Dreadful, truly dreadful: New Scientist on nuclear power
That’s the only phrase I can think of for Michael Brooks’s [paywalled] piece in New Scientist about nuclear power, “Is it all over for nuclear power?“. (Remember Andrew Marr’s dictum: when headlines end with questionmarks, the answer is usually firmly in the negative.)
OK, I’ll admit that I’m in favour - along with a fair number of other thinking people - of using nuclear power as the solution to our electricity generation needs, rather than fossil fuels or renewables. The French, who produce about 75% of their electricity from nuclear, seem to have muddled through with decent leccy prices; so much so that EDF has bought a number of British power companies.
I wouldn’t have minded this piece if it had been coherently argued. But it wasn’t. It assumed that renewables can fill the energy gap that the retirement of nuclear plants will leave; but that doesn’t answer how you cope with surges in demand (such as the classic “kettles on after Coronation Street at Christmas” - the one linked to was a 1200MW surge), or how you sequester power that those resources generate, or how you cope with the transmission losses in moving that energy from the remote places where the renewable resources are to the built-up places where they’re mostly needed.
Most insulting are some of the hidden assumptions. OK, nuclear electricity is “underpriced” because it often doesn’t include decommissioning costs; once you put those in, nuclear power suddenly becomes a lot more expensive than that generated by coal- or gas-fired stations.
Great, yah. But tell me - has anyone calculated the “decommissioning” costs of using gas-fired or coal-powered stations? Anyone tried to calculate the effect of ameliorating CO2 emissions per megawatt? I’d really like to see those numbers, and then have an honest comparison of fossil, nuclear and renewable power - on all the points that matter.
But articles like that one - ptuh. Badly constructed, badly argued, and it really saddened me that nobody at NS apparently had the courage or power or whatever to throw it back at the writer and get it redone properly. I’d like to think it wouldn’t have happened in my time. (I worked at New Scientist from 1992-95, having freelanced for it in 1991-2.) Probably it did. But not at such an important time, on such an important topic. It didn’t even have the courage to front up anyone from the nuclear industry, which left me incredulous. And how about Professor Ian Fell’s claim that “the engineers who built Sizewell B are all either retired or dead” (PDF, but you have to pay; trust me, the article quoted him.) That to me means that either in 1995, when construction finished, (1) they were all aged 50 or over (2) they all retired very young on the vast sums they made as nuclear engineers (3) they all died of gruesome radiation-related diseases.
I think we’d have heard if it was (3). I can’t believe the nuclear business was so good it was (2). Nor that the age range was so narrow that it’s (1). Yet this claim was taken on face value. Perhaps Professor Fells could substantiate his claim. It would have been nice if Michael Brooks had tried.
And sure, I know dog shouldn’t bite dog, but really. Bad is bad.
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- A very brief word on George Bush: why "freedom" but not "democracy"? (20 January 2005; score: 58.76%)
- Nuclear power? Yes please (8 July 2004; score: 55.23%)
- Environmentalists will embrace nuclear power and GMOs, and other contrary thinking (18 April 2005; score: 53.93%)
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April 25th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
Right on, Charles. I remember being shocked at the woolly thinking and one-sidedness in this polemic. It displayed a naked bias and offered no right of reply to the nuclear industry. I remember reading that if the US had built all the stations that were cancelled after Three Mile Island then the US would have exceeded its proposed Kyoto targets. I think that a lot of the attitude towards nuclear energy is bound up
in a word that people associate with either destruction (bombs) or incomprehensible weirdness (Simpsons style mutant fish) alongside a general mistrust of science/authority (things have sometimes been oversold or contradicted in the past). I’ve always seen the attitude towards nuclear power in much of the West as an offence against reason. We don’t need to be using fossil fuels to make electricity, so we should stop. Renewable is desirable but marginal (the article did not address what might happen if the wind doesn’t blow on a given day) and micropower cannot hope to supply the kinds of reliable, robust grids our society and businesses demand. Contentious, one-sided pieces may sell mags, but are fifth
April 25th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
rate journalism at best. Yuck indeed.
April 25th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
Ian Fells is a pretty strong proponent of nuclear power. He was the guy who, after the northeastern US power cut of summer 2003, said the UK was on course for its own blackout, although there was nothing fundamentally out of whack in overall generating capacity. But, at the time, UK leccy prices were so low that the generating companies were mothballing as many plants as they could to save money, so the argument had some credibility.
