the basement, as long as you can be 100% certain that it isn't going to get filled with water."
Basements always fill with water. Not that far from the nuke site at Oldbury is the Mythe Water Treatment Works. In the 2007 floods that was knocked out for weeks because the pumps were in a basement (well, a dry sump) that flooded, and as a result the electrical gear was kaput, the water mains lost pressure, and about a thousand kilometres of water main connected to that works then had to be resterilised.
" the water mains lost pressure, and about a thousand kilometres of water main connected to that works then had to be resterilised."
Is this the same incident where the privatised water companies turned out to be unable to distribute anything like enough bottled water for drinking, and eventually the Army had to be called in to take over the deliveries?
Looks like it is:
http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/Gloucestershire-floods-years-pound-15m-water/story-16567118-detail/story.html
Five years later, the privatised water company is about to announce £15M plans to avoid a recurrence of the same problem.
Good job the Tories know better than to make significant cuts in the armed forces.
Pardon?
Oh.
Actually, the generators were put something like 12m above the ground level, it's just that because of the drop in land the 12m (again, IIRC) wave flooded them. The plant worked to spec, it's just that the spec didn't quite meet the eventuality.
Then you need:
1) Constant wind at the optimal value 24x7.
2) A massive amount of space to ensure that they don't disrupt each other. Either high ground (perhaps a nice national park will do...), or out at sea.
2) A fleet of landrovers/boats and diesel to keep them maintained.
3) Mucho quantities of concrete to mount them on - probably as much as you'd need for the nuke plant.
4) 216 turbines with those wonderfully environmentally friendly to mine Rare Earth metals.
5) Massive amounts of governemt subsidies to make it look economically viable.
its all here, the same math for all size dynamo`s, with electro magnetic motors that have no shaft power and will only ever use 2% of generated power tops
http://community.discovery.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/7501919888/m/24319443111
less power loss if you make motors specific to the dynamo`s maximum RPM and torque, with custom electro magnetic motor calibration, and not your everyday, high RPM and low torque/low RPM and high torque motor, dynamo`s are low RPM and low torque
dynamo`s are all the same..... http://www.guinarnd.com/index.php/turbines/wind-turbine-generators
6mw generated from 20 RPM / 20 RPM = 300,000 watts from every full rotation when running at maximum output speed. a motor will not use 300,000 watts to run, at best a motor would be using 5-15kw with the right electro magnetic calibration, leaving 280,000 watts to goto the grid roughly
I agree, we should attempt to put both economic and non-economic costs for *all* forms of power generation on the table, and then work out which is best (or least bad). This will be almost certainly some exceedingly boring and mutually-but-equally unsatisfying compromise between economics, the environment, and social factors; but I'm not at all sure it's going to exclude nuclear like you appear to want..
...that their nuclear business is about to go Pfut in Japan but they're able to jump ship.
The main thing holding back renewables is battery capacity to smooth the generation/supply imbalances. That's a technological problem. The Germans are extremely good at solving difficult technical problems, and appear to be making good progress with this specific problem.
This is why the German government announced (last week was it?) that they're now expecting 45% renewables by something obscene like 2025. Incredible.
If there's a worry there, it's that it'll make Germany (once again) a very difficult place to fuck with militarily. It's easy to bomb a couple of nuclear power plants and make a country go dark, but much more difficult to bomb hundreds of thousands of solar roofs and wind turbines :-)
If there's a worry there, it's that it'll make Germany (once again) a very difficult place to fuck with militarily. It's easy to bomb a couple of nuclear power plants and make a country go dark,
Not really, if you're happy to risk spreading radioactive isotopes about by dropping bombs on Nuclear reactors, it's probably not that big a step to cut out the middle-man and provide your own fissionable material.
they are "expecting" 45% reneawble, but are EFFECTIVELY building over 20 new fossil plants, of which at least 5 on coal....post nuclear german power generation will be a lot less environmentally friendly in reality,
You battery remark is pretty much nonsense, there are not enough resources on this plannet to build the amount of batteries needed to support large scale "renewable" crap...
also the current energy policy of germany, belgium, holland etc....is one of the main drivers of the economic crisis due to simulateous rises in price 10-20% per year, and billions in green power subsidies putting a noose around the neck of the economy and population
"Battery capacity is being solved, using pumped electrolyte cells. "
I doubt it. It seems to me that reversible chemical reactions don't seem to involve much energy (which is probably why they are reversible). That equates to very low energy density, and for grid applications means that the storage units would be unfeasibly large.
While I'm sure Hitachi's ABWR is a bit safer and cleaner than the crappy old 1960s things GE built at Fukushima, I must admit to some disappointment that it's still basically a giant kettle heated by sticking bits of Uranium in it until they get hot.
The nation that built the world's first commercial nuclear power station and designed the AGCR shouldn't have to be importing nuclear tech or settling for such simplistic designs. I suppose this is what we get for sitting on our bums for a couple of decades when we should have been building for the future.
