Blog 23_ Going Nuclear
"Let's just accelerate the decarbonisation of the electricity grid by replacing our fossil powered generating stations with some nuclear powered ones", says one critic. Maybe not.
In order to do that, we would firstly have to change the law. Generation of electricity by Nuclear fission is prohibited by the Electricity Regulation act of 1999 (Section 18).
Nuclear power does offer reliable, low carbon, generation of electricity ok, but it comes with a number of downsides:
- Nuclear plants are costly to build and can easily take 10 years to complete. Hinkley Point C in Wales consists of two 1630MW units. Construction started in March 2017 with the first unit scheduled to go live in 2029-2031. The projected cost is £15 billion at 2024 prices.
- The plants would produce radio-active waste which remains dangerous for hundreds of years. Properly storing and managing this waste is expensive and challenging.
- There is always the risk of a nuclear accident. Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011) come to mind. As well as a loss of life and indeed serious health impacts, accidents can also cause long term environmental damage. There is still a 30km exclusion zone around the Chernobyl plant nearly 40 years later.
- They bring security concerns as any nuclear installation is a potential target for terrorists.
A new design of nuclear plant termed Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) is on the horizon. As the name implies, these are smaller and more flexible nuclear units. On paper at least, they offer several advantages over the traditional large-scale reactors: enhanced safety features, reduced risk of accidents, less costly and faster to construct.
Two big disadvantages however - they still produce radioactive waste which has to be stored and managed and there are so few in service currently. It will take a minimum of ten to fifteen years of practical experience to verify whether SMRs have lived up to their promise. Hence I would say they are not relevant at present.
The above plants are examples of nuclear fission where a heavy atomic nucleus (eg uranium 235) is split into two smaller nuclei releasing energy in the process.
Nuclear fusion on the other hand is where two light atomic nuclei are combined to form a heavier nucleus, releasing energy. This is the type of nuclear energy that powers the sun and is the "holy grail" of electricity generation because it produces no long term waste. Lots of research effort is being devoted to this at present but several breakthroughs are needed before any practical implementations are possible.
From where we are now, the path to decarbonisation of the electricity network in Ireland should be built on wind and solar, combined with sufficient short and long term storage, and backed up by Fast start-up Gas plants (replacing legacy fossil generators) burning biomethane/green hydrogen, together with an expanded set of International Interconnects.