Britain's first small modular reactors to be built in Wales The UK will build its first small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear plant at Wylfa on Anglesey, an island off northwest Wales, but it won't generate power until the mid-2030s. The £2.5 billion ($3.3 billion) project will initially deploy three Rolls-Royce SMR units capable of powering three million homes, with potential to expand …
Happy to have a replacement at Chapelcross, Dumfriesshire. The still being decommissioned Magnox plant ceased generation operations in 2004.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapelcross_nuclear_power_station
Site self-evidently connected to the UK grid and with cooling water supply.
Shame SNP have blocked any new Nukes in Scotland.
21+ years to decommission. Radioactive waste to deal with when operating.
They may be safer nowadays, but to call them green is hiding the fact that you're just kicking the pollution down the road for future generations to deal with.
It appears the Senedd didn't have the power to block them in Wales - Uk.gov will probably use Welsh coal mines to deal with the waste. Should we tell the Welsh you would accept the waste in Scotland?
The UK waste is all at Sellafield.
Personally I’d be content to have some in Scotland in a properly funded repository than the impact of a gazillion megatons of CO2 and particulates and have electricity price smites to Gas.
Nuclear in a mix of Solar, Wind, Hydro/Pumped storage hydro, tidal, wave alongside insulation and energy efficiency.
Note Scotland’s already fully self sufficient on renewables and has been since 2022 and exports Green electricity. Still plenty room for more.
This post has been deleted by its author
Of course not.
When the wind is blowing (which is pretty much always), there's plenty of spare electricity to pump water uphill (two things that are plentiful in Scotland). Where it can be fed by gravity to hydro plants and generate electricity for those few hours when the wind's been switched off.
That said, there isn't enough grid capacity to send Scotland's excess windfarm-generated electricity to England. So I suppose the lights could go out there. Apart from the area around Sellafield where just about everything glows in the dark anyway.
I actually live in the Scottish Highlands and have a number of windfarms nearby. They are often at dead stop.
Perhaps you don't know windfarm operators get paid to turn them off when the grid doesn't have the capacity to carry their electricity. And sometimes operators - not just of windfarms - only turn on their generators when the spot price for electricity is highest.
Yes, our electricity supply system is <b<that</b> fucked up.
I believe some of the stoppage due to demand, and pricing strategies across all generating sources - rather than capacity. When they finish the giant pumped storage above Loch Ness it can be pumping that water at least.
If there were less data centres in Londonshire and a few in Scotland they could power some of those too. It’s pretty rare it’s not windy there all year round.
Have you ever looked at the figures for pumped storage as a proportion of overall UK generation? Its little more than a rounding error. Absolutely tiny. And all the good sites are already taken.
Existing schemes like Cruachan were built at the same time as the first generation Magnox reactors. Not as a way to store energy but as a way to provide a responsive infill for peaking demand. The infamous rush to boil the kettle during the advert break. Nuclear plants being incapable of throttling up and down rapidly. Those nuclear plants also gave birth to the off-peak tariff for the same reason that you couldn't turn them down very much overnight so you had to find a market for the output no matter how much of a haircut you were forced to take.
Yes, plans are afoot to build new, bigger schemes but they are still modest in the great scheme of things. To be able to do hydro at a meaningful scale you need the geography of Norway. Norway sells us a near constant 1.4GW. None of our schemes will get anywhere near that. For a few hours maybe, but not 24x7 day in, day out.
And wind doesn't just go off for a few hours. When there is a depression it can go off for days on end. Usually in the winter when solar is doing bugger all. Storage to cover this shortfall involves just staggeringly big numbers. The potential energy of moving mass around just can't cover that. You need the energy density of chemical bonds.
What GBE should really be doing is buying up gas stations so that these can be run on a non-profit basis when they are required (not if). Be the generator of last resort. At the same time take responsibility for a strategic reserve of the fuel needed to power those stations to decouple us from global shocks that require domestic energy prices to be reset every 3 months.
>"At the same time take responsibility for a strategic reserve of the fuel needed to power those stations to decouple us from global shocks that require domestic energy prices to be reset every 3 months."
What! do what our European neighbours do and have long-term supply contracts...
Clearly not got the message: we are English and thus we can not be seen to "follow" what our European neighbours do, especially the French.
This was a mindset I repeatedly encountered amongst English people who had no real experience of working in Europe or taking the time to understand how they ran their economies... Depressing...
So agree, but your idea is so sensible, I doubt it will happen...
"Those pumped hydro facilities are very to provide bursts of power in peak demand, Like batteries they have a finite runtime."
Additionally;
1) Pumped storage has net losses of around 25%,
2) It's phenomenally low energy density - 100kg raised 10m has the energy of a single AA battery
Both according to the University of Cambridge Energy Policy Research Group, who have a very informative presentation that a search will turn up.
