Why is the UK anti-nuclear energy?
Posted by Xtergo@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 490 comments
I've seen far too much fearmongering, reluctance & misinformation both from the government and the public, about nuclear energy in the UK. It's not as bad as Germany, but people here still mostly hold anti-nuclear sentiments from what I’ve gathered. Despite the UK's lack of sunshine, cold and damp climate, energy scarcity, and some of the highest, least competitive energy prices in the world*, there’s still this aggressive push for solar (which isn’t bad, don’t get me wrong). But it’s so aggressive that it’s eating into what should have been our stable, non-fluctuating baseline power and it bites us back in winter when we have to rely on France to import energy.
What’s worse is that the more people reject and fearmonger about nuclear, the more we end up relying on France a country that powers us in more ways than we seem willing to power ourselves.
Out of all the places in the world we sit at a climate most suited for nuclear but the reluctance.is extremely high from my understanding of things.
allthemodsarenonces@reddit
It was a mistake 60 years ago to call it “nuclear energy”, as it became, and remains, ingrained with nuclear weapons in the public consciousness. Consequently it is seen by many as dangerous and irresponsible.
The high profile nature of reactor accidents doesn’t help either. Coal and fossil power kills masses more people worldwide due to air pollution than nuclear, but because fission reactor accidents are significant catastrophes, so everyone remembers them. It’s like the risk of driving versus a plane; for many the plane is always seen as more dangerous.
Brian-Kellett@reddit
Coal also probably injures more people through radiation than atomic energy as well - thorium gets concentrated in the fly ash. Stochastic risk being a thing.
lifejoiy@reddit
If it was called “quantum thermal energy” or something futuristic-sounding, I bet there’d be TikToks hyping it up as the “ecofriendly energy of the future.” Instead we’re stuck with 70s era dread
jordansrowles@reddit
I mean what else can we call them?
With the same logic we can’t really use the name Atomic either. And it’s not quite quantum. It’s not plasma. Maybe “Fission Energy”?
allthemodsarenonces@reddit
Atomic energy is generally regarded as the best option. The IAEA is the international atomic energy agency for exactly this reason.
When people hear nuclear they think of the radiation trefoil, and then they almost inevitably think of hazardous radiation and bombs.
QueefInMyKisser@reddit
It’s still the wrong word. I used to study experimental atomic physics. It’s a very different discipline from nuclear physics. Atomic physics deals with electronic transitions in the eV-keV range. Nuclear physics involves energies in the MeV-GeV range.
allthemodsarenonces@reddit
It’s less about semantics and more about what the public consciousness is open to. Yes, atomic physics and nuclear physics are distinct but the public aren’t fussed about that. If we’re being strict with terminology then nuclear energy is actually inaccurate, as this refers to fission, fusion and decay, whereas we only use fission for commercial power generation.
People see nuclear energy as derived from “splitting the atom” (on a terrestrial level anyhow) so the term Atomic Energy tends to make sense in my view. The more we can do to make nuclear fission power distinct from nuclear weapons, the better I believe we will be in the long run.
QueefInMyKisser@reddit
But people refer to nuclear weapons as atomic bombs too, so it doesn’t keep the terms distinct anyway.
Nuclear energy isn’t inaccurate terminology because it’s fission, it’s merely less precise.
Puzzled-Barnacle-200@reddit
Atomic Energy is the term used by the UKAEA, which is the UKs research institute for fusion
allthemodsarenonces@reddit
Yes, similarly with the IAEA.
There’s a real push internationally to try and distinguish nuclear power from nuclear weapons by renaming it as atomic energy or similar.
nothingpersonnelmate@reddit
It's low carbon, and in fact even lower than renewables by most estimates, but it isn't renewable because it uses a finite resource. If we somehow tried to power the whole world off known uranium deposits using current technology, assuming unchanging power consumption, we would run out. There's about 8 million tonnes of known extractable uranium reserves at not-ridiculous costs. We currently use about 67,000 tonnes a year to produce 9% of the world's electricity from nuclear power. At a very rough guess we would have to use ~700,000 tonnes a year and run out in ~12 years.
BalianofReddit@reddit
Fuck it, just call it Steam power
3Cogs@reddit
You're overcomplicating it. GBFO spinning thing with coils.
