The UK's nuclear question
coalescent blogs a quote from John Lanchester's LRB piece on global warming.
The UK government announces a renewed life for nuclear power.
Anti-nuclear greyhairs are searching their closets for whistles, drums, and banners.
What then is next?
My tuppence:
For the UK (and many others), it comes down to a question of what future the UK wants for itself? What sort of relationship do Britons want with their energy, and what price they are willing to pay for it?
Britain may not have the massive steel foundries, shipyards, and brick bakeries of yore, but does have a humming electrical network sewing together homes full of appliances and circuit boards needled with serverfarms...an eon away from the old household radiocabinet and handful of electrical bulbs. No longer patiently pedaling to their village commerical district, the numerously more with means often drive to the hypermarket set atop old farmland far from High Street.
The guiding questions should then be: what sort of Britain do you want to live in, in 10, 20, 30, 40, and even 50 years' time?
What are the known depreciation factors in play? We can say with certainty that in the next 10 years: Britain's machinery for an independent nuclear deterrent must be decomissioned and isolated for longer than British civilization; that the North Sea's oil and gas output will curve down; and Britain's climate (with concurrent ecological impacts) will become increasingly unstable.
What then for the wake from the "dash to gas"? Russian gas imports? Switching to more electric hobs (despite the higher net-energy cost)? More biogas production (despite the decline of disease-prone agriculture and its farmers)?
Whether there's an affirmative jump to electricity (like, say, electrifying all of the UK's railroads, to at least achieve Continental parity; electrifying cookery; electrifying private automobiles), or the mere continued plodding upwards through consumer electronics,* we can be sure electricity demand will remain, and probably increase.
Other supply opportunities:
The UK still has marginal-but-good coal seams left to exploit, but that'll only break the carbon budget and probably accelerate the negative dynamics of UK +40 years on the ecological front.
Wind turbines: far and away a very good supply solution for the UK, even with technical issues of transmission from off-shore, or secondary supply when the wind doesn't blow. But that assumes the UK can move past the wind NIMBYism of "they're ugly^, too noisy, scare the cattle, and kill the birds."
Tides: I've read that if the UK would be willing to sacrifice the Severn estuary, 150% of the nation's power could be generated there with a tidal barrage. I'm sure that's a design problem, but it does illuminate the trade-offs involved for the UK. It is also worth noting how any such investment will be able to adapt to a changing climate.
Solar: Umm, well maybe that's a better solution to start investing in around UK+30, when the tech will be cheaper, and Old Blightey will be considerably less so.
Hydro: All that can be tapped already has been, often at the expense of ecologies that have a strong lobby for recovery in some form. The continued viability of this source needs to be considered at the UK+40 scenario, assuming the US, China, and India don't significantly change what they're doing in the next 2-15 years...whatever the UK might do.
The non-nuclear nuclear option: (shhh, don't tell anyone, but the UK is already buying a lot of French nuclear power...there's a good ol' bit of Anglo-Saxon business acumen, handing off all the waste responsibilities to the French)
The efficiency path: well, London has congestion charging, effective public transit improvements for some parts, and increased efficiency standards for everything from dishwashing machines to lighting to home insulation. Those standards and implementation certainly can, and should, be accelerated. Will it be enough? The real lesson of the 'energy intensity' hogwash my country is peddling is that most societies seem to be rather poor at keeping 'savings' saved.
The nuclear option: plenty of problems, but also avails a large number of solutions - not the least of which is buying time (admittedly in a deficit-spending sort of way, sorry grandkids-ad-infinitum) to put something better in place at a date-to-be-determined. Expensive? Yes, in many more ways than one. But it remains
*interestingly, where multi-functionality may cut down overall numbers of devices per capita (e.g. the next cloned generation of iPhones bundling the formerly separate units of mobile, entertainment unit, Internet connection, camera, and maybe even a pager), the increased processing needs may tip the net energy demand up...especially if more people become more Japanese, dispensing with home desktops for increased mobile computing.
