Nuclear update- it's still with us!

With their costs falling, the UK is aiming to get most of its power from renewables, but the British Energy Security Strategy also includes an ambition for the UK to produce ‘up to 24 GW’ of civil nuclear power by 2050, which might mean that nuclear energy would provide up to 25% of the UK’s electricity. The government wants it to be mainly private sector funded, but this major expansion programme has not been going very well. Despite government encouragement and some seed corn cash, pension fund and investment managers have not been keen to face the risks and uncertainties, for example of the proposed large new EPR plant at Sizewell. Even NEST, the government’s workplace pension scheme, the National Employment Savings Trust, says it will not invest in nuclear projects like this, despite government policy directives  

Some remain hopeful that smaller modular reactor (SMR) projects will be more attractive to investors, but SMRs are some way off yet.  Rolls  Royce had been promoting the development of an SMR with some government support, but the head of the project at Rolls was a casualty of a management change recently.  Its whole SMR project might soon also be one. An aviation industry expert told the Telegraph: ‘it will inevitably get more expensive than you expected, they always do. And meanwhile, renewables are still getting cheaper.’ Maybe Rolls should just stick to aero-engines. 

Nuclear power is sometimes justified as a supplier of ‘baseload’ power’, which can back up variable renewables. For example, the UK’s revised Net Zero plan (p.19) says ‘Nuclear is the critical baseload of the future energy system’, while the British Energy Security Strategy (p.20) says ‘We can only secure a big enough baseload of reliable power for our island by drawing on nuclear.’

However, in response to a parliamentary question from UK Green MP Caroline Lucas asking the government for an estimate of ‘the amount of baseload electricity generation that is required by the UK each day’, Energy Minister of State, Graham Stuart MP said ‘Although some power plants are referred to as baseload generators, there is no formal definition of this term. The Department also does not place requirements on generation from particular technologies. As such, it is not possible to provide this information’. 

Subsequently, some adjustments in language have evidently been made, with the government statement on the much hyped Great British Nuclear programme saying nuclear ‘provides continuous power, which brings stability to the grid, offering a solid foundation for power generation on which renewable technologies can build’. Well at least they don’t now say its ‘baseload’. 

Meantime, Germany has finally closed the last three of its nuclear plants, and, although some think that may have be premature (they should perhaps have got rid of coal first), it’s now a done deal and does not seem to have caused major problems.  The 4GW or so of lost capacity is well on the way to being replaced by renewables, as their cost fall and they accelerate ahead.  So, although reliance on Russian gas has been problematic, that seem now to have been faced, with some now seeing Germany as pioneering a nuclear- free way forward.

Of course not everyone sees it that way. Despite the dire financial state of EDF, France has defended nuclear strongly and challenged the German phase out. It even tried to hijack the EU Renewables Directive. And there is no shortage of pro-nuclear propaganda around the world. Some of it arguably is rather odd. For example, what are we to make of Oliver Stone and his ‘Nuclear Now’ film? He has been quoted as saying ‘in the face of climate change, nuclear isn’t only an option it’s the only option,’.  And also that ‘Russia is doing a great job with nuclear energy’. Well, tell that last bit to the G7 group countries, 5 of whom have just tried to undermine Russia's grip on global nuclear power supplies by shutting it out of a new alliance. Or for that matter, those in Ukraine (and elsewhere) who worry about nuclear plant security in war zones. 

Then again, back in the USA, the mood seems to have been shifted toward support for nuclear, with a Gallup survey in late April finding that 55% of U.S. adults support the use of nuclear power, up from 51% last year. It’s hard to see why. The giant, much  delayed, Vogtle plant, the only new nuclear reactor project at the moment in the US, looks like its total cost could eventually reach $35bn. But maybe, as elsewhere, it is felt that small modular reactors will arrive soon to rescue nuclear. Or even fusion. We do seem to be forever hopeful when it comes to nuclear…perhaps not very wisely, when you look back at what has happened so far- as the tough new Netflix TV series on Fukushima should have reminded us.  

However, there are still nuclear fantasists around. For example, McKinsey consultants look to  their being up to 800GW of new nuclear plants globally by 2050 - more than twice what exist at present. Well, it is just about conceivable, although it’s worth noting that we already have over 3000GW of renewables in place globally. And that’s expanding fast.  China is taking a lead. But it is also expanding its nuclear capacity, with at one time a target of 200GW by 2035. And not to be outdone, the US Department of Energy recently said that the US domestic nuclear industry has the potential to ‘scale from ~100 GW in 2023 to ~300 GW by 2050 - driven by deployment of advanced nuclear technologies.’ 

Would that scale of expansion be wise? Energy Intelligence thought not. Indeed, challenging the US DoE projection,  it said it was ‘beyond absurd - it’s irresponsible. It’s absurd because the US no longer has the supply chain needed for large-scale nuclear projects- it can’t even forge a pressure vessel; it’s irresponsible because the cost of building 200-300 new reactors would be more than $3 trillion. Resources devoted to rescuing a dying industry are resources that wouldn’t be available for viable, less-costly strategies to achieve net-zero emissions in the power sector. More than that, the report reflects an energy agency still dominated by a nuclear-centric culture, and badly out of step with the times’. Quite so. A worryingly backward looking approach. But there is a lot of it about…