'Renewables' mostly aren't and just shift the problem. I do not believe the CO2 is a problem. There may be problems but I don't believe it's our CO2. When reputable scientists that argue it's not they are ridiculed, deplatormed or censored. Thousands travel by jet to a conference in 10,000 acres of for the purpose, stripped rainforest. The rich still buy huge estates on the sea and run super yachts while telling us we must reduce our footprint. Mark Carney on record saying how much money is to be made. We chop forests down and say they don't work we need CO2 extraction plants at great expensive. All these things are tells; we are being gaslit! All this and people still believe it. It's everywhere making money.
It's behaviour that counts not words.
PS I like renewables but they have to be effective and economic.
"I do not believe".
Well that's me corrected and the vast majority of scientists who have studied the data and had their findings on the subject published after peer reviews. Any other expert correcting beliefs of yours that you can share?
I don't disagree that there are a small minority of people who by their lifestyles each create the same C02 emission as thousands of "normal" people, but despite them causing disproportionately more C02 emissions, they're still a tiny fraction of human driven C02 emissions, however if we take a "fix everything or don't bother", rather than the "fix what you can, when you can approach", I think the world would be even more screwed than I fear it is.
Regarding your comment that " 'Renewables' mostly aren't" - on a human, rather than geological timescale, can you advise why you think tidal, wind and solar don't count. Do you know something about the Sun running out that you need to share regarding solar/wind, or about the Sun/Moon that will impact tidal power?
I'm intrigued.
Well that's me corrected and the vast majority of scientists who have studied the data and had their findings on the subject published after peer reviews. Any other expert correcting beliefs of yours that you can share?
Ah, the power of faith! So picking on just one example, the infamous Hockey Stick. That passed pal.. I mean peer review and convinced a lot of people that a few trees could function as highly accurate thermometers that could sense global temperatures. But then of course people pointed out the numerous errors in MBH. Best thing about that, and similar papers that depended on cherry-picked data is they somehow denied the existence of the MWP and LIA.. The latter being kind of important given that ended just as the 'Global Warming' supposedly began..
...each create the same C02 emission as thousands of "normal" people,
Normal people, that is people who aren't convinced by crude appeals to authority know that it's CO2, not C02..
...can you advise why you think tidal, wind and solar don't count.
Well, there's a few obvious snags. Tidal is time-sensitive, so doesn't produce power when it's needed. Plus things like the proposed Severn Barrier are enormously expensive and environmentally destructive, altering the ecology of estuaries. Then there's been some off-shore tidal & wave power experiments, which mostly demonstrated how quickly the sea can wreck offshore stuff. Plus waves and fundamentally linked to wind, so another way to not produce power when there's no wind. And then solar. Fine, except when it's dark, cloudy etc.
Plus of course pretty much all 'renewables' are vulnerable to the 'extreme' weather we're supposed to be getting thanks to Anthropomorphic Global Warming.. Which doesn't make sense, but then 'renewables' are about making money, not reliable power.. Unlike nuclear, which provides power 24x7x365, regardless of weather.
Excuse format. When I enter a newline, it spaces a line.
I hate the term "climate deniers" as it's simplistic and condescending. As if anyone denies climate, or that it changes, or that we create pollution. But here's some people that think human produced CO2, the gas of life & plant food up to levels far higher, is not an issue.
Richard Lindzen Professor Emeritus of Meteorology, MIT; member of the National Academy of Sciences
William Happer Professor Emeritus of Physics, Princeton University; former Director of Energy Research, U.S. Department of Energy
Freeman Dyson Emeritus Professor of Physics, Institute for Advanced Study; theoretical physicist
Ivar Giaever Nobel Prize in Physics (1973); Professor Emeritus, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Roy Spencer Principal Research Scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville; former NASA scientist
John Christy Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama in Huntsville; former lead author, IPCC
Sherwood B. Idso Founder, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change; PhD in soil physics
Frederick Seitz Former President, National Academy of Sciences; solid-state physicist
Nir Shaviv Professor of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; astrophysicist
Ian Plimer Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne; geologist
Regarding "renewables". No one knows the full impact of all that rare material being dug out, processed and then discarded. They are not very recyclable. There is impact on wildlife, the weather and who wants a world covered in them. They would also massively change the geo-politics, which is happening right now. Trump is likely not pushing oil & gas just because he disbelieves climate change but because they cannot compete with China otherwise. WW3 anyone? You also have the massive change to the infrastructure and the need to cope with peak demand at times without both wind & sun. If you also want to move all EV then the infrastructure changes exponentiate. Finally, CO2 production is naturally buffered by "greening" provided we don't f'k the environment in other ways. CO2 has been higher during mamalian life, it was at an all time dangerous low, so it could only go one way or we'd be dying right now. It was also one of the ideas that emerged from the Club of Rome as a manufactured crisis needed to control humans and reduce the population. Along with pandemics interestingly.
Finally, I am incredibly suspicious that anyone challenging the climate narrative is deplatformed or abused and have funding removed. Surely, we should not fund one side of the argument only?
