A bit delayed, the secretary of state for energy security and net zero, Grant Shapps, has officially launched Great British Nuclear (GBN), the new ‘arm’s-length’ government agency that is meant drive the delivery of new nuclear energy projects- especially small modular reactors (SMRs). The press release was very up tempo, with the headline: ‘British nuclear revival to move towards energy independence’. It said that GBN will ‘drive rapid expansion of nuclear power at an unprecedented scale’, all apparently for just an extra £157 million, with most of that being for SMRs, including advanced High Temperature Reactors, and some new fuel production plants, the later ‘supporting the global move away from Russian fuel’.
Well, while it would be good not to use Russian fuel in future (e.g. for new SMR/HTR designs), talk of a ‘massive revival’ of UK nuclear may be a bit premature. In all about £233m has been allocated to new SMR work so far, plus £700m for the big Sizewell C., and it’s far from clear whether either of these options, big or small, will get the go ahead. Funding Sizewell C will not be easy, according to a review in Nuclear Engineering International, with few investors coming forward, and a review of SMR options concluded that ‘none of the tested concepts is able to compete economically with existing renewable technologies’.
Nevertheless, a tender for procurement contracts for SMRs has been launched which states that between one and four awards could be made for grant funding, and, ultimately, up to £20bn spent on developing designs and funding construction. However, that’s all a bit speculative. While some more grant support will no doubt continue (Rolls Royce has already had £210 for working up its mini PWR-design), the £20bn will mostly presumably involve GBN seeking partnerships with private sector companies and private finance. Shapps stressed that this was ‘not a spending commitment’ by government. So the Guardians headline saying Shapps had ‘earmarked £20bn for a fleet of new reactors’ was a bit wide of the mark. It will in any case take a while for GBN to get fully established, at present it hardly exists, and even longer for SMRs to exist- the Guardian noted that, in relation to the SMR competition, ‘a final decision on each project will not occur before 2029’.
The Guardian was though surprisingly positive on SMRs, despite the slow progress that has been made so far with the one-time UK front runner from Rolls Royce. It’s also not exactly a small reactor. At 470MW, it is actually larger than unit 1 at Fukushima and most of the old UK Magnox reactors. While a number of other companies are in the race (Balfour Beatty/Holtec included) with smaller designs, the Guardian said that ‘Rolls-Royce is understood to be sanguine about the rising competition, and comfortable in the belief that it can offer a compelling & competitive nuclear option’.
We shall see. SMRs miss out on the economies of scale of large units, but the theory is that mass produced smaller factory-made reactors will have lower units cost. That of course does assume there will be a large market for multiple units, and that, despite the safety and security issues, local communities will be happy to have them installed nearby e.g. in urban areas. However that’s all for the future. There is a way to go yet before any prototypes are ready for testing. Though it is interesting that power cost estimates for the USA’s NuScale mini PWR, currently the most advanced SMR being developed, have recently almost doubled .
Nevertheless, chided by Labour, with Shadow energy minister Alan Whitehead saying ‘it’s shambolic that after 13 years of Tory government, not one of the 10 nuclear sites approved by the last Labour government have been built,’ the UK does now have an ambitious nuclear programme, at least on paper, with a commitment to build a massive 24GW of nuclear capacity, the equivalent of a quarter of total generating capacity, by 2050. But, as I have indicated, it is far from clear if it can be achieved, especially given the low cost of renewables. As US energy expert Amory Lovins has commented ‘I don't see how nuclear new build of any type or size can compete in economic dispatch against un-subsidized renewables whose lifetime Levelized Cost of Energy in many countries has fallen through $30 and then $20 per MWh - even to $10’.
Leaving aside the cost issue and the still unresolved issue of long term radioactive waste disposal, nuclear enthusiasts do sometimes claim that we will need nuclear to back up variable renewables. However, there are cheaper ways to do that, including advanced batteries, for short to medium-term grid balancing, and, for longer duration green supply lulls, the storage of effectively free surplus green power as hydrogen, produced during demand lulls/green supply peaks. It is also possibly to operate on the demand side, for example to shave peaks by introducing ‘time of use’ consumer power tariffs and smart grid systems.
Given options like these, the whole idea of needing ‘baseload plants’ has become redundant. Certainly building new large inflexible nuclear plants for backup would be very expensive and inefficient, and we have no idea if SMRs would be any better. As Steve Thomas, an emeritus professor of energy policy at the University of Greenwich, has said: ‘SMRs are a long way from being commercially ready and at best will be as uneconomic as existing technology and at worst won’t even be technically feasible. The answers to reaching net zero with electricity are already available – energy efficiency and renewables. This announcement will only divert time and resources from these.’
The UK does have to get on with it though. As a new Oxford Economics/ EnergyUK report warns, the UK is already falling behind in renewables compared with its main rival countries. Given the urgent need to cut emissions, it’s therefore arguably rather tragic that, as Steve Thomas comments, ‘yet again, the British government has proved credulous to the claims of the nuclear industry that a new generation of technology will solve all the problems of its predecessors’. And evidently that applies to Labour too. We’ve yet to hear the latest position from the Lib Dems, but it could be that, apart from the SNP, the Greens will be the only formally anti-nuclear UK party. Although sadly soon without Caroline Lucas as its lone MP-she is standing down.
Similar battles are going on within EU, as I noted in an earlier post, but, despite its new green energy taxonomy, with nuclear now included, most banks and private investors evidently still see nuclear as risky. In the UK, and elsewhere, that may mean taxpayers and consumers will be targeted even more to provide the funding. According to YouGov, the UK public had been about equally split pro- and con- nuclear in recent years, but recently the pro- share has risen. But whatever their view, it looks likely that nuclear is going to cost them dear….
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