[HN Gopher] UK's first small nuclear power station to be built i...
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UK's first small nuclear power station to be built in north Wales
Author : ksec
Score : 150 points
Date : 2025-11-16 10:38 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| mikaeluman wrote:
| Great news. Lets hope this is just the start.
|
| The whole of Europe needs to get on with energy security and
| Britain can and should be a leader here, next to Netherlands,
| Sweden and France.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| The question is what's better value for money, wind and solar
| (potentially with storage when required), or nuclear.
| helltone wrote:
| In the UK, probably nuclear.
| rcxdude wrote:
| Nuclear is surprisingly expensive and solar/wind/storage is
| surprisingly cheap. Even solar in the UK has better
| economics than nuclear, and it has no shortage of wind.
| cenamus wrote:
| Yeah, the UK is probably one of the best places for
| offshore wind, and they're building gigantic fields.
|
| And compared to what Hinkley Point C is gonna cost...
| solar and wind is basically for free
| dukeyukey wrote:
| With the big * of solar being fairly predictable, and
| wind not. You can be bereft of wind for weeks.
| neilwilson wrote:
| Not when you take the circular economy into account.
| We've always been very good at making boilers. Less so
| semiconductors.
| krona wrote:
| The outcome of Contracts for Difference (CfD) Allocation
| Round 6 suggests wind isn't cheap compared to wholesale
| electricity prices in the UK, which are already one of
| the highest in the world. The maths is quite simple.
|
| And that doesn't include curtailment costs, which are not
| insignificant.
| Reason077 wrote:
| The average strike price for offshore wind in AR6 came in
| at PS59.90/MWh. That's pretty cheap, and much cheaper
| than any new nuclear. Hinkley Point C's strike price is
| PS92.50/MWh. (note: strike prices are always quoted based
| on 2012 currency, and get adjusted for inflation)
|
| You can't really compare strike prices to spot prices on
| the wholesale market precisely because there's so much
| supply under CfD contracts, which distorts the wholesale
| market. When supply is abundant, the wholesale price
| plummets and even goes negative, yet suppliers still want
| to generate because they get the CfD price. When supply
| is constrained (eg: cold snaps in winter with little
| wind), the spot price can surge to PS1000/MWh.
| krona wrote:
| That PS59.90 figure is 2012 prices.
|
| In 2024 money offshore was PS102 offshore, onshore PS89.
| AR7 estimates are >10% higher. Those prices were not high
| enough for Hornsea 4, who cancelled the contract (with a
| big write down for the entire project) after being
| awarded it.
|
| Hinkley C is, as everyone knows, a disaster.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Yes, like I said, UK CfD strike prices (both nuclear and
| wind) are always quoted in 2012 prices.
|
| But even adjusting for inflation, offshore wind's PS59.90
| is a fraction of the retail price that UK consumers and
| most businesses pay for electricity. There's plenty of
| margin left for the middlemen (regulator, grid operator,
| distribution network operator, electricity retailer,
| etc).
|
| ... and Hinkley Point C's PS92.50 is PS133.79 today, and
| could be PS160+ by the time it actually starts generating
| in (maybe?) 2031.
| cinntaile wrote:
| As usual the answer is likely to be a combination of energy
| sources. It's not wind and solar (+storage) OR nuclear, it's
| wind and solar (+storage) AND nuclear (and of course other
| energy sources when appropriate).
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| The problem is that nuclear powers profile with fixed
| output and extremely high CAPEX costs is the opposite to
| what a modern grid needs.
|
| How would you add an extremely expensive new built nuclear
| plant to this grid? Would you shut it down for days on end
| or try to run it as a peaker?
|
| https://explore.openelectricity.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=7d
| &...
| justincormack wrote:
| Or add a load of batteries to the capex and redistribute
| the constant load?
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| If taking that step, why charge the batteries with
| extremely expensive nuclear powered electricity rather
| than cheap renewables?
|
| It is done when moving electricity around when the grid
| is strained. Buy expensive electricity and sell it at
| even higher prices. But that is a vanishly tiny portion
| of the demand.
| evandijk70 wrote:
| Because there is little solar in the 3 winter months, so
| you would need a lot more storage for solar then for
| nuclear.
| pfdietz wrote:
| What is needed is an alternative storage that minimizes
| capex, even if that means operating at lower round trip
| efficiency. Hydrogen or ultra low capex thermal storage.
|
| I'll point to Standard Thermal again here.
|
| https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal
| cinntaile wrote:
| That's South Australia, not the UK.
|
| My point still stands though given that I specifically
| did not exclude any scenario. It makes more sense to
| optimize when you include all energy sources. It's still
| possible some sources won't end up in the final solution
| and that's fine.
| kitd wrote:
| But SMRs address the capex costs by reducing time and
| resources needed to provision them. The "M" stands for
| "modular" after all, ie components can be built offsite
| and imported, and capacity can be added incrementally.
|
| Think 'agile', not 'waterfall'.
| pfdietz wrote:
| If SMRs are cheap enough to act as backup to wind and
| solar, they are cheap enough to displace wind and solar
| entirely. And the contrapositive as well: if SMRs are not
| cheap enough to displace solar and wind, they aren't
| cheap enough to act as backup. The scenario where it's
| just a backup never arises in cost minimized solutions.
| kitd wrote:
| > _If SMRs are cheap enough to act as backup to wind and
| solar, they are cheap enough to displace wind and solar
| entirely._
|
| That doesn't follow necessarily. Wind & solar being the
| most cost effective doesn't mean you remove all backups
| just because they aren't as cost effective.
| graemep wrote:
| Its the other way around. If you have sufficient nuclear
| to act as a backup, then you have sufficient that you do
| not need the wind and solar in addition.
| rwmj wrote:
| Wind & nuclear together. Britain already has large wind
| installations, since the sea to the east is quite shallow (it
| used to be a land bridge to Europe only 7,000-10,000 years
| ago). Back that up with nuclear providing the base load and
| you have reasonable energy security.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| > Back that up with nuclear providing the base load and you
| have reasonable energy security.
|
| So you're saying that we should turn off the nuclear plant?
|
| What do we calculate? A generous 50% capacity factor?
|
| The new built nuclear power now costs ~40 cents/kWh.
|
| It just becomes ridiculously expensive when real world
| constraints are added.
| happymellon wrote:
| The current "real world constraint" is purchasing gas
| from Russia.
|
| Yeah, nuclear is better than that.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Almost all of Europe has stopped buying Russian gas? The
| exception being nuclear powered France. [1]
|
| You also do know that we despite 19 sanctions packages
| still haven't been able to sanction the Russian nuclear
| industry? We're just too dependent on it.
|
| [1]: https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/eu-talks-tough-
| russian-lng-...
