Britain Offers 18 More Sites for Nuclear Plants

From Reuters: Britain said on Thursday it was making 18 more sites available for the next generation of nuclear power stations and gave operators four weeks to pick the ones they wanted.

"Interest in building new nuclear power stations in the UK is strong," Business Secretary John Hutton said in a statement on the Government News Network.

That's putting it mildly. Currently, the U.K. derives about 19 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy and, while the goal is to increase the percentage dramatically, no target was given in the article.

Comments

Anonymous said…

If Britain actually goes ahead with a big build of like 10 big nuclear plants that they are talking about they will become a world leader in nuclear. And have clean, affordable energy for 2 generations of future Brits to come.

They need to just go for it.

March 7, 2008 at 3:52 AM

Unknown said…

"...while the goal is to increase the percentage dramatically"

Not strictly true. The new stations will, by and large, replace older stations coming offline. Six stations (2 final Magnox and 4 AGR's) are due to come offline by 2015. By 2020 the only nuke station that will still be generating (assuming no extensions) will be Sizewell B.

March 7, 2008 at 10:30 AM

Anonymous said…

I think it's necessary to take a look at the broader picture Paddy. IF...and it's a big "if"...they build the 10 plants, and they due within or close to budget and schedule, then it will of won over the public completely, IMO, and they will go "all nuclear" by the middle of the century.

Plus...all the proposed plant builds are much bigger units than the current fleet.

David

March 8, 2008 at 9:33 AM

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog