EDF confirms funding for Sizewell C

[Mart]

Do we want EDF to get involved in Sizewell C

"Right now, 28 French EDF reactors are offline due to corrosion safety problems. EDF is essentially bankrupt due to 43billon euro (£37.7billion) debts, facing up to a 100billion euro (£97.6billion) bill for French reactor life-extensions, all of which has forced Macron to fully nationalise EDF, to the detriment of the French economy."

Yep, it's been a mess. As costs rose, France took an 84% share, and now have had to save it. The true costs of nuclear are just so high.

Looks like France is planning a massive reduction in nuclear. They have over 50 reactors that are ageing, but their plans remain vague at 'might build upto 14 new reactors by 2050'. Assuming the new reactors are all built (unlikely as nuclear is now uneconomic), and are twice the size of the old ones, then that's around a 50% reduction, or 75% reduction as leccy demand doubles in France towards 2050.

Similiar situation in the US where they have ~100 reactors starting to ageout*, but only 2 new ones under construction, down from 4 as two of them were cancelled a few years back despite being in mid build with $bn's already spent. They were cancelled as the cost of RE (and storage) has fallen so fast, they would not be economic when completed, so would lose money from day one.

Edit - Probably worth adding here, that whilst the US moves to end some nuclear early make sense, I personally disagree with Germany ending their existing units early. Would have been better to run them and further reduce their coal and lignite use faster than they are currently managing. Though tbf their progress is quite impressive, as seen in chart 3 of the following:

Germany’s energy consumption and power mix in charts


*Some have actually started to be shut early, as the cost of refurbishment for another 10yrs of operation wasn't economic.

Personally, I've got all my fingers crossed that SZC will still be cancelled. The World situation with rising CO2 levels is too big and too serious for us to slow down action by spending money on a small amount of nuclear, long into the future, when the same money would buy more RE generation, far sooner.

Just watched part 3 of Tony Seba / RethinkX 's vids on the current energy disruption(s), very interesting. FF's and nuclear simply don't have a hope. Hence why nuclear isn't included in the vast, vast, vast majority of countries plans to reach net zero leccy.

Of course if SZC doesn't go ahead (with EDF), then the HPC price rises another £3/MWh (2012 pricing), so up from the current £114/MWh to about £118/MWh. [For reference the last CfD auction had RE at roughly £60 for PV, £55 for onshore wind and £50 for offshore wind, deliverable in 1-5yrs.]

[Oldgreybeard]

We MUST NOT spend the saving from not building Sizewell C wholly on RE generation, that would be complete and utter madness, as when the wind stops blowing (as it regularly does) then we will have no generation. There's an upper limit on the amount of RE generation we can install, as even if we blanketed the whole country and surrounding offshore areas with wind turbines there will still be days when we have insufficient generation.

The problem we need to tackle is how to provide generation at night, when there's no wind. Storage may be a part of the answer but we will need a tremendous amount of storage to cope with even one day without wind, let alone a time in mid-winter when we have a high pressure system locked over the UK producing very low overnight temperatures and very little wind.

Somehow we need to magic up tens of GW of generation when the wind isn't blowing and there is no sun, and right now there is no RE solution to that problem at all (given that our limited biomass generation has been shown to not really be renewable).

The question is how we do that, relatively quickly and and affordably. Probably the quickest fix is to build more gas powered generators, but that makes us beholden to the fate of the world gas market, as well as being damaging to the environment. Nuclear isn't really that good a solution as the lead time is too long and the power output planned is too small.

Storage is also going to be as hard to implement as the capacity needed is that of several Dinorwigs. We aren't going to do that with a few batteries scattered around, even if the battery manufacturers could magically overcome their massive production bottlenecks overnight. Building pumped hydro is probably the best bet, but the time scales involved, along with the very strong lobby against building major infrastructure in wilderness areas in Wales and Scotland make that a project for decades into the future, too late to solve the immediate problem.

[spread-tee]

It isn't an either or situation anyway, we can easily afford both if the GOVT wished to, we cant just spend an enormous amount on renewables in the hope that it would decarbonise faster, all that would happen is we would run up against manufacturing and supply side limits. We need to spend big on all technology which would be good for our economy, the best way to avoid a recession is to spend our way out of it.

Desp

[Mart]

Unfortunatley it is of course an either or situation*. There's no magic money tree, we have one Gov pot of money, or one LCF pot of money. The Gov has already slowed down CfD spending on RE as a result of the higher than expected cf's of the earliest offshore wind farms, and the commitment to HPC. That's why they cut PV and onshore wind out of the CfD mechanism.

More recently they've reversed that position, allowed PV and onshore wind back in, and plan to make the CfD auctions annual, but the facts are the facts, there is a limited amount of money, it can only be spent once. Nuclear means a long wait for little generation, whereas RE spending gives more generation, far sooner for the same amount of money.

The NIC (economic advisors to the Gov) told them straight to dial back their nuclear plans as they expected RE + storage to be a cheaper option than nuclear. This position has only gotten stronger as RE costs have fallen considerably since they gave that advice in 2018.

