UK Nuclear Fleet

[Swwils]

Didn't three mild island tell us the woes of using a submarine design on dry land without the "ultimate heatsink"?

[Moxi]

If the government spent the equivalent of one SMR on a battery or super capacitor instead they would see an immediate and tangible improvement in the UK energy security.

Moxi

[Mart]

If the government spent the equivalent of one SMR on a battery or super capacitor instead they would see an immediate and tangible improvement in the UK energy security.

Moxi

Absolutely spot on.

I think it's hard for them to compare the costs of these ridiculous overhyped hopes, against storage, RE, interconnectors, or simply overbuild (with curtailment). It may seem counterintuitive, but overbuild of cheap RE, and paying some RE not to generate at times of excess (and low prices) is cheaper than adding nuclear into the mix.

That's why I enjoy the work and reports from Mark Jacobson and the Stanford Team so much. We have the technology already, and at viable costs now, but those costs are still falling. Good times.

[smegal]

If the government spent the equivalent of one SMR on a battery or super capacitor instead they would see an immediate and tangible improvement in the UK energy security.

Moxi

Absolutely spot on.

I think it's hard for them to compare the costs of these ridiculous overhyped hopes, against storage, RE, interconnectors, or simply overbuild (with curtailment). It may seem counterintuitive, but overbuild of cheap RE, and paying some RE not to generate at times of excess (and low prices) is cheaper than adding nuclear into the mix.

That's why I enjoy the work and reports from Mark Jacobson and the Stanford Team so much. We have the technology already, and at viable costs now, but those costs are still falling. Good times.

I really do think that overbuilding renewables with curtailment, electricity storage, hydrogen etc is the way forward.

I am a bit less anti-nuclear though, I think we need some spinning heavy pieces of metal for grid stability.

[Mart]

If the government spent the equivalent of one SMR on a battery or super capacitor instead they would see an immediate and tangible improvement in the UK energy security.

Moxi

Absolutely spot on.

I think it's hard for them to compare the costs of these ridiculous overhyped hopes, against storage, RE, interconnectors, or simply overbuild (with curtailment). It may seem counterintuitive, but overbuild of cheap RE, and paying some RE not to generate at times of excess (and low prices) is cheaper than adding nuclear into the mix.

That's why I enjoy the work and reports from Mark Jacobson and the Stanford Team so much. We have the technology already, and at viable costs now, but those costs are still falling. Good times.

I really do think that overbuilding renewables with curtailment, electricity storage, hydrogen etc is the way forward.

I am a bit less anti-nuclear though, I think we need some spinning heavy pieces of metal for grid stability.

Good point. The spinning metal though could come from the H2 if burnt in a CCGT. I think the efficiency of burning H2, or using a fuel cell, are both around 55-60%.

[AE-NMidlands]

Good point. The spinning metal though could come from the H2 if burnt in a CCGT. I think the efficiency of burning H2, or using a fuel cell, are both around 55-60%.

Or a few big HEP stations with one turbine "generating" all the time. Or if it is really needed where that won't work/can't be located, just the big spinning stabilisers we saw illustrated a few days ago.

Why waste energy making H2 then suffer yet more losses in a CCGT?
A

[Mart]

Good point. The spinning metal though could come from the H2 if burnt in a CCGT. I think the efficiency of burning H2, or using a fuel cell, are both around 55-60%.

Or a few big HEP stations with one turbine "generating" all the time. Or if it is really needed where that won't work/can't be located, just the big spinning stabilisers we saw illustrated a few days ago.

Why waste energy making H2 then suffer yet more losses in a CCGT?
A

As one potential form of longer/larger scale storage.

smegal's statement read as storage to me:

I really do think that overbuilding renewables with curtailment, electricity storage, hydrogen etc is the way forward.

Though CAES may be a better alternative, and several deployments are already being tested.

[Ken]

I always find "RE excess with curtailment" an interesting one.
At the moment curtailment is only taking place to balance the grid and often brought on by transmission bottlenecks. This will continually be improved.

But with time of use tariffs and demand shifting will there ever be much curtailment of excess production. When all cars are EV the capacity to soak up this "excess" will be huge. Peak curtaiment nearly always aligns with ev charging at night.

Also as soon as one mentions FREE do you not think someone is going to come up with a way of using this,like small intermittent production or increasing the size of the upper reservoir on pumped hydro.

[Moxi]

Well they want to keep the steel industry going so why not use them as a massive energy sink? If this was two nationalised industries they would allow the steel plants to operate through the night on very low cost power to melt and refine steel then cast and roll through the day and as a nation we would "win" by obtaining grid stability and some of the best steel globally available at competitive international market rates.

But we lack the joined up infrastructure and drive to do this because the power companies want maximum profit and are not interested in enabling the steel industry to function competitively.

Better still you can apply the benefit of cheap (free) energy to any industry you like of course - imagine if we took wind energy and made very low cost silicon wafers and added value by converting those wafers to chips?

As a nation we have a huge opportunity to be a production power house BUT the model wont work if every step of the production is trying to make a profit, some stages need to just "break even" to allow the value added stages to make the nation wealth and swell the sovereign investment pot.

Moxi

[Moxi]

BTW the steel plant would need to be the EAF mini mill route where uk scrap is remelted and recast, typically producing quality engineering steels, the BF BOS rout for flat products would not benefit so well from cheap power and operates in a much broader and competitive flat products market and is at a greater disadvantage due to location etc.

Moxi