| realusername wrote:
| The French gas plants have been built to support
| renewables, France didn't have almost any gas plants
| prior 2010.
|
| There's no sanctions on the Russian nuclear industry
| because it's a rounding error financially compared to gas
| or petrol.
| bauble12 wrote:
| The thing Ive never quite understood is that the UK has
| no domestic supply of uranium.
| trebligdivad wrote:
| Yeh it probably is expensive - but we currently have no
| other way (other than gas) to cover the low-wind/sun
| periods; while there are times when the UK can almost run
| purely off wind, there are other periods where we get ~5%
| of that wind energy for a week or so; the battery storage
| is nowhere near useful for that.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Hydrogen or low capex thermal.
|
| The UK has adequate salt formations for large scale
| storage of hydrogen.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Hydrogen is the worst possible fuel. It's the least dense
| material in existence so you need a ton of it. It has to
| be made from either cracking polluting materials, or
| using a huge amount of electricity. It is really
| difficult to store and really flammable.
|
| Nuclear is endless clean energy. Why do people like you
| keep ruining everything? If it wasn't for you, we'd have
| had full nuclear by 1980. No oil problems, no terrorist
| states, no dubai.
| pfdietz wrote:
| This would be green hydrogen. Sure, it has low density,
| but underground storage is pretty cheap at scale. Yes,
| it's flammable, but that can be handled, and is handled
| routinely -- the world currently produces and consumes
| 700 cubic kilometers (at STP) of hydrogen per year.
|
| The huge advantage of hydrogen here is that a gas turbine
| power plant might cost $600/kW, a tiny fraction of the
| cost of a nuclear power plant. So if you have a need for
| a backup plant whose cost will be dominated by
| amortization of its fixed cost, hydrogen beats nuclear.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Nuclear is endless clean energy.
|
| The UK hasn't had any nuclear waste problems?
|
| It might be the solution but pretending it's perfect is
| how we got here.
| trebligdivad wrote:
| Looks like someone is trying to push for it:
| https://ukenergystorage.co.uk/
|
| Good if they can get it to work; there's also a
| hydrogen/ammonia storage scheme being planned;
| https://www.statkraft.co.uk/newsroom/2025/statkraft-
| shares-p...
|
| I think it's going to take a while, but certainly worth
| trying.
| matt-p wrote:
| It's so funny every time we build a nuclear plant we say
| 'ooooh expensive' then by the time it's built it turns
| out it's ~ at the cost of gas.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Running existing plants is about the cost of gas -
| building new ones is extraordinarily expensive and is
| something like 3x or 4x the cost of other options, even
| after adjusting for nuclear's much better capacity
| factor.
| croes wrote:
| Yeah, let's ignore that construction costs
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cev03wer0p2o
|
| And the subsidies needed to keep the price "low".
|
| That's why France had to raise the price because even
| with subsidies they couldn't cover the costs
| chickenbig wrote:
| Please no more of Stop Sizewell C's Alison Downes a.k.a.
| (Moira) Alison Reynolds [0] & [1], who also happens to be
| one of the directors of the Greenpeace Environmental
| Trust [2].
|
| > That's why France had to raise the price because even
| with subsidies they couldn't cover the costs
|
| I'm not quite sure what you meant by this. By France did
| you mean EDF? And which power station are you referring
| to?
|
| [0] https://stopsizewellc.org/core/wp-
| content/uploads/2025/05/TE... page 5
|
| [1] https://find-and-update.company-
| information.service.gov.uk/o...
|
| [2] https://find-and-update.company-
| information.service.gov.uk/o...
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| > I'm not quite sure what you meant by this. By France
| did you mean EDF? And which power station are you
| referring to?
|
| I am not sure either. But they keep increasing the
| proposed subsidies for the EPR2 program, and they still
| haven't been able to pass them.
|
| The French government just fell due to being underwater
| while being completely unable to handle it. A massive
| handout of tax money to the nuclear industry sounds like
| the perfect solution!
| rcxdude wrote:
| They're right, though. Doing both is dumb. The
| alternative to renewables + storage is nuclear + storage,
| with the nuclear + storage having the advantage of the
| storage capacity needed being more predictable and a bit
| smaller, but with the massive disadvantage of the nuclear
| being extremely expensive and slow to build. But building
| enough nuclear plants to do what you're proposing, and
| then turning them off most of the time to get energy from
| the renewable plants you're also building, and only
| drawing from them unpredictably, is objectively the worst
| option.
| Lio wrote:
| > _it used to be a land bridge to Europe only 7,000-10,000
| years ago)_
|
| Doggerland. I've always found its geography and the idea
| that people lived there fascinating.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
| DrBazza wrote:
| Fisherman frequently dredge up stone age (or earlier)
| implements from there.
| matt-p wrote:
| We could probably do with a small amount of storage as we
| do have days where we pay for turbines to /not/ generate.
| graemep wrote:
| AFAIK the cost of nuclear is building it, but not running
| it. If you have enough nuclear to provide enough energy
| when there is no wind, then why do you need to build wind
| energy at all?
| RobotToaster wrote:
| A big part of the cost is design. China has built a lot
| of nuclear capacity at a low cost by essentially copying
| and pasting the same design, something that should be
| even easier with SMRs.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Relatively low cost. The cost of PV has dropped much
| faster and they're building much more of it, even
| compared to their plans from a decade ago. SMRs are
| supposed to be the design that solves this, essentially
| moving nuclear into the same "build it at mass scale in a
| factory" footing that solar PV is on. But solar is deep
| down the production curve and SMRs are just beginning it.
| rwmj wrote:
| One immediate reason is its going to take another decade
| (conservatively) to even build one of these modular
| reactors. Another is the vast cost of nuclear compared to
| wind. We're deploying wind farms in large numbers right
| now (and even sometimes connecting them to the grid).
| chickenbig wrote:
| > its going to take another decade (conservatively) to
| even build one of these modular reactors.
|
| So nuclear reactors can be built to supply the energy and
| power as the offshore wind farms get decommissioned. The
| rise and fall.
|
| > Another is the vast cost of nuclear compared to wind.
|
| What do you mean by cost? Capital expenditure per kW of
| nominal capacity, or by total energy generated? Plus
| should we consider other costs (backup, transmission,
| curtailment)?
| laurencerowe wrote:
| This slow buildout will logically limit nuclear power to
| a minor role in the UK. By the time we could possibly
| build out large amounts of nuclear it seems likely we
| will already have built out large amounts of cheap wind
| power. With some battery storage and solar this can cover
| us for 90-95% of the year. For the remainder we will need
| dispatchable backup power. That will be gas and maybe at
| some point green hydrogen or its derivatives.
