Poor households face having to help foot bill for building Sizewell C...

[Ken]

but then https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-61996520

The high fuel prices are the best thing that can happen as it is the promoter of change. Even the moaners will benefit in the future.

[Mart]

Are you including the cost of the embodied carbon in the Nukes?
The amount of concrete (and steel) in the pressure vessel fundations was staggering. I think a TV programme said it was a 3-day continuous pour, maybe the biggest ever in Europe.
A

To help nuclear, I'm simply going with 'very low carbon' for nuclear and PV, wind. I think the numbers are around 5-10g/kWh. I'm not saying this is fair, but trying not to load the dice against nuclear.

However, if we also start to consider the simply ginormous construction needed for millennia long storage of waste, then nuclear goes up about tenfold, I understand.

[Mart]

We cannot make the mistake of putting all our eggs in a small number of baskets. It does not matter which production method we consider that is the paramount importance. In the case of when no wind and solar we need a very plausable plan. Part of that plan should be to reduce the effect when this happens ie not allow RE to dominate too much like gas has in Germany etc. This does not rest easy with a RE+ storage advocate like me but these are hard head decisions.

All out race to the cheapest solution, overbuild RE, i do not feel is the total answer. Its impossible to build enough storage to be 100% RE and we will have to pay capacity payments to standby gas? producers. I do not have total faith in the make H2 etc from excess RE to burn in power stations. Firstly with the advent of EVs and HPs and smart things will there really be that much excess? Secondly H2 will be far too valuable to just burn and will be used to produce steel,concrete,fertiliser etc.

Much of our concern is because we have not had it layed out how the grid will look in x yrs time when we have no wind and sun and i fear that nobody has a concrete idea either other than it will work out nearer the time.

Hi Ken, I've never bought into throw the kitchen sink at it excuse for nuclear, since we need enough good solutions to solve the problem, not all solutions including bad ones.

To me, the all eggs in one basket argument is fairer, but misleading. In the case of nuclear v's RE + storage (and a fall back of FF gas generation, like an emergency generator for an off grid house), we are comparing apples with apples - an amount of annual generation, without peaks and troughs.

Add in the overcapacity that can also be provided for the cost difference, and the simply vast modularity that 1,000's of RE farms and storage brings v's one nuclear powerstation / two nuclear reactors, and I'd suggest the RE package is actually superior to the nuclear one, before considering that nuclear isn't green, ethical, clean nor popular.

If nukes were really fast to build, then I think they have a place in the basket, but trying to defend spending monies on nuclear, which would of course necessitate spending less monies on RE (no magic money tree), then we have less total generation, costing more, taking a decade longer to deploy and displace CO2 emissions, and reducing UK (global if all countries do this) investment in RE, thus slowing its learning curve (Wright's Law) and resulting in deployment costs taking longer to fall.

Of course you could argue for an exceptional circumstance, where wind and PV are low, and storage would struggle, but in reality, RE + storage would be fine on average, and that 'average' window expands massively with storage and overcapacity.

Yes, the gas fleet will need to remain on standby as we expand RE, as it will have to with nuclear, since they need standby backup power as the loss of even a single reactor (1.6GW) would have a massive instantaneous hit on the grid.

As to their being excess RE generation, I don't see why not? Yes demand for leccy will grow significantly with BEV's and heatpumps, but there are no scaleability issues for RE, and no generators or suppliers who wouldn't want to sell more, so it's best we work in percentages rather than fear expansion of RE because demand will grow.

Alternatively, if you like, if we can build one nuclear powerstation, then if demand is larger, then we can build 10. The same applies to RE and storage, and I'm trying to compare costs and CO2 impacts between them, so scaling is not really relevant. [I'm assuming nuclear can be expanded, but I understand there could be fuel shortages if 'the World' went down a high nuclear % route. PV, onshore and offshore wind in the UK isn't limited in scale, offshore wind potential (according to Andrew's (AZPS) article) is 10-100x our future needs.]

The UK is the Saudi Arabia of wind energy

Given UK plans to reach 30-50GW of offshore wind in the next decade, Andrew seems to be right.