Some perspective here:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/rants/nothing-like-this-will-be-buil.html
It'd be nice to see some serious dosh made available for research into things like LFTRs and fusion so that next time we don't get caught wrong-footed when the generation capacity runs out ...
I suggest you *read* the article you linked to. It also explains *why* they won't build another.
I have read it, of course. I cited it as "perspective".
The point, though, is not that the AGCR described in Charlie's blog post is what we should be building now, but that having had the technology, skills, and experience to design and build the AGCR we should be embarrassed to find that we have thrown all that away, and that we are now in the position of having to import third-party reactors (of an older and less efficient type) because we can no longer make our own.
It wouldn't happen in France!
Yes I thought this announcement was a bit:
a) telling
b) ironic
50 years ago, my father was out in Japan helping commission some of their first nuclear power stations (well before Fukushima). Now 50 years later we are having to re-import the technology we invented.
This is what we get for letting our governments sell our souls to the City.
I worked at a technology supplier to the Magnox refurb project many years ago.
Ferranti (the incumbent computer supplier, and bidding for the refresh) were already collapsing, but GEC were still around as a significant engineering company (although not involved in that particular project).
Now, Ferranti, GEC, and many other former technology giants, all sacrificed at the altar of the City.
May they burn in nuclear hell forever.
"no longer are willing to build the reactors ourselves!"
Nothing to do with "no longer willing", unless you mean "the City aren't willing to fund it".
Example of recent interest: Sheffield Forgemasters are one of a very very very small number of manufacturers who can make reactor pressure vessels. They needed to buy another piece of specialist equipment (a press) to cope with increasing demand. It was an investment which would have paid for itself after a few years. Lord "Two Resignations" Mandelson promised an £80m (ffs) loan in 2010 but the Millionaires Cabinet reneged on the deal and the City banks weren't picking up the tab (they needed the money for bonuses and lobbyists and high frequency trading kit and stuff).
It is indeed a very very bad joke though.
We pioneered nuclear power and now we're importing it from Hitachi.
We pioneered high speed rail and now we're importing it from Hitachi.
Still, I'm sure we have some good marketing people around to sell the ideas to all the Daily Mail readers who are against anything modern, which is probably why we don't do this stuff ourselves anymore.
Well whilst I dont like Nuclear Power I accept that given the UK's situation we will need a mix of every type of energy production and maybe in time be able to *find* a longer term cleaner energy solution....
BUT.... whose paying for the safe disposal of nuclear fuel? The Guardian, and other media outlets have reported that in 2009/10 DECC's entire spend totaled £3.18bn, but in 2010/11 it is spending £8.06bn, an increase of 146.02% that is largely due to nuclear liabilities costing £6.9bn... ????? If its DECC or rather Government then we will see the true cost impacted on public taxation and if its down to the the Energy producers then clearly they will recoup their costs and profits through higher prices.... Either way people were going to be paying a very high price in either subsidies or direct energy charges - or maybe a bit of both.
An people have been complaining about Solar and Wind subsidies..... they wont even touch the amount Nuclear receives.... as I said either way were going to pay... big time... I advise everyone starts looking at ways to provide their own power and energy now .. Gas and Electric are going to get extremely expensive, way more than they are today
That'll be a first for the *British* nuclear industry. I think the AGR's managed to be about a *decade* behind schedule on average.
Got to love that cost plus contracting and many firms did.
Of course with Hitachi on the case the new ABWR's will likely be smaller and cheaper.
The AGRs were horribly over-budget and had a pretty terrible reputation for reliability when they first came onstream, but they were incredibly ambitious pieces of engineering at a time when Britain was really losing the knack for big projects and industrial relations were in the crapper.
It's a real shame as some of the ideas were good ones, such as producing steam at the same temperature and pressure as a coal-fired plant allowed commonality of equipment between stations. By the time the AGRs were commissioned their price per unit far exceeded that of the PWR which had been churned out by the hundred. So when it came to ordering Britain's third generation stations there was no choice but to go with the PWR. Which was a real shame, because once the AGRs were debugged they turned out to be pretty reliable.
I'm still trying to work out why the Canadians have never tried to sell CANDU in the UK. It addresses all the cooling problems of the PWR and the contamination of coolant in the BWR and is ready to go.
But I won't believe this announcement amounts to anything until the ground is broken. I've lost count of how many times in the last 20 years the UK has announced the go-ahead for new nuclear only for it to be cancelled when the economics intervene. After all, the price per unit and the level of government subsidy that will be required if the cost of electricity falls below the floor required for new nuclear have yet to be agreed.
"The AGRs were horribly over-budget and had a pretty terrible reputation for reliability when they first came onstream, "
That was sort of my point.
"It's a real shame as some of the ideas were good ones, such as producing steam at the same temperature and pressure as a coal-fired plant allowed commonality of equipment between stations."