-- Still plenty room for more. --
I assume from that you do not actually live in Scotland, or at least do not live outside one of the big cities so the windfarms have no impact. You might be surprised at the number of people who would happily see them and their associated infrastructure disappear.
-- Scotland’s already fully self sufficient on renewables and has been since 2022 --
True apart from when the sun isn't shining or the wind blowing at just the right velocity. There is a lot of difference between theoretical built output and what you actually get.
So the impact is aesthetically challenging then… anyway there is plenty room for more offshore wind, on-shore wind, solar and hydro galore and jobs and energy security that brings.
A quick journey up and down the M74 and beyond makes that self-evident. I will include through adjacent M6 Cumberland and Westmorland too.
"The UK waste is all at Sellafield."
Erm no it isn't, the majority is, but some sites like Sizewell B have a dry store to keep the items. https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/First-cask-emplaced-at-Sizewell-B-fuel-store
In regards to more and more waste, the newer reactors are actually designed to use older reprocessed waste fuel
Nothing is green except for trees. But the pollution from nukes 'should' be concentrated rather than spread all over the world and thus can be dealt with. We kick every can down the road because to work it all out before the start is very expensive. But you would hope there is some serious though going into waste disposal / use / storage. But I am 100% behind a distributed energy production strategy.
In France, where they reprocess the used fuel from their nuclear power plants, the residual high-level waste is (they say) 20 grams per person per year, and is about the volume of a 20-centime piece.
However the high-level waste contains both fission products and transuranics. The radiation from the fission products is negligible after 300 years, but the transuranics remain active for several thousands of years.
I'm interested in seeing Thorium reactors, which don't produce significant transuranics.
I worry about the current reactors using U-235. The reactors EDF is building should still be running in 100 years, but if we continue using U-235 for all the new nuclear power stations being planned, then the fuel will become very expensive. There really isn't very much U-235 on earth. So a breeder reactor using either Thorium or U-238 is a necessity in my opinion.
20 g per person means around 1000 tonnes per year for France (population ~60 million). That's quite a lot, I think.
The bigger issue is that nuclear and renewables compete for baseload – yes, I know about Dunkelflauten – with renewables now being cheap enough to not require subsidies. Things get interesting when you start trying to factor in storage systems and grid connections, but even so renewables are pretty competitive and you can start producing power much faster. But we do need to rethink the costs of grid connection and storage – synthetic hydrocarbons have a lot of advantages over batteries and lots of new transmission lines, and there is still a lot we can do to improve efficiency and thus reduced the need for extra capacity.
I've no problem with more research on non-Uranium SMRs, but nuclear technology may always be the technology of the future.
The bigger issue is that nuclear and renewables compete for baseload – yes, I know about Dunkelflauten – with renewables now being cheap enough to not require subsidies.
'Renewables' still need massive subsidies and cheap is a myth. So as evidence, the number of wind projects being cancelled because they're uneconomic.. And that's with subsidies. If cheap were true, then pretty much all the subsidies could be removed, and our energy costs would fall by a lot, which would also reduce inflation. The myth of 'cheap' though (at least in the UK) came about by some wind farmers putting in lowball bids of around £50/MWh during CfD auctions, but none have actually taken up those contracts. Which was just one of the many flaws around our energy policy given bidders weren't forced to deliver at the contracted rates.
Competition for baseload is also the problem, especially because 'renewables' can't actually compete on fair terms because of the inherent variability of 'renewables'. So as well as throwing money at windmills, we've also had to build gas generation to provide reliable, dependable and arguably cheaper energy to compensate for the weather. Then because gas is relegated to a stand-by role, the costs are spread across fewer operating hours, inflating the cost.
This project will be interesting though because it'll give an idea of the actual cost of SMRs, as well as lead times. As it's a pilot project, they'll be FOAK costs and in theory, should reduce with lessons learned and serial production.
(There's also some potential national security & CNI issues. In Ukraine as part of the attacks on their energy infrastructure, Russia has been targetting windmills. They're obviously using bigger drones than nutjobs might try using in the UK, but over there, it's also lead to things like building 'cope cages' around infrastructure. NPPs are generally less vulnerable to those kinds of attacks given they're usually built inside reinforced containment buildings.)
You've got a few things back to front here – normally your aguements are better.
wind projects being cancelled because they're uneconomic… This is true but not for the reason you give – renewable generation has become so cheap that it's driving the market price which is the basis for the auctions. As with many post-subsidy systems, regulation needs adapting so that it's not just about additional capacity. The subsidies have done their job, it's high time to get rid of them, including nuclear.
Renewables are can be used for baseload because they are very predictable. Shortfalls can be anticipated, and many tend to have natural compensations – if it's cloudy and wet, it's also likely to be windy – or geographic, though transmission lines are expensive. But there are situations where this and short term storage aren't possible and some form of standby production is required. As you, say this doesn't work well with the merit-order principle in an environment where demand cannot fall further, which the side of the equation. This means we should be looking for further efficiencies to reduce demand, and smaller standby plants, which are much cheaper to build (which is what drives the cost). Denmark has done a reasonable job, though geography is also a big help there. But we need to be working on reducing on our demand for electricity and not increasing its demand for heating and vehicles.