|
| I suspect we will always keep around a little nuclear to
| maintain expertise for strategic national security
| reasons but it is hard to see nuclear power making sense
| in an energy market dominated by intermittent renewables
| like the UK.
| DennisP wrote:
| One option is to build enough nuclear to cover your
| minimum demand, and enough wind/solar/storage to cover
| the rest.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| Why not just build the wind/solar/storage to cover it
| all.
|
| If that's too expensive why not just build enough nuclear
| to cover it all.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Because they do different things.
|
| Suppose you need 10GW of power for an absolute baseline.
| Enough to heat homes to a temperature that people don't
| freeze to death on a cold day, to keep power to hospitals
| and other critical services, etc. Then you need another
| 10GW on top of that to run aluminum smelters and heat
| homes to 80degF instead of 60degF and things like that.
|
| If you have 20GW (average) of wind but you get an
| extended period of low generation and the batteries run
| down, people die. If you have 10GW (average) of wind and
| 10GW of nuclear and you get an extended period of low
| wind generation, the price of electricity goes up that
| week and people turn off their aluminum smelters and
| things but nobody dies. If you have 20GW of nuclear you
| can run the aluminum smelter 52 weeks a year instead of
| 51 but then people are paying more for electricity than
| they would with renewables in the mix, which isn't worth
| it.
|
| So which one should we do?
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Take California. The minimum demand is 15 GW and peak
| demand 52 GW.
|
| What you're saying is they they should use extremely
| expensive nuclear power to cover the easy portion and
| then have renewables when they are the most strained
| supply 37 GW.
|
| Why not just cheap renewables for everything?
|
| New built power literally does not make sense when real
| constraints are added.
| DrBazza wrote:
| The cost of nuclear is two fold - government bureaucracy,
| and the lack of commercialization due to decades of
| misinformation from the eco-groups.
|
| The plans just to build a tunnel under the Thames in the
| UK in 2025 is over 2 million pages at the moment, imagine
| what it is for the Sizewell C reactor - the environmental
| assessment on its own was 44,000 pages.
|
| SMRs are a good middle ground because they can be
| commercialized and cost can be driven down once the
| government gets out of the way.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > The cost of nuclear is two fold - government
| bureaucracy, and the lack of commercialization due to
| decades of misinformation from the eco-groups.
|
| The misinformation hasn't occurred in a vacuum. The
| nuclear industry has been far from transparent in how it
| operates.
| fundatus wrote:
| > the lack of commercialization due to decades of
| misinformation from the eco-groups
|
| The lack of commercialization has exactly a single
| reason: The lack of commercial viability.
| newsclues wrote:
| Depends on the load, but nuclear isn't dependent upon
| batteries or the wind.
| fundatus wrote:
| True, but for most places you'll now be dependent on some
| other country selling you uranium. Which is something many
| countries are now factoring in into these kind of
| decisions.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| Depends on over provision then. If lowest demand in the
| grid is 20GW, average 30GW highest demand is 50GW then you
| need to be able to generate 50GW, despite nuclear costs
| only being specced assuming they can always find 20GW of
| customers.
|
| It's the same problem as wind has where demand and supply
| are variable.
|
| Nuclear cant scale up in an affordable cost as the first GW
| is amortised over 8,760 hours a year, but the top 10GW is
| only needed 50 hours a year. If it's PS8760 to generate
| 10GW for a year, that means you have to spend PS43,800 to
| be able to cope with a peak of 50GW, but the average demand
| of 30GW means the average cost is PS14,600 - 65% more than
| the average "base load"
| chickenbig wrote:
| Given UK wind capacity factors are not going to be as high as
| predicted [0], a lot more storage is required for the wind
| system so reducing its value.
|
| [0] https://chrisbond.substack.com/p/desnz-to-include-some-
| reali...
| skeletal88 wrote:
| What do you do when there is no wind and it is cloudy. Dont
| turn on your tea kettle?
| dan-robertson wrote:
| One advantage nuclear may have in the UK is in the per-
| Megawatt planning applications required, purely by the energy
| generation being more concentrated. Of course, while people
| hate wind turbines and solar panels, they _really_ hate
| nuclear, but this can mean nuclear has some chance of getting
| special permits from central government.
|
| Another potential advantage is building energy generation
| closer to where it is needed as Britain is unable to build
| good interconnection infrastructure. I think this doesn't
| actually happen so much - the main places you need power are
| where there are people, which is bad in the 'people _really_
| hate nuclear' front, and regulators are very conservative and
| more wary the more people live nearby.
|
| Wind+batteries is a bit viable (and helps with interconnect
| too in that if you can max out interconnect utilization by
| transferring energy from generation to storage near usage
| even when there is no immediate demand, you can move more
| energy with a given interconnect per day than if you only
| used it to directly move energy from generators to users) but
| estimates of battery storage required still seem potentially
| prohibitively high.
| DrBazza wrote:
| > they _really_ hate nuclear
|
| The general public don't _understand_ nuclear. And we can
| thank CND, Greenpeace, and the mainstream press of the 60s
| onwards for regurgitating their misinformation and poor
| science as fact.
|
| Modern designs are effectively melt-down proof. Nuclear
| waste storage is also hilariously funny. People understand
| not to tread on a railway line or get electrocuted and die,
| but somehow have a problem with burying waste at the bottom
| of a sealed mine in a geologically safe area many miles
| from the nearest village or town (never a city) in
| containers that have been tested to literal destruction is
| somehow a problem.
|
| The sad irony is these eco-people's opposition to nuclear
| for decades has resulted in gigatons of CO2 from
| coal/oil/gas power stations.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| People have a problem with spent fuels sitting in pools
| for decades, as happens in Sellafield.
|
| "Originally constructed in the 1940s, 50s and 60s these
| facilities - two ponds and two concrete silos - no longer
| meet the safety requirements that are required today and
| present some of the most difficult decommissioning
| challenges - not just in the UK - but in the world."
|
| The industry does not have a good reputation, and it only
| has itself to blame for that.
|
| https://www.onr.org.uk/our-work/what-we-
| regulate/sellafield-...
| alecco wrote:
| Wind and solar are extremely unstable. Spain had a country-
| wide blackout earlier this year because of reactors being
| off. Days with peak solar and wind (heavily subsidized) made
| nuclear not viable. But you need a stable source to keep the
| grid from collapsing (and not fry appliances), like nuclear
| or hydro. It's like both a pace-maker and a goakeeper.
|
| So you need a mix. Small reactors fix the problem of NIMBY
| caused by decades of fearmongering (now slowly reversing).
| razighter777 wrote:
| No good answer to which is better for the money. I say bring
| it all.
|
| Diversity in renewable energy sources is important for grid
| resilience. Some areas are gonna be terrible for solar and
| good for wind. Some areas might not have proper water access
| for nuclear.