This prompted the IChemE to argue that CO2 emissions relative to generating capacity were going up because the old, fully depreciated and less efficient gas and coal plants would be kept running for longer. Under NETA as it was, there was no incentive to invest in more efficient gas plants. Naturally, there was a bit of self interest in the IChemE’s position as it has a substantial membership made up of people who push stuff through pipes for living. That institution is not averse to nuclear either but, this being about 18 months shy of an election, the government was not going anywhere near nuclear. The thinktanks were saying that nuclear would come back on the agenda but not until after 2005. And, hey presto, it has.
Fells has carried out a fairly extensive lobbying and letter-writing campaign for nuclear power over the last five years or so. He has argued that the UK better get back into building nuclear plants pronto because there are very few people with the right experience who aren’t building them in Japan, South Africa or Korea (or Iran, I suppose). The “retired or dead” quote came from the Rimini conference document here, but at the end of a paragraph about problems competing for engineers if the UK does not move soon. I would imagine this bunch might have something to say about claims that it lost its membership. Most of them are probably, in reality, working for BNFL’s Westinghouse division.
There is a Keeping the Nuclear Option Open consortium funded by the EPSRC and BNFL, so it’s not true to say there is no work going on here. However, Fells favours a fast-breeder reactor design. I haven’t checked, but that approach may be incompatible with the designs favoured by KNOO group. (The last time I went near energy as a subject properly was for a couple of analyses about the 2003 power cuts).
On the wind power side, you do need a shedload of turbines to get anywhere near the original 20 per cent target for renewables. Meteorologically, the UK is a great place for wind turbines: 40 of the total ‘wind resource’ hits the UK or the waters around it. However, even then, they would run only about 30 per cent of the time and it can be too windy as well as not windy enough. A big anticyclone can keep a turbine out of action for several days. But, and this is the real but: there is a limit on how much wind or wave power you can put into a grid without making the grid unstable. Twenty per cent is a realistic upper limit according to some. The Scandinavians can go higher because they effectively use hydroelectric generation as a ’sink’ for wind. The two balance out quite nicely. But we don’t have lots of hydroelectric. So, that’s out of the question.
Nuclear is not necessarily the only option. High-efficiency gas turbines would be a politically easier and possibly a better option than nuclear even though they generate CO2 and raises the prospect of going cap in hand to Gazprom. These turbines are much more responsive to changes in demand than nuclear and they produce a lot less CO2 than traditional stations. Electricity generation accounts for just 30 per cent of the UK’s CO2 emissions today, albeit with 20-30 per cent nuclear. You can make a much bigger dent in emissions for Kyoto by focusing on other areas, particularly transport, although that might be electorally much less popular than opting for nuclear + gas.
April 25th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
Many of the arguments both for and against nuclear power seem to stem not from a plus/minus determiniation, but from justifying a decision the author has already made.
You might find my website interesting. It contains a techno-thriller about nuclear power endorsed by Stewart Brand, founder of The Whole Earth Catalog. There’s no cost. See the homepage comments for reader reviews. I’ve spent many years in the US nuclear industry, but have tried to keep an open mind to all possibilities. http://RadDecision.blogspot.com
April 30th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
“Anyone tried to calculate the effect of ameliorating CO2 emissions per megawatt? I’d really like to see those numbers, and then have an honest comparison of fossil, nuclear and renewable power - on all the points that matter.”
You will be able to read some answers to your questions in the next issue of Ingenia, the magazine produced by The Royal Academy of Engineering. Funnily enough, one of the authors of the article, on carbon capture, is Ian Fells, who is not so much pro-nuclear as anti-lunacy.
I should declare in interest, I have know Ian for 30 years or more and we have been known to share several “jars” together.
By the way, I recently spent two hours interviewing one of the engineers who built Sizewell B. A civil rather than nuclear engineer, but alive and kicking. He now has the lesser task or running Network Rail.
May 5th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
I think that it would be prudent to develop new Nuclear capacity but not using the failed technology of Sizewell B. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island demonstrate the real problem with nuclear power - the political dimension. Sellafield (nee Windscale) shows that the British political system is no better.
I don’t want the existing nuclear establishment to have a second chance. They do not deserve it. We were lied to repeatedly, we were told the designs are failsafe, they are not. We were told the power is cheap, it is not.
What I would like to see is the new wave of nuclear designs being given a chance. Designs like the MIT pebble bed which are genuinely fail safe.
What I fear is going to happen here is that the green lobby will successfully block building of new nuclear capacity up to the point where there is a crisis. At that point the only option that can meet the shortfall will be another generation of the light water design.
Going with an entirely new design now will have the advantage that the older generation of engineers will be around to comment on a design that they are not personally committed to. The chance of getting a thorough review is greatly improved.