[Mr Gus]

Also, with the not fully understood (sleepwalking) by public minds, Rolls Royce's "mini" nuclear is STILL nuclear, the risk & security that is required still present, if we have this many problems with pre existing sites be it rebuild or brick by brick takedown, that is still present (& bloody costly) ..wherever the perceived suitcase nuclear plants are eventually placed, I imagine Scotland will tell them to "go do one" leaving only the spectre of all that we know (& why it is resented)

The pics & blurb on it's site is architectural delight, but none of the security realities of what is required in any nuclear fuels site, it jumps in with the Greenwash from the outset, yet you'd have to click & read a good few downloads to find basic "to scale" info & site requirements.

Solar has more than matured, it is now cheap, yet new builds still aren't required in design to create energy ..something stinks, almost as if energy blackout fear is a power play of govt staying in power, for what purpose? Teflon suiting bad news they insist on creating? ..in the middle of a bother fuel crisis from covid fallout (not Ev popularity) the govt are not doing much to convince us of their ability to be in control.


How many new builds per annum?
How many of those with decent levels of contributing solar from the drawing board? ..contributing
In a time of good building practise concerned with emission s the quickest way to balance an estate out is to have it producing from the point of ploughing up the agricultural land.

I'd wager a tin of beans that it is nearer 1% than 5%

The hardest way to get to govt 2050 net zero is by continually ignoring (ongoing) every damn new builds solar contribution potential over its design lifetime whilst saying we need more housing & What it brings with it.

All new builds roofs orientated to decent solar gain & double kWh figures panels fitted to
Bring in a standardised garage size, (still isn't one) off road parking only & solar car-ports to get smaller homes panel numbers up.

I don't see how NOT having a plan for new housing rooftop energy production helps future energy supply solutions unless you are a breeder of expensive white elephants.

[Ken]

Took me a few days to find this again

In 2020 UK primary energy used was 120 Mtoe (Million tons oil equivalent)
The amount generated by RE leccy was less than 12 Mtoe
Therefore if RE was to replace all primary energy -gas,coal,oil,nuclear we need to increase RE by something of the order of 10X
The use of 100% EV and HP could because of the increased efficiency reduce this to say 5X

This is a mammoth task and dare i say it bordering on impossible.

[Stinsy]

Took me a few days to find this again

In 2020 UK primary energy used was 120 Mtoe (Million tons oil equivalent)
The amount generated by RE leccy was less than 12 Mtoe
Therefore if RE was to replace all primary energy -gas,coal,oil,nuclear we need to increase RE by something of the order of 10X
The use of 100% EV and HP could because of the increased efficiency reduce this to say 5X

This is a mammoth task and dare i say it bordering on impossible.

It is worse than that!

RE is intermittent in its nature (unlike FF). So we need both: excess production and storage.

[Mart]

Took me a few days to find this again

In 2020 UK primary energy used was 120 Mtoe (Million tons oil equivalent)
The amount generated by RE leccy was less than 12 Mtoe
Therefore if RE was to replace all primary energy -gas,coal,oil,nuclear we need to increase RE by something of the order of 10X
The use of 100% EV and HP could because of the increased efficiency reduce this to say 5X

This is a mammoth task and dare i say it bordering on impossible.

Nope.

You raised this a year or so back, and I explained that we don't need to replace primary energy, only final energy, as most of the energy in coal, oil and gas does not reach the end user, be it 40% efficient coal generation, 50% efficient gas generation, or 20% petrol (v's 75% BEV's). Even space heating at 80-90% efficient gas, is 3.5x behind heatpumps at an average UK COP of 2.9,

If I remember correctly, last time you realised your mistake and accepted we wouldn't need 10x as much RE.

With RE now closing in on 50% of generation, then I'd suggest we need 4 to 5x as much generation long term as you suggest, but the 10x figure and primary energy is simply meaningless.

But again, there are no scalability issues regarding the deployment of RE, so nuclear won't add to RE generation, it will displace some RE generation, once that's accepted, then we need to consider the cost of RE + storage v's nuclear*, and with RE + storage being cheaper and faster, the argument for nuclear disappears in a puff of logic.

*In fairness nuclear needs storage too (like Dinorwig, Heat Electric and E7), but folk like to hide it as baseload. IMO if we had for instance 80% RE and 20% nuclear, and generation was in excess, then 20% of the excess needing storage is nuclear.

Back to the eggs and basket words (not an argument in itself, we idea behind that phrase is to hedge your bets to avoid losing something, such as eggs. In the context here comparing the building of new generation capacity resulting in generation 'eggs', we could roll out all RE (and storage) giving us 12 eggs worth of reliable generation in 1-5yrs, or

we could spend half on nuclear, at twice the cost (per/MWh) and get 6 eggs worth in 1-5yrs, plus an additional 3 eggs by year 15.