Russia has been targetting windmills……and solar panels. I wondered when that would come up. Another example of misaligned incentives, this time for Pukin's goons: solar panels are cheap and easy to replace. It's like when mobiks risk their lives to plant the Russian rag somewhere for a handful of roubles, before they get to complete their Compost Duty™. Nuclear power plants might survive direct attacks, but their cooling systems are vulnerable and they need connections to the grid. Elsewhere, Russia has unfortunately become better at targetting the substations and interconnects which are essential for a working grid. Fortunately, Ukraine has made significant steps in diversification and decentralisation over the last few years. Something which can't be said for the Russian system which is collapsing on its own without foreign help.
wind projects being cancelled because they're uneconomic… This is true but not for the reason you give – renewable generation has become so cheap that it's driving the market price which is the basis for the auctions. As with many post-subsidy systems, regulation needs adapting so that it's not just about additional capacity. The subsidies have done their job, it's high time to get rid of them, including nuclear.
You are half-right. Wind projects are being cancelled, not just in the UK because they're uneconomic. Reality exposes the lies behind 'renewables' claims. The more we've added, the more expensive our electricity has become. If it really was so cheap, then our bills should be falling, not continually increasing. Subsidies are still a major part of this problem, and even though nuclear is effectively zero-carbon, it doesn't get the same subsidies as 'renewables'. But see also-
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/11/14/bbc-fail-to-challenge-chris-packhams-false-claims/
In a discussion about supposed misinformation put out by the fossil fuel lobby, he said (39.30 mins in):
“We’re up against the misinformation machine, because ultimately investment in renewables provides us with cheaper energy”
He was not challenged and the other two panellists nodded in agreement like donkeys. This is hardly surprising as all three were obviously of the same political persuasion throughout the programme.
The facts show that either Packham did not have a clue what he was talking about or he was lying.
The 'misinformation machine' is actually the 'renewables' lobby, aided by one of the main promoters of misinformation, the good'ol Bbc.. Who just got rather spectacularly caught creating fake news, but are also reviewing their climate coverage because of the amount of misinformation the Bbc generates.
Renewables are can be used for baseload because they are very predictable. Shortfalls can be anticipated, and many tend to have natural compensations – if it's cloudy and wet, it's also likely to be windy
No, they're very unpredicatble. The best they can manage is day-ahead weather forecasts, which can often be wrong. Then there's the issue of dunkelfautes, which might predict a few days of high pressure and no wind, which means some advance warning that windmills will be sitting idle. Pretty much the opposite of what's needed for baseload generation. But the reality is shown here-
https://gridwatch.co.uk/Wind
minimum: 0.084 GW maximum: 17.847 GW average: 7.373 GW
which are the year to date figures. Many billions invested in windmills for an output of only 84MW. So based on total installed wind capacity, it's only around 20% efficient. And YTD wind speeds have been declining, which is consistent with some AGW predictions wrt global warming. Then more extreme predictions for extreme weather have pretty much been falsified, but if true, why would we be investing in windmills and solar when the 'worlds scientists' have been telling us about more extreme weather that will damage or destroy wind & solar?
Russia has been targetting windmills……and solar panels. I wondered when that would come up. Another example of misaligned incentives, this time for Pukin's goons: solar panels are cheap and easy to replace. It's like when mobiks risk their lives to plant the Russian rag somewhere for a handful of roubles,
Again more reality inversions. Russia hasn't really been investing in solar, which is sensible given their latitude and insolation. It's been investing in nuclear instead, and Ukraine has been attacking Russian NPPs, unsuccessfully so far. You've also been rather propaganised given the 'mobik' slur is more appropriate for Ukraine. The SMO means Russia is using volunteers, rather than conscripts, and Russian law prevents the use of conscripts outside its borders.. except in war time, and war hasn't been declared. Yet. The 'mobiks' are actually on Ukraine's side and there are plenty of videos of Ukrainian snatch squads 'recruiting' Ukrainians to throw into the meat grinder.
I can't believe I have to repeat this in 2025 every time someone bangs on about nuclear waste.
Nuclear waste is just spent fuel rods. It is not millions of barrels of green goo. Nuclear waste is usually stored onsite at the nuclear facility in lined pools of water. Unless you get within 10-20m of the rods in those pools, you can actually swim in them and it is perfectly safe. Nuclear rods are 12 foot long and about 1 inch thick. Fuel rods last up to 5 years, but typically they get replaced within 3 years. for safety reasons.
One of these smaller reactors will probably have about 10,000-20,000 rods fuelling it.
It takes about 10 years for a fuel rod to cool down before it can be put in deep dry storage...at which point it is considerably less radioactive and much easier to store and you can store them closer together.
"Spent" rods can be recycled and used in other things...like batteries, smoke alarms, healthcare treatments etc.