| belorn wrote:
| How much fossil fuel are acceptable to burn, should
| subsidizes count to the total cost, should grid connections
| and transport count to the total cost, and what is the time
| frame? Is the market allowed to freely spike based on supply
| and demand with no price roof?
|
| The service that the money is paying for is to have a grid
| that is always producing enough energy for any demand at any
| given time. Having 10gw/h today but 0 tomorrow is worth close
| to zero. If people are asked how much they are willing to pay
| in order to not get disconnected, the current record in spot
| price are 580.55 per MWh (that is market price before taxes,
| connection fees, and so on). How long voters would accept a
| elevated price is a question that many countries in EU saw
| answered following the energy crisis.
|
| So the best value for the money is the cheapest one that
| provide the service that people demand when all the costs are
| accounted for, and that does not cause voters to elect a new
| governments in order to have it solved.
| 7bit wrote:
| Truly great news. Less competition in the renewable energy
| sector for us.
| croes wrote:
| Nuclear and security, that's a good one especially nowadays
| when companies tend to connect everything to the internet and
| drone wars are a thing since the war in Ukraine.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/09/ukraine-war-br...
|
| Didn't here similar about wind and photovoltaics
| londons_explore wrote:
| Nuclear is an industry that strangled itself with red tape and
| harmful PR, making every project fiendishly expensive and take so
| many decades that cost-of-capital costs are insane.
|
| I don't think it will ever again beat solar+wind+battery for grid
| scale carbon-free power pricing.
| longor1996 wrote:
| Wasn't all that bad PR mostly caused by the coal/oil industry,
| doing some serious astroturfing for a decade or so?
| toyg wrote:
| If by "the coal industry" you mean people in charge of
| Chernobyl and Fukushima...
| Angostura wrote:
| And Windscale (now Sellafield) and Three Mile Island
| longor1996 wrote:
| Oh, sorry! Shouldn't have said "all" there... :'D
| lysace wrote:
| See also: Gazprom, Gerhard Schroder ("Putin's man in Germany"
| according to NYT) and the German nuclear power shutdown.
|
| https://atomicinsights.com/gazprom-profiting-mightily-
| from-g...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/world/europe/schroder-
| ger...
| eucyclos wrote:
| I think it was mostly caused by fear about nuclear Armageddon
| during the cold war - it's hard to feel like the world could
| end at any second due to nuclear bombs while also feeling
| grateful for nuclear electricity generation. Would be even if
| there was no overlap between military and civilian nuclear
| industries, which of course there is.
| fundatus wrote:
| Well, at least for Germany it was the _actual_ nuclear
| fallout over large areas of the country after Chernobyl.
| Which is btw still measurable today. [1] That 's a pretty
| scary thing to happen to you and one just has to accept that
| these are the actual lived experiences of people that form
| their opinions.
|
| [1] https://www.bfs.de/EN/topics/ion/environment/foodstuffs/m
| ush...
| jabl wrote:
| Radiation detectors can detect very low levels of radiation
| (far below any measurable health effects, for instance), so
| claiming we can still detect fallout from Chernobyl doesn't
| really say anything.
| fundatus wrote:
| To quote from the article I linked to:
|
| > In the last years values of up to several thousand
| becquerel per kilogram were measured in wild game and
| certain edible mushrooms. In Germany it is not permitted
| to market food with more than 600 becquerel caesium-137
| per kilogram.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| This was my impression as well, both watching Smarter Every Day
| and visiting a nuclear power plant myself and taking the tour.
|
| Yes, safety is important, but I think they're far into
| diminishing returns territory, and we have to take the penalty
| in both energy cost and security.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> I don 't think it will ever again beat solar+wind+battery
| for grid scale carbon-free power pricing._
|
| The problem the UK has is their climate: Northerly enough that
| solar makes 5x as much power in the summer as it does in the
| winter, and much more demand for heating in the winter than
| cooling in the summer.
|
| Batteries are fine for storing solar in the day and using it at
| night - but much less good for summer-to-winter storage. And
| the UK isn't exactly eager to start flooding desolate valleys
| for pumped storage reservoirs either.
|
| Oh, and they don't just need to decarbonise their existing
| electricity output - they also need to greatly increase their
| electricity output to hit their goals on EV and heat pump
| adoption; and they need to lower electricity prices too.
|
| I can see why they'd hedge their bets.
| stephen_g wrote:
| The UK has massive wind resources up north. Absolutely no
| need for summer-to-winter storage, that would be madness!
| eucyclos wrote:
| Even if it had never had those issues, nuclear power would
| still be the textbook example of a fragile system - capital-
| intensive, centralized projects that can be shut down by
| disruption to fuel shipments halfway round the world, droughts
| in the cooling system's water sources, or any of a dozen unions
| of specialized workers going on strike. Add to that iteration
| cycles measured in decades instead of years and it's hard to
| imagine how Nuclear could ever even close the gap, let alone
| pull ahead.
|
| I have a theory that smart financiers avoid nuclear because
| getting a new version done on time and under budget is so damn
| hard, and smart physicists gravitate to nuclear for the same
| reason. I wish the nuclear-curious factions would pivot to a
| project Orion style endeavor instead of powering a UK hamlet
| sometime in the 2030s. Now there's something insanely difficult
| and likely to fail that I wouldn't mind my tax dollars being
| spent on.
| blitzar wrote:
| Capitalism is extremely poor at "fragile systems", and for
| whatever reason (water under the bride now) the nuclear
| industry never made the move to smaller modular systems -
| even for large installations (think a reactor hall with 20
| small cores rather than a single large core).
|
| Even this project sounds like a custom on-site build,
| although at the moment it is still vapourware.
| wafflemaker wrote:
| But the wind &solar is highly dependant on rare earth
| minerals that China can limit at any time.
|
| And their condition is for us to accept their highly
| subsidized products (cars, solar), which make our
| manufacturers go bankrupt.
|
| It also makes us lose manufacturing capacity for dual use
| products like drones etc.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Not once it's installed! And no such conditionality exists.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| Producing power by the mid 2030s? Isn't the entire point of SMRs
| that they are effectively a complete package and it takes very
| little effort to ship them out and getting them to produce power.
| Or is this just a pipe-dream we were sold?
|
| Like, I imagined these things being compact enough to be shipped
| to the outskirts of towns and producing power. Afterall, they are
| from the same technology that was powering nuclear subs, right?
| thyristan wrote:
| The reactor is still to be developed by Rolls Royce, which is
| hidden in mid article. The don't have plans, not even a working
| prototype yet, so expect delays to at least the mid 2040s.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| The underpant gnome version of nuclear power?
