Two interesting developments in the world of nuclear power generation.
One from China is that they have almost finished construction of a prototype thorium molten salt reactor designed for commercial electricity generation. Ok it's "only" 2MW but it's a whole different avenue of nuclear science with very interesting properties.
On the other side of the coin, the UK Government has just put out its pitch for "High Temperature Gas Reactors" as part of an "Advanced Modular Reactor" programme. https://www.gov.uk/government/consultat ... r-evidence
Re: New Nuclear
Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2021 11:50 am
by dan_b
An interesting video about Thorium molten salt reactors.
Although it gets a bit distracted about using it for aviation.
Re: New Nuclear
Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2021 12:01 pm
by dan_b
And meanwhile it looks like financing for Sizewell C, based on a Hinkley C EPR copy and paste, will be sorted out in the Autumn.
And the current complete emergency shutdown of Heysham Power station due to a grid fault will be concentrating minds in goverment with our reduced number of Nukes.
What happens if we lose a full Nuke reactor station in the middle of winter and have a large sustained high pressure system over us, along with a beast from the East. Freezing cold temps with fog and no rain, so massive demand, little wind, little solar and little hydro.
Increases in storage may reduce the number of Nukes we need, but its unlikely that number will be zero for a very long time to come. Leccy prices are likely to keep rising, especially with the accelerated closure of our aging nuclear plants.
Indeed so, and the non-restarting of Dungeness.
I know we go around in circles on the whole nuclear argument, but it does seem to me like the UK going to have some very tight supply issues in the next few years if significantly more new generation and storage capacity isn't built? Even with all the extra HVDC interconnectors!