If you took all the spent fuel rods that exist on earth right now that have ever been created, they would fill up less space than a football pitch.
Nuclear waste is not a huge problem that is impossible to solve. It's very manageable and far less polluting than burning coal or gas.
Come and join us in 2025...it's not the 80s anymore, the Toxic Avenger isn't coming to your neighbourhood anytime soon.
So, the no-longer reactors and their containment vessels and their cooling systems are radiation-free? I see.
Same goes for our decommissioned nuclear submarines. Since they have no nuclear waste - according to you - they all can be safely broken up for scrap.
I didn't say there was no waste, I said the waste is so small that it is easily contained...I specifically alluded to the fact that nuclear waste is no endless barrels of green goo.
Nuclear waste is not unmanageable. It's quite sustainable when done properly.
Obviously a Chernobyl style meltdown is harder to solve, but we aren't Soviet Russia.
"Site self-evidently connected to the UK grid and with cooling water supply."
Chapelcross was designed to produce tritium for Britain's H-bombs. The small amount of electricity it generated was a bonus,
Too bad all that cooling water was miles from any population centre and therefore couldn't get used to feed a district heating system. Though our carbon-burning generators have that flaw too.
[...] will initially deploy three Rolls-Royce SMR units capable of powering three million homes, with potential to expand to eight reactors. [...] at Wylfa on Anglesey, an island off northwest Wales - but it won't generate power until the mid-2030s.
as per wikipedia -> Population (2024) Total 69,097
With 70k people living there right now, even a ten year viagra-only diet will leave them hard pressed to need power for three million homes, leave alone eight, by 2040.
Depends how you judge it, Seven.
A world-weary, slightly cynical riff on Britain's relative decline down the years will usually get you an upvote or two, especially if you reflect on past glories.
Nuclear power? Well us commentards are largely led by the evidence. The attitude to the last 70-odd years is generally "2 Level 7 incidents - not great, not terrible". But in my view all opinions are welcome. Even those Russian trolls I seem to attract.
I rather liked your tongue-in-cheek encouragement to have my country men take up Viagra (they did their bit in proving it's efficacy in the first place, after all). That said since my preference is for Cymraes rather than Cymro, I'm probably not the best person to opine.
Ok, so they are much safer nowadays, but what about the decommissioning costs and the costs/environmental challenges of disposing of the waste?
You seem to know what you're talking about, so this isn't a counter argument, it's a legitimate question - no-one seems to discuss decommissioning or waste when talking about modern nuclear power systems.
Aren't they an important factor?
(anon to hide my ignorance)
The 'pro-nuclear' lobby prefer to kick the 'actual costs' can down the road, or look the other way.
In theory 'nuclear power' (as we know it) offers genuine up-front benefits, but in practice it's a toxic wasteland of exorbitant and runaway costs (not just financial).
To put it another way: 'nuclear power' is basically a techno-positivist's dream of how things should be, and the 'political elite's' way of showing off—"Look what I did!" Leaving others to clear up the mess, and/or live with it.
All in all, a long lived lesson in hubris.
"However you convert mass to energy there is a mess to clear up. The only clean solution so far is biological"
How so? Britain's peasants convert a huge mass of fast food into energy*, but Britain's rivers would object to that being described as "clean". Also true of more conventional biomass schemes, where Drax hardly meets the bill of being clean?
* Not sure what they do with that energy.
In the same way that the anti-green lobby deny that the stuff spewing out of power plants, industry & transport does not exist.
The biggest different between nuclear and fossil fuels is that the residue is visible. With the latter if CO2 had been a messy liquid then it is unlikely it would have seen the adoption without any mitigation.
Both nuclear waste and fossil fuel waste is long term problem and the reality is that globally we are running out of time on the latter. I am old enough to be around when Global Warming first starting being discussed and predictions made 40 years ago have happened. Many of those far sooner than predicted. Sadly humans are the smartest, most selfish, destructive and stupid being on the planet.
The clue's in the name Small Modular Reactors.
Small- not that much radioactive stuff
Modular- it's all contained in one box.
When it comes to End of Life for the reactor, will have a small (~1kg) pile of high level waste which will be treated as normal (Sellafield reprocessing), and the modular "box" can also be recycled/ reused with only another small (don't know exactly how much, less than a tonne) of low-level stuff to deal with instead of multi-tonne stuff now.
When they designed the old reactors in the 60s/70s didn't think about end of life, now the modern ones do, and so have less to clean up afterwards
Properly long term storage (of the order of thousands of years) is theoretically possible, and the Scandinavians are doing it. In the UK "kicking the can down the road" is a fair summary.
In the UK the first generation of nuclear power stations were designed to produce plutonium (for far less benevolent purposes), with power generation a nice side effect. We have been decommissioning these since the 1990s, so the process is at least established.
The second generation were to be a standard pattern, even sharing generator tech with contemporary coal-fired stations. In practice each reactor had differences from the other as experience of build and use dictated. They are also CO2 cooled, which in a nation that has a limited number of pure CO2 manufacturers might not be the best idea.