We (all countries) need to reduce CO2 emissions as fast as possible. Nuclear expenditure harms that move by providing less, later for more cost. I don't know why the UK is so different to most other countries, but it's worth noting that the vast, vast majority are aiming for net zero carbon leccy without any plans for nuclear.

I've got to go with the studies, research, analysis, and actual moves. Whilst I appreciate the emotional arguments for nuclear, we simply don't have the time nor money to waste on nuclear.

*If the fact that there is an ultimate budget for spending is still dismissed, then the argument can still be tested by using the 'test it to the extreme' method. So we spend more money on RE, but still have extra for nuclear - great, now take that extra for nuclear, spend it on RE (and storage), and you get more generation, sooner. If there's still more spare money for nuclear on top, then we can take that money, and do better by spending it on RE (and storage) instead. This extreme test can be repeated over and over.

[Mart]

The question is how we do that, relatively quickly and and affordably. Probably the quickest fix is to build more gas powered generators, but that makes us beholden to the fate of the world gas market, as well as being damaging to the environment. Nuclear isn't really that good a solution as the lead time is too long and the power output planned is too small.

That's very much my thinking. As I've mentioned before, if we do add SZC, which comes under the NIC advice to stop at HPC + 1, then review in 2025+ as costs of RE and storage mature, then we'll have around 6% of generation from nuclear (assuming our demand rises to ~100GW (+150% from today)). 6% is of course sizeable, but nowhere near enough to make a significant difference to our situation. In fact it could be provided by tidal lagoon schemes, which based on the small and expensive Swansea scheme is comparable in cost of generation to HPC. If Swansea works as a pilot scheme, then the 10x larger Cardiff scheme should be half the cost.*

But for 2030, what we need is to build out RE at around 5%pa, which we are roughly doing, expand interconnectors massively, which we are also doing, and add more shorter term storage to handle intraday management, this too is happening, and accelerating in line with the economics, though I'd like to see Gov spending to aid it.

After 2030, we should start to get ahead of the curve, as new RE is added faster than demand rises and old nuclear eges out. then we need to consider some longer term storage, whci (simply as a suggestion) may be CAES, or H2 (for use in existing gas generation facilities (after modification). these storage methods offer TWH's of potential storage if it's needed, depending on how the economics of RE overcapacity turn out.

There's also a strange argument (or position people have) where nuclear helps when generation is low, but nuclear is baseload when generation is high. That's because if we had for example 10GW of nuclear generation and 20GW of RE generation but demand was only 20GW, then we 'clearly' have 10GW too much RE generation that needs storage. But the nuclear doesn't!

*Doubling the circumference of a circle quadruples the area, so enlarging a tidal lagoon wall provides for a larger than proportional volume of storage, thus reducing the cost of generation. The tidal lagoons would provide 4x 3.5hr periods of generation per day, with 4 slack tide periods of 2.5hrs per day. they may also provide a small element of storage by delaying (or accelerating) their use to better match peak periods, but this would reduce the total generation for any given 3.5hr period.

[Swwils]

This is why it's important to support nuclear even if you are not directly nvolved. Politics need the leeway to be able to support these projects and not trade them for other stuff. Suggesting to stop nuclear projects to be replaced by renewables is just betting against physics.

A very simplistic* solve would be, print £180 billion quid, get 75000 MW of 24/7 nuclear ASAP, no take backsies.

The above post suggesting overbuild of RE makes no sense when analysed. The storage doesn't exist. The materials limited.

[Oldgreybeard]

The problem is the perennial one that there is only one RE generation source that is inherently reliable, tidal, and so far we have been unable to make that work at any sort of scale.

Building more wind doesn't solve the problem, as we often have windless days in very cold weather in the UK. Building more PV doesn't solve the problem as we need power at night. Piddling amounts of storage (UK total storage is minute, even with the ~9GWh of Dinorwig) don't help, and the prospect of us having enough centralised big storage to cope with just two or three windless days is decades away.

Investing in more wind and PV may not be the best thing to do at all. Investing in new storage makes far more sense, but the timescales seem way too long for anything other than batteries, and batteries have a short life span (in terms of grid infrastructure) as well as being hard to obtain in the large volumes needed.

The alternative is to accept that we do without electricity when the wind isn't blowing. We could do this, but my guess is that it would not be popular; people have got far too used to electricity being always available, especially those living in towns and cities where power cuts are rare.

As mentioned earlier, one thing we could do fairly easily is invest in small scale distributed storage, at the house or community level. There are no infrastructure costs involved as far as the supply and distribution system are concerned (unlike all other options) as there is already enough capacity to do this. The efficiency is high, maybe 10% better than centralised storage. The cost is relatively low, as the equipment is all off the shelf and already in mass production. The speed with which this could be rolled out is high, limited only by the production capacity and the availability of installers.

Main downside is that it's a short term fix, maybe puts the problem off for around ten to fifteen years, the typical lifespan of a small battery system. It does lend itself to being a community enterprise, though, especially in rural areas. For example, it would be very easy to put a containerised battery system next to the pole mounted transformer that supplies all the houses along our lane. That could probably reduce peak demand by a great deal, might even remove all the peak electricity usage locally, freeing up power to run more critical infrastructure, like hospitals.