One of those simple high level design decisions with *huge* implications (and hopefully cost savings).
"I'm still trying to work out why the Canadians have never tried to sell CANDU in the UK."
I think it's still a bit difficult to get the level of bomb grade Plutonium that HMG was keen on getting out of its reactors. And possibly they surcumbed to the Canadian disease that "American is better".
One little point people don't seem to want to talk about is the PWR's were developed out of the US ICBM sub programme. It's *key* requirement was high energy density. So if something *does* go wrong it can very bad very fast. Rather ironically the Chernobyl designs were rather *low* energy density (with some unfortunate design flaws) which should have coped *much* better in an accident. Unless run (as I believe the official report put it) "Murderously incompetent sons of w**res."*
*That may not be an entirely correct description of the accident report.
CANDU steam conditions are if anything slightly worse than those of PWRs - broadly similar to those of a BWR. And, of course, they're not the easiest to build - lots of on-site fabrication to connect up all those little pressure tubes.
On plutonium, the LAST thing you'd do, if you were after bomb grade Pu was got for a design with a long refuelling cycle/high fuel burn-up. That's when you get a build-up of Pu240 and higher actinides, which are a very bad thing when you're fabricating a bomb. So, if anything, CANDU types (no enrichment, on-line refuellable) are a much better option for bomb making than LWRs of any sort.
One other thought on an LWR - this from someone who worked on AGRs - they're one very large inherent advantage. Lose coolant, you lose moderation, and you're inherently in shutdown. Suffer a pressure vessel brach in an AGR, or a major pipe break in a CANDU, you can at least in theory have a full scale reaction ongoing, and no cooling (in CANDU, at least until you get voiding in the calandria).
I've no idea how CANDUs are secured against this - on AGR, there's a "s**t or bust" option to dump a ton or two of boron-glass beads into the core. It's a system tht gives operators nightmares. If it ever were to operate spuriously, it'd write off the reactor in about 2 minutes flat.
"On plutonium, the LAST thing you'd do, if you were after bomb grade Pu was got for a design with a long refuelling cycle/high fuel burn-up. That's when you get a build-up of Pu240 and higher actinides, which are a very bad thing when you're fabricating a bomb. So, if anything, CANDU types (no enrichment, on-line refuellable) are a much better option for bomb making than LWRs of any sort."
That I did not know. I've always had the impression that CANDU *should* have been more successful abroad *because* of its no enrichment fuel requirement. BTW The Wikipedia AGR article *suggests* that CANDU was on the list of reactor types the UK was considering for (what at the time) was going to be its "next generation" UK reactor design. It was very much my impression that the AGR concept was *very* much the in-house design of the CEGB, which ran *all* UK generating (and distribution) capacity at the time which meant *all* other designs would get a mark down as NIH.
And the rest is history.
But remember all that is past is prologue.
While the Chernobyl reactors were low energy density compared to PWRs, don't forget that being graphite moderated they have some rather large safety issues. Positive void coefficient means the reactor will increase in power in the event coolant starts to boil at the wrong places or coolant channels become clogged, causing (partial) meltdowns and similar issues.
For a true low energy density reactor, you need a design that is limited by heat coefficient like the PBR and gas cooled. Those can suffer a full loss of coolant and full loss of control rods without melting down. They just get really hot and dump their heat passively to the surrounding air. The hotter they get the less power they produce.
Low energy density is one approach, but there is an alternative. A liquid core -- fluorides of uranium disolved in fluorides of light elements -- can change density, reducing or even stifling the reaction as it heats up. If it all gets too much, it can change shape, by escaping or being decanted from the low-surface-area compact reaction vessel that can reach criticality around a moderator, into high-surface-area pans and pipes that can cool in air.
I think the point here is that we are mad, as a high energy consuming country, to have abandoned nuclear energy design, a new field teeming with possibilities, simply because gas looked cheap. That's why we're faced with a souped-up seventies design for generators that will be commissioned in the twenties.
Good luck to Hitachi though. I hope they make money from making electricity. When you consider there are firms -- I'm looking at EON, among others -- that bill us for NOT turning their windmills, I think the Japanese approach is more honest.
"I think the point here is that we are mad, as a high energy consuming country, to have abandoned nuclear energy design, a new field teeming with possibilities, simply because gas looked cheap. "
I think you need to look at the history of the programme. Descriptions of AGR's "Building a Swiss watch in the middle of a field." Or a construction programme *decades* behind schedule. Or the belief that "The market will provide" religion of Margaret Thatcher's government.
IMHO *any* nuclear programme must be able to handle the burn up of nuclear waste. MSR is supposed to do this but Hitachi claim ABWR do as well. I'd *love* to see the MSR in the UK but no one is offering that.
" Positive void coefficient means the reactor will increase in power in the event coolant starts to boil at the wrong places or coolant channels become clogged, causing (partial) meltdowns and similar issues."
I don't think that was what caused Chernobyl. But it certainly would not have helped.
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