|
| Step 1: Find and reserve site of nuclear plant
|
| Step 2: ???
|
| Step 3: Power!
| pfdietz wrote:
| One has to expect any promise of future nuclear to have the
| optimism turned up to 11, right to the limit of
| plausibility. The reality will inevitably disappoint.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Isn't the entire point of SMRs that they are effectively a
| complete package and it takes very little effort to ship them
| out and getting them to produce power.
|
| That's the point if / when we have actually working SMRs, with
| production lines set up. But the limited development of small
| civilian reactors before the 80s and the 3 decades freeze on
| most things nuclear means SMRs are only just getting out of
| research status (e.g. in the US only NuScale's VOYGR are
| currently certified).
| topspin wrote:
| This Rolls Royce design isn't all that "small." A RR SMR design
| is a 470MWe PWR. About half the size of a typical PWR reactor.
| Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 was 460MWe. Calling this an "SMR" is a
| stretch, likely for PR purposes.
|
| It's a rather conventional design, low enriched fuel, no exotic
| coolants. There is a paper on it at NRC[1]. And they've never
| built one, so if they get it running by the 2030's they'll be
| doing pretty well for a Western company.
|
| [1] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2521/ML25212A115.pdf
| rsynnott wrote:
| This has kind of been the problem with SMRs; they sound great,
| but as you develop them, they get less and less small and
| modular. These are 470MWe. Coincidentally, the (very old)
| 'normal' MAGNOX reactors which used to operate at this site
| were 490MWe; in their day they were considered quite large.
|
| > Afterall, they are from the same technology that was powering
| nuclear subs, right?
|
| Not usually, no; that wouldn't be cost-effective.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > Not usually, no; that wouldn't be cost-effective.
|
| The reason being that the nuclear sub reactors run on very
| enriched uranium which is very expensive and not fun if some
| got away.
| isodev wrote:
| That was just for the news headlines, nuclear isn't and never
| has been, "practical". Look on the bright side, so much
| taxpayer money will go into this, it's probably going to make
| someone richer.
| mr_toad wrote:
| I doubt you could ship one. The cores need specialised port
| facilities to even get them into the subs.
| perihelions wrote:
| > _" The old nuclear power plant at Wylfa was switched off in
| 2015"_
|
| Tangentially--this is a brownfield site, where there once was an
| early generation of nuclear fission reactor, cooled by CO2 gas.
| Here's a brief description of what those machines looked like
| (not this exact one):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29890470 ( _" Nothing like
| this will be built again"_--263 comments)
| speedbird wrote:
| Wylfa was Magnavox, not AGR. AGR was the next generation that
| never went full commercial.
|
| Had a tour of the place back in the day before 9/11 and all
| that made the world a lot less fun.
| Oras wrote:
| Hopefully not another HS2
| jorisboris wrote:
| I believe the more technologically advanced we live the more
| energy we will use. Travel requires energy, ai models require
| energy, healthy food requires energy
|
| The cheaper and more abundant we can make electricity, the faster
| we can reap the benefits of new technology
|
| imo nuclear is an important part to have abundant energy at all
| times
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Anglesey is beautiful[0]. My ancestors came from there and I used
| to holiday there as a child. Today it is somewhat blighted by
| those ugly and noisy turbines[1]. I am in favor of this if it
| reduces the number of onshore turbines on the island.
|
| 0 https://www.celtictrailswalkingholidays.co.uk/wp-content/upl...
|
| 1 https://i2-prod.walesonline.co.uk/article21841043.ece/ALTERN...
| blitzar wrote:
| Hopefully we can go back to just having the big beautiful high
| voltage power lines again.
| testdelacc1 wrote:
| This live dashboard puts this number in perspective -
| https://grid.iamkate.com/
|
| Roughly: the demand is about 33-35GW. That's projected to become
| 50GW by 2050 as transportation and home heating become
| electrified. So that's the puck we're skating towards.
|
| Nuclear supplies a constant 10% of the demand today (more, if you
| count imports from France). The goal is to power 20% of the 50GW
| demand through nuclear. If it's cheap, even more. Each of these
| Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) generates 470MW, so we'd need about
| 20 of them.
|
| The plan is to set up a factory near Sheffield and produce the
| reactor parts like IKEA, so they can be assembled on site. The
| hope is that manufacturing and assembling the same product
| repeatedly makes people more efficient. That's the main problem
| with nuclear - over budget and delays - that SMRs aim to fix.
|
| I'm glad the UK is taking electrification seriously, and is
| investing in domestic industry that will hopefully export
| reactors if it's successful. Some folks might look at the
| estimated date of completion (2035) and get discouraged, but I
| wouldn't. The best time to plant this tree was 20 years ago. The
| second best time is now.
| jacobgorm wrote:
| "like IKEA" sounds misleading at best.
| testdelacc1 wrote:
| Misleading how? That's precisely how SMRs differ from
| traditional plants - they're manufactured in a factory
| instead of being constructed on-site. That's exactly like the
| difference between IKEA and constructing furniture from
| scratch using blocks of wood.
| blitzar wrote:
| > Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) generates 470MW, so we'd need
| about 20 of them
|
| A more realistic target, one that would make this all more
| viable, would be 50MW and make 200 of them.
| rsynnott wrote:
| That was the SMR dream, but it largely hasn't worked out, for
| various reasons. Most 'SMR' designs have grown to
| suspiciously close to er, normal nuclear reactors.
| jl6 wrote:
| This is a rare moment of sanity in energy policy. It's not about
| wind vs nuclear. We (the whole world) need everything we've got.
| SMRs have the potential to move nuclear out of its mainframe era.
|
| Remember iPhones would cost ~$billions each too if you only made
| 12 of them.
| fundatus wrote:
| That's not what we're seeing with nuclear power though. At
| least so far. Counterintuitively it seems to get more expensive
| the more you build of the same design: [1]
|
| > Among the surprising findings in the study, which covered 50
| years of U.S. nuclear power plant construction data, was that,
| contrary to expectations, building subsequent plants based on
| an existing design actually costs more, not less, than building
| the initial plant.
|
| [1] https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118
| jl6 wrote:
| Mass production has never been tried before for nuclear so
| those 50 years don't tell us much about the possibilities for
| the next 50 years. They built multiple mainframes of the same
| design too, but the scale remained tiny and so the costs
| remained high.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| We desperately need regional pricing. If we had that,
| manufacturers and data centres would be able to move to places
| like this, or to scotland, and get almost free electricity.
|
| And then electricity producers would have a huge incentive to
| build generation in places where electricity is actually used.
| And NIMBYs would be told to fuck off, because letting someone
| build an energy source would make your electricity cheap.
| chickenbig wrote:
| > If we had that, manufacturers and data centres would be able
| to move to places like this, or to scotland, and get almost
| free electricity.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglesey_Aluminium used to be
| close to Wylfa.
