I'm interested in what solution you are advocating.....
Unlike a lot of people, I'm not advocating a specific mix, primarily I just want the mix that is cheapest and achievable, whilst giving us acceptable energy security and reliability. With current technology - and note, I've not mentioned CO2 so far - for the UK that probably looks something like 70% wind/solar, 15% nuclear/biomass, 10% gas and 5% storage. Maybe it's 60% wind/solar, maybe it's 75% wind/solar, whatever.
But it's the current state of technology that is primarily pushing us in that direction - (our legal obligation to) net zero is relatively marginal in that, it just pushes some of the gas generation into other forms. But the mix advocated by the government advisors in
the report I mentioned above (as I say, do read it if you're interested in this stuff even if it's far from perfect) seems an ambitious but doable place to aim for - 70% wind/solar, 20% nuclear/biomass/tidal, 8% storage, 2% gas in 2035.
Again, I'm only interested in the general direction, not the detail at this stage.
- are you saying that nuclear isn't a viable backup to renewables or are you just pointing out its limits ? My sense is that a large number of smaller reactors would, based on the law of averages, provide a backup that is net more Whilst one nuclear power station might be somewhat unpredictable a cluster of them would be very likely to meet our needs.
I'm not saying whether anything is a viable backup or not, merely observing facts in the real world, which are often absent from this debate. And the fact is that the entire nuclear fleet of France saw availability in the real world drop as low as 35%, which is not just lower than offshore wind, it's barely more "reliable" than onshore wind. That is at odds with the perception of nuclear in some quarters.
The other lesson from France is that the law of averages doesn't save you - nuclear power stations of a certain age all tend to go wrong in the same way at the same time. And if they're of the same design - necessary for economies of scale - then the low bar for safety shutdowns mean that if one goes wrong, the others tend to get shut down at least until they've been inspected.
And the main problem is cost - the French prototype of the reactor at Hinkley Point C was promised to cost €3.3bn but
ended up costing €19.1bn for 1.65GWe (£10bn/GWe), and at the moment Hinkley Point C is due to cost £32.7bn for 3.2GWe. That excludes running costs, maintaining Sellafield for fuel processing etc. And based on existing nuclear plants you could see availability of 75-80%. Whereas the Dogger Bank windfarm
is costing £9bn for 3.2GWe. Current offshore windfarms are averaging 45% of capacity,
Hywind has been getting as high as 57.1% and I've seen suggestions Dogger Bank will manage the low 50s%. So you need to adjust a bit for capacity factors - but not that much.
The fact remains nuclear is just stupidly expensive compared to the alternatives, and that's before you get to how slow it is to build. Gordon Brown's government
decided in principle to build new nuclear power stations in 2008, and Hinkley Point was named as one of 8 sites in 2010 - but it won't produce electricity until 2028 at the earliest. At that rate, any new nuclear wouldn't come on stream until 2041 - can we afford to wait that long? Not that any government is going to announce new nuclear sites a year before an election.
- or are you saying that renewables and storage could be enough for the UK and that we don't need nuclear or fossil backups ?
If government advisors are saying 15-20% nuclear and 2% gas is plausible for 2035 then let's have that as a starting point and see where we go from there. Replacing gas totally is dependent on the development of hydrogen storage for the chemical industry, which we're a long way from just yet but it is happening slowly.
- i'm also intrigued as to what you mean by "live within our means" - are you advocating we reduce energy consuming activities to cut our demand ?
I said "
we need to start living within our means when it comes to energy imports" - as in, depending on gas which is >50% imported is not sustainable, as we can't rely on it being there when we need it. It needs to be replaced with energy produced within our shores.