So hedging our bets, delays the eggs arriving, and 'loses' 25% of them before we start. So CO2 emissions will be higher and for longer.

Perhaps the phrase 'don't put all your eggs in one basket' in this context is trumped by 'a stich in time wastes nine'.


If it helps here's an energy flowchart showing how much is wasted. I've simply grabbed one at random:

[Mart]

This is a mammoth task and dare i say it bordering on impossible.

And again, nope, that's highly misleading. [That's like saying changing the UK fleet to BEV's is impossible, when the technology already exists, just because the task is large.]

Whilst the task is mammoth, it fails to note that the technology already exists, and at a cost that is competitive with existing FF generation for leccy, and cheaper regarding transport.

So the hard bit has been done, developing the solutions, the rest is simply a matter of scale and time, and if we don't waste money and time on nuclear, then it can be achieved faster.

Was inventing a mass production car like the Ford Model T easy, of course not, yet we now produce around 1m per year. [Edit - 100m per year.]

Was electrifying a whole country easy, of course not, be we did it.

How about storage for a week for an all leccy UK? Well, we probably have about 3 weeks storage for transport, let's say 1 week in vehicles fuel tanks and the petrol stations, one week of refined fuel at the refineries, and one week of crude oil. Then we have (or had) weeks of storage in the form of gas and coal at powerstations for leccy.

Are there solutions for long term solution on a large scale, yes, CAES and H2 storage potential in salt caverns and old gas extraction run into the 100's of TWh's.

So we shouldn't focus on the scale of the problem, we need to focus on viable solutions, and these exist, and will improve, scale will follow naturally, as it has done for all technologies in the past.

[Mart]

Sorry to keep posting, but to lighten the mode, I thought it might be fun to guess at what's needed in terms of leccy generation this decade. Only my guess, so fee lfree to rip it apart.

So currently leccy demand has been falling thanks to efficiency improvements (lamps, tv's, heatpumps (refrigerators/freezers). I think we are about 10% down on demand and peak demand from a decade or so back. These gains will reduce, so I'll ignore them.

Looking at cars, I suspect BEV's will reach ~100% of sales by 2030, perhaps 30% of the fleet. An all BEV car fleet would increase demand by about 10%net (after savings from reduced FF refining and transportation), so an increase of 3%(ish) by 2030. Commercial vehicles account for about 1/3rd of fuel use, but, may transition faster, so let's add another 3%.

Heatpumps will be more significant eventually, but a slow move this decade, perhaps 5%-10% extra demand.

HPC should come on line, but other nuclear plants will be reaching end of life and they make up 20% of the mix. I thought most of the existing reactors age-out this decade, but EDF suggest 35%, which works out at 7% of UK leccy (35% of 20%). So HPC also 7% of current demand balances that out. But we will need to account for the other 13% in the 2030's.

So a quick count up, we need to meet current leccy demand, RE is at about 50% now*, and will need to reach 80% by 2030, so +30%, plus those estimates I've made of plus 6% transport and 10% heating, so +46%, roughly what we have today.

At that point we can relax ............... WHAT!!!!!!! I hear Ken scream.

Yes, relax, from that point on RE (and storage) can be rolled out to meet the growing demand as we continue to move to an all leccy future. That expansion is entirely normal, it's what every product, company and industry has done in the past to meet growing demand for anything. And as I keep saying, since RE has no scaleability issues, we don't need to fear the increase, just enjoy it. If we want more leccy, generators and suppliers will be more than happy to sell it to us.


*I'm guessing at 50% RE now, I may be off, but we were at about 40%, then it jumped a bit in 2020, but we had covid and reduced overall demand, then in 2021 we had a poor wind year. So with all of the new deployments and a past increase of about 3.5%pa, we may see something closer to 50% this year.

[Ken]

Mart,
So how does your
" With RE now closing in on 50% of generation, then I'd suggest we need 4 to 5x as much generation long term differ from my " The use of 100% EV and HP could because of the increased efficiency reduce this to say 5X "

Seems i have already aligned my view to yours on that.

I understand the other points you make but do not align there because i do not see as yet 5X hydro ,5X wind etc. partly because of capacity factors and intermittency.