| JohnCClarke wrote:
| I suspect that the push for civilian SMRs is a disguised subsidy
| for the naval reactor programme. This is shortsighted because (1)
| for electricity renewables are cheaper than nuclear, and (2)
| large naval vessels are enormously vulnerable to drones.
|
| Ukraine's success against Russia's Black Sea fleet proves this
| for surface vessels. Similarly, it is easy to imagine a swarm of
| small underwater drones detecting, tracking and trailing nuclear
| submarines.
|
| The UK government's is more focussed on providing juicy contracts
| to large corporations than realistic preparations for the future.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > Similarly, it is easy to imagine a swarm of small underwater
| drones detecting, tracking and trailing nuclear submarines.
|
| Those are called torpedoes.
| Retric wrote:
| It's way cheaper to build a drone that doesn't need to travel
| quickly or carry huge amount high explosives.
| greedo wrote:
| How is a slow, lightly armed drone going to damage a
| nuclear submarine that can both outrun and outdive it?
| Retric wrote:
| The drone's goal is to locate it, you'd then send
| something else to destroy it if you're in an actual war.
|
| America uses surface buoy's to similar effect, going
| underwater would allow drones to be harder to detect.
| https://idstch.com/military/navy/navy-researching-new-
| buoy-t...
|
| Of note you don't necessarily need to be able to track a
| sub everywhere, an invisible underwater "fence" may be
| good enough.
| _n_b_ wrote:
| > I suspect that the push for civilian SMRs is a disguised
| subsidy for the naval reactor programme
|
| It absolutely isn't. There is very little crossover between the
| RR SMR (which is 470 MWe, not really an 'SMR' by IAEA
| definition) and a submarine reactor core. Sub cores are smaller
| and optimised for different conditions. They're vastly
| different tech. The teams at RR working on these are totally
| distinct with no crossover.
|
| RR just got PS9B for sub NSSS work. They don't need a back door
| subsidy when they have a big cheque coming right through the
| front door!
|
| If anything, UK govt is prioritising domestic technology,
| whether or not that's the best from a purely economic point of
| view.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| It is all about having the workforce able to deliver on the
| military ambitions.
|
| This has been well known for a while, and western governments
| have started to say the quiet part out loud to justify the
| insanely large handouts required to build civillian nucleaar
| power.
|
| https://theconversation.com/military-interests-are-
| pushing-n...
| wbl wrote:
| Ukraine's success proves that you need to actually have people
| guarding ships against intrusion. This is not a new lesson ever
| since the Raid on the Medway.
| 0x000xca0xfe wrote:
| Renewables are cheap but storage isn't.
| detritus wrote:
| ...just quite yet.
| epistasis wrote:
| In 2025 storage is cheap too, it's just that there's no need
| for it until you already have a large amount of renewables.
|
| 2025 is the year that storage is really being deployed in a
| serious manner in the US, more than 18GW most likely:
|
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65964
|
| You can see on the map at the bottom of this page that almost
| all the batteries are in areas that already have high amounts
| of renewables:
|
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64586
|
| And the prevalence of batteries in Texas means that they must
| be cost effective, because all grid assets in Texas are from
| private investors risking their own capital, and there is
| zero incentive for batteries except for their profit
| generative capacity.
| Closi wrote:
| > You can see on the map at the bottom of this page that
| almost all the batteries are in areas that already have
| high amounts of renewables:
|
| It could be - but the battery investments map also align
| with the map below which shows that these states (Texas &
| California) are also states suffering from blackouts.
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/power-
| outag...
|
| So while this could mean that storage is cheap, it could
| also mean 'Texas's mix and grid is unstable, particularly
| as it's not connected to the national grid, and this has
| opened the opportunity to profit from higher levels battery
| arbitrage that doesn't exist in a better balanced grid'
| epistasis wrote:
| That looks to be a population map:
|
| https://xkcd.com/1138/
|
| Which is what you would expect of a stat of "number of
| outages per state". If it's not normalized for land area,
| population, and all the other primary contributors to the
| total number of outages it's a useless stat. San
| Francisco has more people in it that the entire state of
| Wyoming.
|
| Texas' power is also cheap, so to justify batteries they
| would have to not raise the cost of electricity that
| much.
|
| The current cost of grid batteries is hidden, but it's
| not too hard to find out, and it is indeed quite cheap.
| But if there's no mechanism to get paid, ie ability to do
| time arbitrage in the energy market, then they do not get
| deployed.
|
| Electricity market design and the ability of
| ISOs/PUCs/utilities to adapt to changing technology are
| bigger barriers to batteries than their price.
| abathur wrote:
| There's quite a lot of pricing data available for the
| energy market and it might be possible to approximate
| battery profitability by rerunning normal and long-tail
| history.
|
| See https://www.ercot.com/mktinfo/prices and
| https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards and https://
| www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/energystoragere...
| for example.
| Retric wrote:
| Storage is cheaper than peaking power which is why it's
| common to add huge battery bank to solar power plants. It's
| simply more profitable to add storage.
|
| Net result renewables currently save you money until ~80%
| annual electricity supply. At which point adding more
| batteries and generation to cover overnight demand is cheaper
| than adding nuclear to the mix. In such a mix, Nuclear saves
| a little per kWh overnight and cost way more per kWh during
| the day, net result it's more expensive as baseload. But,
| operating nuclear only at night drives up per kWh costs above
| storage.
|
| Due to plant lifespans, new nuclear is already a poor
| investment which is why it's rare, which then drives up
| construction costs. It's a viscus cycle which ultimately
| dooms nuclear without massive subsidies which become hard to
| justify.
| Closi wrote:
| > Net result renewables currently save you money until ~80%
| annual electricity supply. At which point adding more
| batteries and generation to cover overnight demand is
| cheaper than adding nuclear to the mix.
|
| Assume you mean more expensive than nuclear in the second
| point?
|
| Agree with your point although it's about wind in the uk
| rather than solar, and about being able to last a few weeks
| if there is calm weather rather than a day without sun,
| which is when having a nuclear baseload makes sense.
| Retric wrote:
| > Assume you mean more expensive than nuclear in the
| second point?
|
| No, but I clarified the comment. My point is when taken
| in isolation nighttime nuclear costs less than nighttime
| batteries on a near zero carbon grid, however the
| economics operate 24/7/365. Nuclear heavily favors 24/7
| operations so gaining 3c/kWh at night while losing 6c/kWh
| during the day is a net loss. Operating only at night
| almost doubles nuclear's cost per kWh so you'd lose money
| anyway.
|
| > weeks if there is calm weather rather than a day
| without sun, which is when having a nuclear baseload
| makes sense.
