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Properjob70 t1_j5f23fk wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in 1st small modular nuclear reactor certified for use in US by sunflowerastronaut

🇬🇧 last 12 months. We certainly have more wind & solar to harness. A record 21GW just last month followed by a period where it wasn't windy & we only got 0.7GW out of it.

41% gas underpins this. And we've all (Europe) been walloped by the price fluctuations caused by the geopolitical antics of producers of said gas jacking up the price this side of the pond. Gas is not an energy security friendly fuel. And it still heats a large percentage of homes here.

We're building HVDC interconnects for all we're worth. Hydro & geothermal isn't really a thing here and hydro is mostly built out. Our wood pellet burners (6.5% total 12mths) are disallowed past 2028 so we don't chip up North American virgin forests to supply them.

Nuclear plants provided >16% electricity but each year fewer plants will be around so that has dropped from 9GW to 5GW in a few short years. It ain't cheap but it is secure so policy is aiming at around 10GW by 2035 to assist net zero. SMRs might help buy us 50 years or so while we work out the harder problems intermittent sources bring

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[deleted] t1_j5f31ax wrote

Nuclear doesn't mesh well with intermittent sources at all, though.

The only thing it does is provide a base level below which generation will not drop, which is not actually that useful for the way grids operate. What you need for intermittent renewbales is backup sources that can be easily, economically, and quickly ramped up and down to balance demand and supply.

Currently that does mean gas generators, unfortunately. Medium to long term, various storage plants such as pumped hydro, batteries, maybe gravity storage, compressed air storage, maybe hydrogen, etc.

UK has 3.2 GW of nuclear that will be finished (Hinkley C). And 3.2 GW that might be built (Sizewell).

Alongside something like 90 GW of wind power in the pipeline that will produce 6-7x as much annual electricity as those two nuclear projects.

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Properjob70 t1_j5f7izj wrote

We're building more solar & gas at pace here - a good thing but over here it'll barely keep up with the ageing out nuclear stations & the woodchip burners going offline by 2028. All those storage things are nearly as far out in adoption as SMRs and we're really going to need them as well as the planned 10GW nuclear.

Mostly, the storage will be able to last hours, maybe days, the HVDC between nations smooths things out. But when that Black Swan weather event happens & blankets most of Europe in a high pressure bubble that kills off the wind for 2 weeks... Not many answers with what we'll have around 2030.

E.g. Lithium batteries are great as instantaneous peakers & grid frequency stability for a few hours - but lower tech solutions like flow batteries are more suited to stationary applications, especially as lithium production hits a pinch point where it's really wanted for Gigafactories for electric vehicles above all else - and transport will pay more.

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[deleted] t1_j5f84lu wrote

Nuclear isn't an answer for long term outages of renewables, though, unless you are proposing we just build a 100% pure nuclear grid, overbuilt by a factor of 60% or something to be able to ramp up and down to load follow.

Because in any normal model of nuclear buildout you don't have significant "spare capacity" to bring online to backstop renewable shortages; the plants are designed to run at 90-95% capacity factor. Minimal room to ramp up further.

All the happens if you have a 50% renewable 50% nuclear grid is that if half the renewable generation drops out, you drop to 75% output and the grid collapses into rolling (or long term) blackouts anyways.

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Properjob70 t1_j5fa75g wrote

Govt policy here is aiming at around 20-25% nuclear by around the mid 2030s. Three off 3.2GW EPR sites (one under construction, one agreed, one contended) plus one existing AGR.

They are supporting a Rolls Royce version of the SMR in this article but there isn't a policy that includes their use in generation yet given they aren't being built and aren't approved. But I can't see a scenario where SMRs won't come in useful for net zero if we can crack it.

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[deleted] t1_j5fcsml wrote

What's the third EPR? I'm only aware of Hinkley and Sizewell.

And for sizewell. While I knownits been approved, I'm still maintaining some skepticism on it actually being built, until construction is significantly underway.

SMRs will be useful for net zero if they come in as economically viable. But right now, that prospect does not seem likely.

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Properjob70 t1_j5fezjk wrote

TBH I share your skepticism on Sizewell but it would be a major controversy if it didn't, especially now China has been paid off

EPRs at either Wylfa/Oldbury (April 2022 announcement) plus some as yet unrealised plans from 2021 to build a hybrid wind farm / Nuscale SMRs that is meant to be for generating hydrogen.

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