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However, in examining the role of SMRs, the EAC heard that a final investment decision on the first station in the UK is not expected until 2029. The timeline means it is unlikely to contribute to the 2035 target, or Labour’s pledge to run the grid on clean energy by 2030.
That argument is so old that you could have built three generations in that time. If you never start, it will allways be late.
Just when gas prices were spiking and countries that were heavily invested into nuclear were making massive profits and their citizens spared the worst of the price increases, I was reminded of Cameron cancelling the new generation of nuclear power plants in ~2010 as they wouldn't be ready until 2022.
Yeah, and then you ask which industry might have profited from it. I swear to God, if nuclear hadn't been a real threat to the coal and petroleum industry 50 years ago, it would never have gotten the reputation it got. Imagine where we could have been.
Oh and what's a few meltdowns between friends?
Are we still yammering about Tsjernobyl in 2024? Ask France how they are doing, or USA.
If you're genuinely worried about radiation According to estimates by the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the world’s coal-fired power stations currently generate waste containing around 5,000 tonnes of uranium and 15,000 tonnes of thorium. Collectively, that’s over 100 times more radiation dumped into the environment than that released by nuclear power stations.
Nuclear energy still has caused much less irradiation and deaths than coal.
How much death and irradiation have renewables caused? I mean, I get it, coal is shite. Nobody wants coal. But that's absolutely not an argument for nuclear.
It depends on the method here's a chart:
To be clear I don't oppose renewable green sources, I just feel the benefit of nuclear merit it to be used along side renewables.
The real issue for governments is that it takes longer than one election cycle for them to be built.
They are worried that they might spend all that money and then not be in power to reap the political benefit.
I swear this happened before "We won't bother building them, as they wouldn't even be online until 2020!"
Meanwhile in 2024, we'd quite like some power, please.
Considering our current track record with building infrastructure, even if construction starts there’s a good chance it would never be completed.
New nuclear power would likely attract a far greater degree of the sort of budget scrutiny and NIMBYist political opportunism that’s already derailed HS2.
These projects never get started because they never make sense. SMRs are simply not a mature technology at all so investing in them when safer and cheaper alternatives already exist is irrational.
Nuclear power plants are top 2 in area footprint for energy generation. It's clean, safe and a reliable baseload source. Personally I'd rather have nuclear power plant in the outskirts of my city than littering our nature with noisy bird killing windmills. Solar is cool, but won't work as a baseload source.
SMR won't mature without investments, it's the sort of short sightedness that has made us burn coal and gas for 50 unnecessary extra years.
"IT'S NOT PERFECT SO WE SHOULD NEVER USE IT GRRRRRRR ATOMIC ENERGY BAD COAL GOOD"
Is what I hear/read every time someone whines about how it's not developed enough.
It's not developed enough because shits like that never let them get improved upon.
Imagine how much better the world would be if people didn't still deep throat fossil fuel propaganda from the 50s and 60s.
I mean, the entire purpose behind SMR's is pretty much to circumvent the political opposition to built-in-place reactors. If companies/nations could build conventional nuclear they would.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
MPs have warned that a planned fleet of small nuclear reactors are unlikely to contribute to hitting a key target in decarbonising Britain’s electricity generation, as the government opened talks to buy a site in Wales for a new power station.
The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) said that ministers’ approach to developing factory-built nuclear power plants “lacks clarity” and their role in hitting a goal of moving the grid to clean energy by 2035 was unclear.
Last year a body, Great British Nuclear, was launched with the aim of delivering new power stations, including a fleet of small modular reactors (SMRs).
Philip Dunne, the chair of the EAC, said: “The UK has the opportunity to be a genuine world leader in the manufacture of SMR nuclear capability with great export potential.
“The first SMR is unlikely to be in operation by 2035, the date ministers have set for decarbonising the electricity supply: so what role will SMRs have in an energy mix dominated by renewables and supplemented by existing and emerging large-scale nuclear?”
Ministers now hope to strike a deal with Hitachi to acquire the land, with the intention of finding a partner to develop a nuclear power station there.
The original article contains 657 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 70%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
They will never get built.
If they get built they will cost 10x what a reactor should.
Regardless, a bunch of consultation firms will get tens to hundreds of millions of UK taxpayer money.
I mean, it's the UK. If we could get anything done that only cost 9x what it ought to that would be a national news story.
Huh. I wonder if all of the verbatim identical pro-nuclear posts I see on every social media platform that all read like they were copied and pasted from the same template are astroturfing by the nuclear consultation firms.
Huh. I wonder if all of the verbatim identical anti-nuclear posts I see on every social media platform that all read like they were copied and pasted from the same template are astroturfing by the natural gas firms.