|
| If you don't have enough energy for a few days randomly
| you need peaking power generation not baseload. Nuclear
| is really bad at ramping up to meet sudden shortfalls.
|
| The scenario you described is one of the very few cases
| where hydrogen might make sense assuming all fossil fuel
| use is banned. Without that natural gas is going to win
| to prevent random outages every few decades.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| As for point one they are much less reliable because they are
| intermittent. I'm skeptical of how much cheaper renewables are.
| I haven't noticed energy prices declining recently. Correct me
| if i'm misinformed. I'm slightly confused by point 2. What are
| you saying, because soviet technology is getting sunk a lot we
| should stop bothering with having a navy?
|
| Either way you are giving way to much credit to the power of
| the UK military industrial complex.
| zoul wrote:
| Solar power is very cheap and still getting cheaper:
|
| https://www.statista.com/chart/35117/levelized-cost-of-
| energ...
| chickenbig wrote:
| Solar power doesn't work well in the UK in winter, with 1/3
| of the energy output of summer months.
|
| Taking the limit of free solar power, what would the
| storage requirements look like for the UK?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The UK is aiming for around 27GW of battery storage by
| 2030.
|
| But it's not a simple picture. The grid needs to be
| expanded to distribute power from renewables more
| efficiently, batteries aren't the only storage option,
| and the concept is still too centralised.
|
| A combination of distributed rooftop solar with domestic
| batteries, maybe local storage in substations, strategic
| national storage, and a mix of sources would be a more
| effective strategy than trying to park huge batteries
| around the country in the hope they'll be big enough.
|
| The UK still has a post-war mindset around energy which
| doesn't make sense in the 21st century.
| chickenbig wrote:
| > The UK is aiming for around 27GW of battery storage by
| 2030.
|
| How many GWh? Citation please.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I'm not OP but: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-
| the-uk-plans-to-rea...
|
| It's either 27 or 27GW they are installing sorry.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| 27GW for an hour or for a week?
|
| There's a massive difference.
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| take a look at all the roofs next winter, if its anything
| like the other side of the canal, you'll see that the
| average roof coverage is substantially less than 1/3.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| The Royal Navy only uses nuclear power for submarines, at least
| for now (unlike USN which uses it for big aircraft carriers)
| lazzurs wrote:
| Making the two new UK aircraft carriers dependent on natural
| gas has to be one of the worst military procurement decisions
| of the modern era.
| 7952 wrote:
| Its fuelled with diesel, not natural gas. And all carriers
| need refuel at some point for their embarked aircraft.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _I suspect that the push for civilian SMRs is a disguised
| subsidy for the naval reactor programme._
|
| Ontario, Canada is building a bunch of BWRX-300 SMRs and don't
| really have a desire for a naval reactor programme:
|
| * https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/carney-ford-
| announce-...
|
| * https://www.opg.com/projects-
| services/projects/nuclear/smr/d...
|
| * https://www.gevernova.com/news/press-releases/ge-vernova-
| hit...
|
| Canada is currently looking at new submarines, and the final
| two candidates are both SSKs (and not nuclear SSNs):
|
| * https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2025/08/28/canada-
| shortlis...
|
| * https://www.canada.ca/en/public-services-
| procurement/news/20...
|
| As an Ontario resident I wish they chose to build more CANDUs
| (which, AIUI, they are planning to do as well) rather than
| SMRs: our grid is in more need of 'bulk power', and SMRs are
| better suited to small grids (like the Canadian Maritimes) or
| small sites (like in Poland: replacing previous smaller scale
| coal plants).
| Closi wrote:
| > This is shortsighted because [...] electricity renewables are
| cheaper than nuclear
|
| This is an oversimplification - Renewables are cheaper than
| nuclear, but they are also less reliable than nuclear in the
| sense that when the wind stops blowing, power stops being
| generated. Also if you include the cost of energy storage to
| survive a week or two without substantial wind, suddenly it's
| not the cheaper anymore.
|
| A mixed nuclear + renewables grid would reduce the total cost
| because nuclear can provide a stable base load which isn't
| affected by seasonality. Modern plants can also ramp up/down to
| some extent to balance the overall system.
|
| That's why you need an energy mix rather than just putting all
| your eggs in a single source.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| If you invest in battery and storage tech you'll get reliable
| storage long before the first "baseload nukes" start
| contributing to the grid.
|
| Storage tech has been criminally underfunded and under-
| researched. There are many, many options. But because of poor
| investment decisions and lobbying from the usual suspects the
| tech is around twenty years behind where it could be.
| jayflux wrote:
| That's simply not true, or at least not today.
|
| First of, the UK are investing in battery storage, there's
| already a rollout of grid-level battery systems across the
| country*.
|
| None of them hold capacity for longer than 2 hours before
| they need to start discharging. In fact, the record
| breaking duration is 6 hours. This is great as a short
| buffer, but it's not "storage".
|
| To put this in perspective, last year the UK went 2 weeks
| without any significant wind, so a 2 hour buffer is
| nothing. This is why Hydrogen is still being kept as an
| option for long term storage.
|
| https://stateraenergy.co.uk/projects/thurrock-storage
|
| https://rhomotion.com/news/longest-duration-battery-
| energy-s...
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| The ratio between GW and GWh is always an optimization of
| the fixed costs vs potential profit.
|
| A 4 hour battery can run at 50% for 8 hours or 25% for 16
| hours.
|
| The determining factor is what the market needs.
| Melatonic wrote:
| For civilian use I believe this has proven unnecessary
| (assuming mix of wind, solar, etc) plus battery and other
| storage
|
| Still seems like a worthwhile pursuit though
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| nuclear energy still causes a lot of prompt heating
|
| other forms of renewables could generate electricity _while
| cooling the planet_.
|
| a super chimney (perhaps suspended with balloons) piercing
| the tropopause and carrying either air in open or closed loop
| fashion, or a "refrigerant" (not necessarily a harmful one,
| could just be moist air, or any other medium of thermal
| exchange, like a gravity assisted heat siphon) in a closed
| loop could generate power while cooling the planet, it would
| also be base load given the large temperature difference
| between surface level and tropopause (which persists day and
| night, summer and winter). Obviously this can also be used to
| desalinate sea water by freeze desalination.
|
| as soon as such technology takes off and multiple blocs make
| use of such technology, they will probably even get into
| arguments about how long or what fraction of the time each
| nation state is allowed to generate power this way (arguing
| it was our Western excessive CO2 consumption to which we have
| to thank this excess heat availability, and India countering
| that we should take into account their proper share of excess
| CO2 due to the underground coal mines that have been burning
| uncontrollably for decades on end, etc...) to the point of
| nation states attacking each others superchimneys.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| What good is a "base load" when the problem is peak demand.