The third generation (just one, Sizewell B), is a more standard approach (internationally) but suffered from being built just as a certain part of Northern Ukraine embarked on a radical rewilding experiment.
The SMRs are supposed to be based on similar tech to that used in our nuclear submarines, where size is an obvious constraint. To the extent that we have experience in this domain, and folk who live months on end no more than a couple of dozen yards away from the reactor, I suppose it makes some sense. Within certain definitions of the word "sense".
"encouragement to have my country men take up Viagra"
But that doesn't necessarily help fertility which is the problem all over the West that no one seems to worry about except Musk ... oh no I mentioned Elon, that's a thousand down votes! It's a sad story when the human race need Viagra to do it and take contraceptives to prevent an outcome, although, I think food, pharma and lifestyle is the problem.
And when the EU manages to start their war with Poootin centralised production provides a nice juicy target with which to inflict maximum damage. Or ... if we have one of the major disasters we keep getting threatened with, civil war, climate disaster, Chinese hacked control, pole shift, crust displacement, alien attack; there's probably more. All possible, all unquantifiable.
I wonder if this can be marked as a benefit of Labour; the Conservatives on their performance over 40+ years would have signed with Westinghouse on the basis it was cheaper and that there was no UK manufacturer with a track record and similarly priced offering etc., then whinge about how poor UK manufacturing is by not being world class and thus able to compete with Westinghouse
Agreed but I really don't think Labour are any better. We may find out if Reform are but I doubt they will be. I suspect any party (including Green) that comes along wll be absorbed into the "system" of bureaucracy and selfish interest unless all people start taking a more active interest and I don't see that happening or "most" people being sufficiently different to the people we elect. We're doomed until a shock comes along and wakes people up for a short while and start the next doom loop cycle. The "system" is highly effective at turning any good intentions into money and power capture for a few.
I visited Wylfa back in about 1980 (aged about 12). No sure how legal/official it was - my Dad was Deputy Mayor in Conwy, so when he was invited on a tour, I tagged along.
High point of the day was when the guide pointed out the switch that turned up the power output. Not sure if he was telling me to turn it or not, but I did. Much excitement before he turned it down again.
Big regret of the day is that I wasn't allowed to keep the radiation detection badge. Lunch was good though.
A-Level physics trip to Sellafield in 1991. My mate moved inside the full body radiation detector, when we were leaving the room where the flasks are opened and spent fuel rods removed. It measured his body radiation multiple times. An awful lot of alarms went off. There was quite a bit of urgent phone calling and consulting before the alarm got turned off and he was sent through again with a clean bill of health. Meanwhile muggins was the only one of the group left on the wrong side of the detector, waving a hand-held geiger counter over myself and wondering whether the red line had been set conservatively or whether there actually was a leak. Interesting trip. Lunch was good though - canteen did nice chips.
Never set the alarm off even though have been in many of the Sellfield plants including standing on top of the Magnox Swarf Storage Silos (sometimes called "The most Dangerous Building in Britain). It's not the most dangerous, the Houses of Parliament are far more deadly.
These silos (22 of them) are the ones currently being emptied and the contents put into high integrity containers for burial.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/sellafields-most-complex-clean-up-job-reaches-major-milestone
My personal claim to fame is finding certain out of date and life expired chemicals in a storage laboratory, these materials being shock sensitive as the inhibitor had evaporated. That one required the Bomb Squad to dispose of the materials.
http://corecumbria.co.uk/briefings/chemical-alert-brings-bomb-squad-to-sellafields-confined-separation-area/
It was put down to a couple of apprentices, but it was me :-D
"These silos (22 of them) are the ones currently being emptied and the contents put into high integrity containers for burial."
And in ~70 years, they'll be found to be leaking and our grandchildren will have to clean up our mess. Just like our grandparents did to us.
IMO, we shouldn't be creating any more nuclear waste until we've found a provably safe and secure solution for the stuff we've already created. Putting it in "high integrity containers for burial" - metaphorically sweeping it under the carpet for a while and hoping nobody notices - is not that provably safe and secure solution.
Oh god this comment right here. This is the problem we're facing. Total inability to understand the concept of "Risk".
If we left the stuff out in the open in a big field in the middle of nowhere with no more protection than a "keep out" sign, it would most certainly kill a few hundred people a year - probably mostly of the sort that can't walk past a wet paint notice without getting Dulux on their fingers, but probably a few non-idiots as well.
THAT WOULD STILL BE SAFER THAN WHAT WE ARE CURRENTLY DOING WITH FOSSIL FUELS.
The averaged annual death-toll just for respiratory diseases caused by air pollution is larger than every single death attributable to every nuclear accident that has ever happened and it's not even close. That's not going anywhere near climate change - that's just straight air pollution and us breathing it in.
Seriously. Perspective. Estimated death toll from Chernobyl - the worst nuclear disaster of all time - somewhere between 4000 and 60,000 - which is pretty wild how big the error bars are on that and should say a lot about how it's very likely that the problem is way less bad than people automatically assume, but lets go with 60,000.