[Mart]

Hiya OGB, I do agree very much with what you are saying. I suspect the relative lack of storage at scale (so far) is down simply to economics. Storage will, if left to the markets, also be slightly behind the curve, as it will wait for enough excess (both in scale and regularity) before being deployed.

The good news is that when batteries become economical, then they do step up. We've seen that with FFR and peaker services as they start to win the contracts.

It does disapoint me how much RE, mostly wind is curtailed as we can't always shift it around enough, and I totally agree about distributed storage, I think that's a better solution for intraday storage*, though of course RE sites such as wind and PV are starting to add storage. This was always claimed would happen by their trade bodies, since the site and connections already exist, so as and when storage becomes / became (it's starting now) economic, then storage could be added. I believe their argument was that there was no cost penalty in adding it later, which seems reasonable.



*A thought has occurred to me, that I've been using a figure of 500GWh for intraday storage for many years now. I saw it in several studies, but the most convincing was a pro-nuclear argument by Euan Mearns, who showed how a 100% net RE solution would require 500GWh, and also showed a spill of about 30% and the need for about 13% gas to fill in the holes (hence the net, based on exports). But quickly it became apparent that 500GWh is doable, especially with distributed storage and V2G, and I noted that the spill would cover the gas needs, via H2 using the excess, even at a 40% efficiency. His position does now state gas / bio-gas, but I don't think it includes synth-gas such as H2 from electrolysis. ..... sorry I digress, back to the 500GWh.

..... so that Australian study I linked to a few days back, suggests that for ~99% of cases, they would cope with 'just' 5hrs of storage, so effectively intraday, rather than larger and longer term storage. That was based on 105% from wind and solar, so we'll also need to add in any other RE sources, such as hydro. But 5hrs, based on a UK future average demand of 100GW is also 500GWh.

But of course, we don't have the strong, reliable and predictable solar that Australia has, so I'm sure we will need a higher level of overcapacity and more storage, but it's very promising, and fits in well with the UK's potential to generate and export large amounts of off-shore wind generation. AZPS (a member of the old site, and the guy that runs the Energy Numbers site) and colleagues produced an article over a decade ago (so not based on the latest offshore wind technology), suggesting (theoretically) that the UK could produce 10 to 100 times our future all leccy energy needs:

The UK is the Saudi Arabia of Wind Energy



Addendum - Sorry, but probbaly best I mention this, as I try to support all of my statements with facts, links, numbers, economics etc. I have previously mentioned that V2G could, simply as a side effect of the move to BEV's, provide that whole 500GWh of intraday storage for free*. that's based on approx 1,500GWh of car batteries. There would also be commercial vehicles, and trials of large(r) BEV fleets is already happening around the World, where vehicles parked up during troughs in demand, absorb excess generation, and supplement supply during peak periods.

But, there is a major flaw in this BEV / V2G / intraday storage solution, and that's TAAS (transport as a service). If autonomous robo-taxis are succesful, then there will be less vehicles (therefore less battery capacity), and far less BEV's sitting round doing nothing, as they will either be in use, charging, or charged ready for work.

Just thought I should provide the counter argument.

*free - in this context is just me being tongue-in-cheek. I appreciate that batteries aren't free, but for intraday storage there is no additional CAPEX, only the OPEX cost of paying some level of recompense for the service/energy provided.

[nowty]

@Mart, as you may know I quite often compare the Nowty Towers installation to the UK grid, partly to give me a sense of practical reality whether the green dream of RE and storage exists or not.

Certainly, I and many others have demonstrated it can be done in an all electric (or almost) house Apr to Sep with Solar and home batteries but in winter, forget it.

Well at least until recently as the leccy from the Ripple WT1 made my house carbon negative for October, that's a first. I'm likely to fail in November but if WT2 was operating, I would be carbon negative again. But Dec, Jan and Feb I still probably need WT3 and that would be with Nowty Towers with 120% of solar and 200% of wind. Those percentages are compared with what I can actually use from their sources, i.e. I need significant overcapacity.

But in the finer details of reality, I would still need even more storage, maybe even several times more storage. Looking at Nowty Towers import verses WT1 generation on a daily basis for Oct and take into account I have circa a little over 1 days storage capacity for a typical day in October. Looks generally OK, but from the 11th to the 14th if I limited my import to WT1's generation I would have ran out of energy on the 12th.

[spread-tee]

Hi Mart,

there is a magic money tree, otherwise known as quantitative easing, see https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetar ... ive-easing

you can see the GOVT created nearly 400Bn to cover the costs of the Covid pandemic back in 2020 , also back in 2008 they created a similar amount to save the banking system from collapse, those amounts didn't come from some mythical pot. and very little has been "paid back" I put that in parenthesis because the GOVT own the BOE so in effect there is no debt, how can you owe yourself something??.

The GOVT is free to create any amount of money it likes to spend where it likes, as I have said many times before all we need is the political will, sadly that is a lot harder to come by.

Desp