Small Modular Nuclear Reactors
My objections to nuclear power plants like Hinckley Point C, is very much like my objections to giant aircraft carriers like HMS Queen Elizabeth,enormous 4×4 Chelsea tractors and massive houses, where one billionaire lives with just his trophy wife.
It’s just that they satisfy the ego of a class of men (and it’s usually men!), who like to show off, that they have more money or power than others.
There are generally much more efficient and affordable ways of achieving the same aims.
As a small example, I remember having a chat with a General in the British Army, who had very low opinions of heavy tanks and felt that there were better ways of spending the money to achieve the same objectives.
I also remember some of the arguments about the aluminium frigates after the Falklands War. A lot of these were amplified, by a friend, who’d gone to the islands as an officer on a British Rail ferry.
This is said about Hinckley Point C in Wikipedia.
Hinkley Point C nuclear power station is a much-delayed proposal to construct a 3,200 MWe nuclear power station with two EPR reactors in Somerset, England. The proposed site is one of eight announced by the British government in 2010,[5] and on 26 November 2012 a nuclear site licence was granted. In October 2014, the European Commission adjusted the “gain-share mechanism” so that the project does not break state-aid rules.[7] Financing for the project will be provided “by the mainly [French] state-owned EDF [and Chinese] state-owned CGN will pay £6bn for one third of it”.[8] EDF may sell up to 15% of their stake. Financing of the project is still to be finalised.
I have a feeling that any sane woman, who’s lived with a man with bad shopping habits, would cancel it tomorrow.
After all, it’s supposed to cost £18billion and there is still no date yet for when it will produce a watt of electricity.
As a reaction to these enormous costs, the Small Modular Nuclear Reactor is being proposed. Wikipedia says this.
Small modular reactors (SMRs) are a type of nuclear fission reactor which are smaller than conventional reactors, and manufactured at a plant and brought to a site to be fully constructed.
Small reactors are defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency as those with an electricity output of less than 300 MWe, although general opinion is that anything with an output of less than 500 MWe counts as a small reactor.
Modular reactors allow for less on-site construction, increased containment efficiency, and heightened nuclear materials security.
I recommend reading the full Wikipedia article.
I feel that SMRs have a lot of advantages.
- Much more of the building can be in a factory, not on a bleak remote site.
- They are particularly suited to remote locations, where there is a shortage of construction workers.
- An SMR may be a much less risky project cost-wise than a conventional large plant.
- Containment is more efficient.
- Proliferation concerns are lessened.
- Say you are building a plant that needs a lot of electricity, like say an aluminium smelter. The SMR could be built alongside, so there would be no need for massive transmission lines, between the smelter and its power source.
- They could be built underground, lessening the visual impact.
- High energy use industries like steel-making could be paired with an SMR.
- Large office complexes like Canary Wharf could be linked to an SMR deep underneath for their massive energy use.
- Build time is much less.
I like the concept and think that this type of reactor, perhaps arranged in groups around a country or region, will kill off the traditional large nuclear reactor.
This section on safety features illustrates the innovative thinking behind the reactors.
Since there are several different ideas for SMRs, there are many different safety features that can be involved. Coolant systems can use natural circulation – convection – so there are no pumps, no moving parts that could break down, and they keep removing decay heat after the reactor shuts down, so that the core doesn’t overheat and melt. Negative temperature coefficients in the moderators and the fuels keep the fission reactions under control, causing the fission reactions to slow down as temperature increases.
I suspect we can now design a reliable reactor, that say it received a direct hit from a tsunami or three simultaneous crashes from Jumbo jets, would fail-safe.
There are certainly a lot of groups and companies trying to design the ultimate SMR.
There is even a concept being developed at the Universities of Manchester and Delft in the Netherlands called a u-Battery. That concept may not work, but something like it will produce electricity for a lot of people and industry around the world.
The dinosaurs like Hinckley Point C are hopefully a mistake of the past.
Denmark Hill Station Rises
I say rises, as the pub at Denmark Hill Station is called The Pheonix.
When I last took photos before the upgrade, it was rather a mass of scaffolding.
But look at it now!
I took these pictures as I came home today.
It’s certainly one of the better middle-sized stations in London.
Atlantic Superconnection Features In The Sunday Times
I am an electrical engineer by training and although possibly the only work I’ve done in the power field directly is to wire a plug, I know the technology of power generation fairly well.
Ever since I went to Iceland last year and first heard about IceLink, I’ve followed the project with interest.
Today there is an article in The Sunday Times entitled Cameron wants sea cable to bring lava power from Iceland.
It talks about the involvement of a company called Atlantic Superconnection
Read the article and follow the company!
The Aussies Get Into Home Batteries
As you might imagine, Australia with its sunshine and lots of remote communities could be a big market for battery technology like Tesla’s Powerwall. But this article in the Australian Financial Review shows why the country will be a big market.
It says that for example in Queensland, a third of the houses have solar panels, which must only increase the demand for batteries.
But it also says that the way the Australians charge for electricity is different to the United States and this makes batteries much more useful. I think that in the UK, we follow the Australian model. Except for the sun of course!
The article has some interesting details on how the price of the devices will go, especially as it says that Panasonic who are one of the Big 3 battery makers will be entering the market soon.
I all think it goes to show that each market is different and I suspect that the UK market will be different again, as most of us don’t live in houses that are too friendly to solar panels.
But my house is with its flat roof, and I am watching the price of solar panels, because I reckon in the next few years, I’ll be able to fit a very affordable system, that will take me substantially off-grid, with a battery in the garage.
Solar panels, battery technology and small innovative energy companies are going to give the Big 6 energy companies, one hell of a kicking.
British And French Engineers Can Work Together
In the Sunday Times today, they are talking about a £4billion project to import electricity into the UK from Iceland, It is called Icelink and it would appear to have the backing of both the UK and Iceland governments. There’s more about it in this article in Utility Week.
So it got me thinking about undersea electricity connections around the world. There is a list of them here. And there is forty-four of them
Perhaps the best known is the connection between Kent and France, which is called the HVDC Cross Channel. It is actually the second one and it has been running for nearly thirty years. A section in Wikipedia describes its significance.
Since the commissioning of the 2,000 MW DC link in the 1980s, the bulk of power flow through the link has been from France to Britain. However, France imports energy as needed during the summer to meet demand, or when there is low availability of nuclear or hydroelectric power.
As of 2005 imports of electricity from France have historically accounted for about 5% of electricity available in the UK. Imports through the interconnector have generally been around the highest possible level, given the capacity of the link. In 2006, 97.5% of the energy transfers have been made from France to UK, supplying the equivalent of 3 million English homes. The link availability is around 98%, which is among the best rates in the world. The continued size and duration of this flow is open to some doubt, given the growth in demand in continental Europe for clean electricity, and increasing electricity demand within France.
So it would appear it’s been successful and proves that we can work with the French on an engineering project.
It strikes me that we need to connect all of our power systems together in Western Europe. The UK is being connected to Ireland, Iceland and Norway and the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany are getting in on the act.
What you won’t find from reading about the cables, but you will in some newspaper articles, is that Norway will have the ability to store electricity in a pumped storage system in the future.
So when the wind is blowing and we have too much electricity, the Norwegians will pump water from a low to a high lake and when we want it back, the water will be released through a turbine. It’s like putting your KWh in a bank!
The Anonymous Widower 