Deaths attributable to air pollution this year somewhere between FOUR AND SEVEN MILLION.
If we'd done a serious full-scale transition to nuclear power back in the 60s we would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives by now in the UK alone. Tens - possibly even hundreds - of Millions, globally.
> the company would "deliver nuclear power very differently by utilizing modularization and a high level of factory build, therefore minimizing the impact on local people."
So all the skilled work and well-paid jobs will go to Derby while the Welsh just get to install the dangerous, radioactive bits?
So all the skilled work and well-paid jobs will go to Derby while the Welsh just get to install the dangerous, radioactive bits?
Very little local labour is going to be working on the building process. whatever you do. That's going to be the big national contractors. And for big nuclear plants, lots of speclialists. I'm sure they'll use local subbies, for the more basic stuff, and there'll be more work for lots of local firms.
Most of the jobs for the locals will be in running the place. And that's equally true, whatever type of reactor you use.
The difference is that instead of horrifically exacting work to build up a pre-fabbed reactor containment vessel up - and then weld all the bits perfectly on site - because it's way too big to transport whole - you can do all that precision welding in a nice warm factory. Using welding robots and with nice easy access to ultra-sound and x-rays to make sure you've got it all perfect. This should shorten the build process of the reactors by years. And knock hundreds of millions off the costs.
Moving 200 tonne steel pieces around is difficult and dangerous. If they get damaged you have to scrap them and have another one built. And then you've got to weld it and test it. BBC did a good documentary on Sizewell C - and building the reactor vessel is a bastard of a job. You have to bring pieces in by barge, and then you have to have 72 hours where the wind doesn't go above fixed amounts - or your crane can't cope. Your lift-plan takes days/weeks to get done - and anything short of perfection has just added a couple of extra months a tens of millions of quid to the job.
Cynically, the reason to build SMRs is they are of a scale "we" (as in, not China, not South Korea, not even France) might actually be able to build with the current level of practical fingertip knowledge (which has all been lost over the past 40 years), as opposed to management knowledge (which only hinders construction due to handwaving away the actual work as trivial as long as the paperwork is filled properly).
So the only way out of this hole is to start small and (hopefully) simple again, on a scale similar to the first nuclear reactors. The trouble even with this is, the industry can't help asking for billions to do these SMR projects, it's inbuilt at this point. The only thing the nuclear industry excels at these days is lobbying for money for white elephant projects that are not expected to actually produce electricity at competitive rates, and then effectively distribute that funding among the players so no one feels so left out as to raise a stink about all the (non-nuclear) waste.
And regulations are blamed, while the real problem is the mindset. The problem with too "heavy" regulation is is not that the safety demands are unreasonable, but instead the problem is that the regulations assume a level of practical design and construction competence that the nuclear industry had around the year 1985 and never again since.
Edit: my personal posting competence appears to be lacking too, did not mean to reply to the above post...
I think the reason for keeping them small is so they can be factory built and transported by road. I think RR SMR made the largest reactor vessel that could be transported from factory to site. The whole SMR thing is to turn reactors from bespoke to mass produced. Watch this video to find out more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkP3LeKbPJs
Yes, but they needed an average workforce of 27,000 people over 26 years, they used slaves to build it, and mashed slave as a lubricant. Even in Wales I think you'll find that's slightly frowned upon now.
You could conscript the 13k unemployed of Anglesey I suppose, but I suspect that even with an incoming job-fest the same people will be "unable to find work".
I think I get the reference, 27,000 being the recently reported Hinkley Point C workforce (as in "directly supported jobs")?
I do think 26 years is a little bit optimistic as to the eventual construction time when it is actually finished, but time will tell. And I have not heard of workplace safety being on quite that low a level.
Never mind!
The number 27,000 was then just coincidentally the same as in recent news articles similar to below one - where Hinkley Point C workforce was mentioned as exactly what you mentioned as used for the great pyramid - so I thought maybe this was a subtle dig at the current reactor designs as "building the great pyramid" (I did google Hinkley Point C 27000 and this was the first hit)
https://www.business-live.co.uk/economic-development/hinkley-point-c-workforce-hits-31815078
Don't be silly. The skilled jobs will go to China. Derby will get the powerpoint monkeys and customer experience managers. The Welsh will get to run the on-site catering and provide the minimum wage security goons, assuming that doesn't all get outsourced to Crapita.
"So all the skilled work and well-paid jobs will go to Derby while the Welsh just get to install the dangerous, radioactive bits?"
Sounds like a deal. Some of the Welsh think they are hard done by, maybe they are, and that devolution is the answer. Maybe, just maybe integration and working on better representation in London would serve the region better. Although the metropolitan, middle-class, entitled, dog me off completely. Maybe they're best concentrated in a small location where they are obvious. How about moving parliament to Anglesey? That should concentrate some minds on safety and keep them out of the way of the rest of the country.