^or "not in keeping with the rural character I bought my vacation home for."
The UK government announces a renewed life for nuclear power.
Anti-nuclear greyhairs are searching their closets for whistles, drums, and banners.
What then is next?
My tuppence:
For the UK (and many others), it comes down to a question of what future the UK wants for itself? What sort of relationship do Britons want with their energy, and what price they are willing to pay for it?
Britain may not have the massive steel foundries, shipyards, and brick bakeries of yore, but does have a humming electrical network sewing together homes full of appliances and circuit boards needled with serverfarms...an eon away from the old household radiocabinet and handful of electrical bulbs. No longer patiently pedaling to their village commerical district, the numerously more with means often drive to the hypermarket set atop old farmland far from High Street.
The guiding questions should then be: what sort of Britain do you want to live in, in 10, 20, 30, 40, and even 50 years' time?
What are the known depreciation factors in play? We can say with certainty that in the next 10 years: Britain's machinery for an independent nuclear deterrent must be decomissioned and isolated for longer than British civilization; that the North Sea's oil and gas output will curve down; and Britain's climate (with concurrent ecological impacts) will become increasingly unstable.
What then for the wake from the "dash to gas"? Russian gas imports? Switching to more electric hobs (despite the higher net-energy cost)? More biogas production (despite the decline of disease-prone agriculture and its farmers)?
Whether there's an affirmative jump to electricity (like, say, electrifying all of the UK's railroads, to at least achieve Continental parity; electrifying cookery; electrifying private automobiles), or the mere continued plodding upwards through consumer electronics,* we can be sure electricity demand will remain, and probably increase.
Other supply opportunities:
The UK still has marginal-but-good coal seams left to exploit, but that'll only break the carbon budget and probably accelerate the negative dynamics of UK +40 years on the ecological front.
Wind turbines: far and away a very good supply solution for the UK, even with technical issues of transmission from off-shore, or secondary supply when the wind doesn't blow. But that assumes the UK can move past the wind NIMBYism of "they're ugly^, too noisy, scare the cattle, and kill the birds."
Tides: I've read that if the UK would be willing to sacrifice the Severn estuary, 150% of the nation's power could be generated there with a tidal barrage. I'm sure that's a design problem, but it does illuminate the trade-offs involved for the UK. It is also worth noting how any such investment will be able to adapt to a changing climate.
Solar: Umm, well maybe that's a better solution to start investing in around UK+30, when the tech will be cheaper, and Old Blightey will be considerably less so.
Hydro: All that can be tapped already has been, often at the expense of ecologies that have a strong lobby for recovery in some form. The continued viability of this source needs to be considered at the UK+40 scenario, assuming the US, China, and India don't significantly change what they're doing in the next 2-15 years...whatever the UK might do.
The non-nuclear nuclear option: (shhh, don't tell anyone, but the UK is already buying a lot of French nuclear power...there's a good ol' bit of Anglo-Saxon business acumen, handing off all the waste responsibilities to the French)
The efficiency path: well, London has congestion charging, effective public transit improvements for some parts, and increased efficiency standards for everything from dishwashing machines to lighting to home insulation. Those standards and implementation certainly can, and should, be accelerated. Will it be enough? The real lesson of the 'energy intensity' hogwash my country is peddling is that most societies seem to be rather poor at keeping 'savings' saved.
The nuclear option: plenty of problems, but also avails a large number of solutions - not the least of which is buying time (admittedly in a deficit-spending sort of way, sorry grandkids-ad-infinitum) to put something better in place at a date-to-be-determined. Expensive? Yes, in many more ways than one. But it remains
*interestingly, where multi-functionality may cut down overall numbers of devices per capita (e.g. the next cloned generation of iPhones bundling the formerly separate units of mobile, entertainment unit, Internet connection, camera, and maybe even a pager), the increased processing needs may tip the net energy demand up...especially if more people become more Japanese, dispensing with home desktops for increased mobile computing.
^or "not in keeping with the rural character I bought my vacation home for."