| You're saying nuclear gets to take the easy stuff and another
| industry can worry about peaker plants.
|
| I suspect you need far ledd in peaker capacity - both GW and
| GWh - with a 100% wind than 100% nuclear if you spend the
| same amount on wind and nuclear.
| adrianN wrote:
| Either you build enough nuclear to cover 95% of peak demand
| and essentially only run it a few weeks a year (because most
| of the time you have plenty of renewable supply) for terrible
| ROI or you need storage and peaker plants anyway. Nuclear
| energy is mostly interesting for cross subsidizing a military
| nuclear program by keeping relevant skills in domestic
| supply.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Russia's naval prowess have always been a joke so you can't
| make too many conclusions.
| greedo wrote:
| It's dangerous to extrapolate much from the performance of the
| Russian Navy in the Black Sea. While Ukraine has had remarkable
| success in almost completely shutting down Russian naval
| activity in the Black Sea, it's not all due to the superiority
| of drones. Russian incompetence, both in naval strategy as well
| as operations is endemic, and the fate of the Moskva and other
| systems isn't indicative of a widespread vulnerability of
| surface vessels to drone systems. The Moskva was sunk with
| cruise missiles, primarily ones developed from Soviet era
| missiles (Kh-35). Much has been written about the materiel
| state of the Moskva, as well as operational
| decisions/inadequacies that lead to its demise.
|
| Surface drones work well when air cover is limited/restricted.
| Tracking them via radar is difficult due to surface noise, but
| it can be done. Countering them isn't an impossible task
| either, it, like other threats are handled systematically. The
| Russians have a relatively slow OODA loop, and Ukraine has been
| very successful in leveraging their superiority.
|
| Is the threat a universal one or limited to the UKR/Russian
| conflict? A little of both. We've seen where an unprepared ship
| can be easily damaged by a small boat laden with explosives
| (USS Cole). We've seen the Ukrainians shut down Russian
| activity in the Black Sea, even going so far as to down
| unwitting aircraft that didn't respect the threat. But
| militaries adapt, especially to proven threats. Witness how the
| West responded to the sinking of the Eilat in 1973. It
| developed countermeasures and weapon systems for the threat of
| cruise missiles, while simultaneously developing their own
| cruise missiles (Harpoon/Exocet/Otomat/Penguin).
|
| Will undersea drones prove as concerning? I doubt small swarms
| of UUVs will proliferate like we've seen with FPV drones.
| Flying through the air is much much easier than operating in
| water. Propulsion, C2, and targeting is quite difficult
| underwater compared to UAVs. Both range and payload are a
| challenge, so I don't believe that a swarm of "small underwater
| drones" will be able to detect the quietest ships in the ocean
| any time soon, much less track and trail something that can
| travel at speeds above 40kts with ease.
|
| Now will large UUVs have a role in future naval combat?
| Undoubtedly.
| Melatonic wrote:
| It would also provide a steady source of tritium for upkeeping
| nuclear weapons
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| This: nuclear energy is a subsidy for nuclear weapons.
| OJFord wrote:
| > electricity renewables are cheaper than nuclear
|
| Are they still if you include storage, vs. nuclear's continuous
| generation?
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| Continue generation is great if you have continues demand.
| The U.K. does not have that (especially if you include
| heating and travel which is currently mainly provided by gas)
| jayflux wrote:
| That's quite an odd statement to make.
|
| The UK certainly does have continuous demand, our overall
| energy demand has rarely fallen below 25GW in the past
| couple of years. Right now gas makes up for much of that,
| the goal here is to replace gas with nuclear, using gas as
| baseload generation isn't wise long term.
|
| Source: https://grid.iamkate.com/
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| Our demand varies from 25 to 45GW
|
| Saying "nuclear can handle the easy part" doesn't help.
| You still need 20GW of extra capacity to cope.
|
| It's like saying "wind can handle the bulk of the
| capacity you just need to top up the rest".
| jayflux wrote:
| I'm sorry I struggle to understand your comment, but I'll
| have a go.
|
| > Saying "nuclear can handle the easy part" doesn't help.
|
| That's literally how baseload works, look at France's
| energy mix for an example, they have nuclear handle the
| bulk of their demand (at least the very minimum it will
| ever be) and renewables + transfers handle the rest, if
| renewables goes up they export it or lower their nuclear
| output (yes, their nuclear output can be modulated).
|
| > You still need 20GW of extra capacity to cope
|
| The goal isn't to replace the entire energy mix with
| Nuclear, the goal is to add enough nuclear in the mix so
| that we don't need gas being generating all year round
| (gas sets the price in the merit order so we don't want
| it on 24/7). If you added just 6GW of nuclear you'd be
| achieving that on some days.
| stevesimmons wrote:
| > gas sets the price in the merit order so we don't want
| it on 24/7
|
| I never quite understood the logic for this. Sure, if you
| overlay a simple upward sloping cost curve on a downward
| sloping demand-price curve, the market-clearing price is
| where they intersect, and that in practice much of the
| time is a gas generator.
|
| But there must be a million other aspects that can affect
| what price _needs_ to be paid to secure the capacity
| below that point. Surely only part of the total area
| under that market-clearing price needs to accrue to the
| generators?
|
| And if generators are getting windfall profits, can't the
| market rules be adjusted so more of it can given to the
| consumers in the form of lower energy prices?
|
| Can someone explain this? Maybe that is what actually
| happens, just it is too complex for the mass media.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| So if wind produced 35gw and nuclear 20 and demand is
| 30GW, you just say "well nuclear is the base load and
| wind needs to be curtailed"
|
| What about when nuclear produces 20GW and wind 5 and
| demand is 35gw
|
| Of nuclear costs the same as wind then why not have
| nuclear produce the full demand?
| AnonymousPlanet wrote:
| People often underestimate the amount of storage you need for
| renewables. Depending on the geographic location you might be
| looking at tens of TWh. The cost for renewables then suddenly
| becomes much higher.
|
| I recommend everyone who is using the cost argument to actually
| do the math on this first. It might be an eye opening
| experience. It certainly was for me.
| speedylight wrote:
| So Rolls Royce makes cars, engines for planes, and nuclear
| reactors?
| qayxc wrote:
| The car company is a different entity owned by BMW.
| ksec wrote:
| >estimated date of completion (2035)
|
| Ignoring cost, I sometimes wonder why we cant build this in 1 - 2
| year. And if the first one takes 5 years, why the second one
| isn't 5 times faster.
|
| It frustrates me that nothing in UK is done with any urgency. And
| I bet that the Estimate date will be off as well.
| jacobp100 wrote:
| The reactors will also be cast in the UK by Sheffield
| Forgemasters
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