How about moving parliament to Anglesey?
Well, it's in the power of the Senedd to move themselves to Anglesey. Maybe they could rotate, use the Cardiff location for two days a week, one day at the barely used Welsh government buildings in Aberystwyth, and then the final two days on Anglesey. The old aluminium smelter would be a good location, and close enough that they can enjoy the cosmopolitan delights of Holyhead. And they could enjoy travelling between these locations on the transport system that the Senedd have soooo improved across Wales.
I can't find the Omdia report through Google, but if the quote given is representative of the report, then Omdia don't seem very aware of what is happening with SMRs.
A plant with four 300 MW SMR units started construction in Canada just east of Toronto last year. The first reactor is expected to start operation before 2030. This is for a utility customer who currently operate large nuclear reactors.
As for data centres building their own SMRs, I'll believe it when I see it. The AI bubble is about to pop and when that happens capital spending on data centres will get cut back drastically.
We still need reliable electric power to light our homes and businesses, and for an increasing number of people to charge our cars, and for that nuclear power will see increasing use. That I believe is where I expect to see most SMRs built, and these will like the reactors announced in this story be mainly designs based on conventional and well proven reactor technology scaled down and simplified rather than the exotic technologies many of the AI data centre operators talk about.
thames,
Doesn't that agree with the guy's point then? Your Canadian example are hoping to have one single SMR up and running, sometime after 2030. With 4 planned. So even if all goes well, that's sounding awfully like, early and test implementation in 5 years time, getting towards full operating capacity by 2035.
Which is pretty much the stated timescale for Wilfa.
I've seen some press releases by big Cloud and AI firms where they're claiming they've pre-bought nuclear energy for 2028 - from modular reactors that don't currently exist. I can only assume that this is either lying, or wishful thinking. Or they're buying options on the power generated by the hypothetical initial reactors - with a highly optimistic intial date on it, but actually expecting to be able to get power in the 2030s.
No, the SMRs being built in Canada and announced in the UK in the story are very conventional designs based on well proven technology scaled down and simplified and will use commercially available fuel. These are full scale commercial plants. There's no reason to expect any issues with the engineering or technology. This is not experimental.
The US plan to build some experimental SMRs based on unconventional technology and which use proprietary fuel for which there are no existing commercial suppliers. These reactors will not necessarily even have a steam system connected to them, just cooling systems and may be scaled down in size to below what would be utility size SMRs. They may be located at US nuclear research labs, which would allow them to bypass normal US licensing (which is very slow and bureaucratic compared to the UK or Canada). These are intended to prove that the technology works. If these work then they will be followed by larger commercial versions, assuming they find a buyer. These are pretty clearly what he is talking about with respect to test or experimental reactors.
Most of the proposed data centre SMRs are of these unconventional designs. As I said, I suspect that few if any of the data centre proposals for this type will ever be built. Utility SMRs based on conventional designs are finding commercial buyers, as seen in the story.
If they'd been built on Wales, that would be cruelty. As it is, I'm envisioning some sort nuclear-powered cetacean cyborg roaming the oceans and seeking vengeance on Japanese and Russian "research" vessels. Eventually, we are forced to built an artificially intelligent craft called the Autonomous Hunter Assault Boat, whose only purpose is finding and slaying the whale (Wale?).
The thing missing in all the discussion of SMRs is the military subsidy - in order to commit Rolls Royce to maintain the workforce needed to sporadically build and maintain this class of reactor for nuclear submarines, successive governments have guaranteed to continuously fund that division of Rolls Royce whether or not there’s demand from the navy. So this scheme gives them something to do at fairly low marginal cost.
In terms of skills that's true, but bear in mind there's nothing that the several government regulators involved won't be able to delay and make far more expensive.
In terms of expected out-turn cost, Hinkley Point C is half as much again per MW as the equivalent Flamanville-3, despite Hinkley having the supposed economies of building two identical reactors compared to Flamanville's one.
I believe the nuclear industry is barking up the wrong tree with SMRs. The reason the construction of nuclear reactor power plants takes so long has to do with safety regulations and certification. Pebble reactors are inherently safe and therefore need fewer or hardly any safety systems. Certification is therefore much faster and the resulting construction time can be reduced, by more than half.
Current SMRs are merely smaller conventional reactors, some with submarine heritage. Since safety on nuclear submarines was of lesser importance I doubt if these SMRs will be certified quicker than conventional nuclear reactors. I suspect all sorts of snafus will pop-up.
You're correct about the problems of regulation, but wrong about certain other assertions.
We don't know that PBMR needs "hardly any safety systems", they've managed proof of concept, but we've yet to see them in long term production use, and the benefits claimed are not without downsides. Whilst Areva and Westinghouse would not be keen, don't you think if PBMR were a magic bullet that somebody, somewhere would have seized upon it over the past 40 odd years and put it into mass production? Also, safety of submarine reactors is not "of lesser importance" and it's pretty impressive that they can be operated in a sealed tube with humans a few feet away.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
