Overnight the BBC has reported that the UK government might backtrack on Sizewell C. I also saw a Nordic report yesterday that labelled Nuclear power as unsustainable.
What's the evidence?
Safe - no, but safer than the alternatives - far fewer deaths than fossil fuels. Needs to be handled very carefully, which rightly creates a lot of fear about them.
Green - a lot of concrete and steel are needed to build a nuclear power station, but its operation produces very little. I was told that they pay back their carbon footprint vs gas production in the first 6 months.
Affordable - wind and solar are cheaper, but the strike price for Hinkley at 9p kwh sounds cheap compared to current UK prices to households at 25p.
Sustainable - a powerstation can be expected to run for 50 years. Which is about the same as other generators. They are not easily recycled, and decommissioning is a big job.
So why build them? In a future system where a lot of energy is intermittent we need an 'always on' source to match the 'always on' demand that needs to be there when we need it (hospitals, rail system, lighting at night, heating in the winter). Electricity demand will triple in the next 30 years. We need low carbon energy sources to meet Net Zero.
Why not use more storage? - this is the true test for the economics of nuclear, is it cheaper than a big battery? My calculation is that a battery big enough to match HPC for 3 days would cost £35bn. Which is above the £26bn est for HPC. And we still need to pay for the energy going into the battery.
Why not shift demand? - this is what saves us from having to build nuclear for ever, but the reality is that we have not moved quickly enough, and net zero remains a supply side issue.
So, yes we need to build nuclear - in all of its forms - large and small. And hope that we shift demand enough so that the second half of this century doesn't need to.