BalianofReddit@reddit
Hmm.. how about Spinny Energy? Spenergy?
Throwaway91847817@reddit
Spinergy
ohthedarside@reddit
Literally perfect
People are stupid and here nuclear and go BUT THE NUCLEAR WASTE
3Cogs@reddit
60 years ago civil and military were intertwined. The first civil nuclear power station in the world, Calder Hall, was a plutonium production reactor for weapons use.
I'm not against nuclear power and some designs like the abandoned Integral Fast Reactor programme answer the proliferation problem by reprocessing the metallic fuel on site whereby it would be obvious if anything was being abstracted.
NuclearCleanUp1@reddit
And all the MAGNOX reactors.
All their fuel rods were sent back to Sellafield for reprocessing and no MOX beyond experimental amounts was ever made and used. They used natural uranium, to breed plutonium, instead of LEU which increases efficiency. Fuel elements were rotated through very frequently early on, to capture most of the plutonium.
Curiousinsomeways@reddit
A good reason why our nuclear programme existed and was a financial hole was because it was to support nuclear weapons.
wolfensteinlad@reddit
Russia and the Arab gulf states funded anti nuclear propaganda to middle class progs and they fell for it.
Specialist_Spot3072@reddit
People are just uninformed and think its super dangerous
Kitchen_Part_882@reddit
The big problem is that 99.99% of the time, nuclear power is boring and just ticks along harmlessly.
It makes the news when you get a 3-mile island, a Fukushima, or a Chornobyl.
Then you have the "environmentalists" banging on about how long the waste remains radioactive...
For anyone who understands the science, the long half-life stuff is way less radiologically dangerous than the stuff with really short half-lives.
But Joe Public just sees "This will be radioactive for millions of years!"
Defiant-Plantain1873@reddit
Nobody gives a shit about the dangers of nuclear.
It’s the cost and the time to build.
Oh yes, why should we build renewables when for 10x the cost and 5x the time we can build a nuclear plant of the same capacity.
See Sizewell C for example
PsychologySpecific16@reddit
But they don't have to be so expensive or time consuming to build. Look around the world.
You build a bespoke reactor, in a hellish planning environment and it's gonna cost a lot each time you do it.
That's why SMRs are a positive step. Also most renewables just force reliance on gas when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing (or blowing too much)
CarpeCyprinidae@reddit
Fukushima proved conclusively that Nuclear is safe. A crappy ancient reactor on a tectonic faultline suffered 3 simultaneous issues (a catastrophic flood, an earthquake and a failure of the backup power supply for the safety systems) and didnt melt down and nobody died
Leader_Bee@reddit
"For all the fear, total deaths were only in double figures."
Ignoring effects from fallout all across Europe for the next 30 years, of course.
That sounds like i'm against Nuclear, but actually, I think we should be building a lot more of them; I agree with all your other points.
Zavodskoy@reddit
It's borderline impossible to deliberately "Chernobyl" a modern nuclear reactor let alone do it by complete accident.
Every human could vanish off of earth in the next 30 seconds and not a single nuclear reactor would explode
NuclearCleanUp1@reddit
That is not true. No reactor today is walk away safe.
Once the grid would become unstable and the site's breaker would trip, it would lose power to the grid.
If it has the capacity, it would try to shut itself down but now it can cool itself on as long as it's back up generators have power, if they automatically turn on.
That's why operators are still needed at the Zaporizhzhia npp and why Fukushima exploded after successfully shutting down.
Gruejay2@reddit
It wasn't easy to do it to the RBMK reactor as well. The circumstances would have been incredibly negligent even without the design flaw.
It was the equivalent of turning off a gas oven (including the pilot light), intentionally keeping the flow of gas on, allowing the room to fill with gas, then hitting an emergency shut-off, except that the shut-off switch sparks slightly when pressed - something that wouldn't normally matter, but because the room is now filled with gas it causes your house to blow up. Yes, the design flaw is a flaw, but it only mattered under an extremely negligent scenario that should never have occurred in the first place.
damhack@reddit
You’ve forgotten three major incidents at Windscale (fire, theft and leak), plus the ongoing massive cost of making the ageing spent fuel storage pools safe.
nothingpersonnelmate@reddit
As with all things nuclear, the issue isn't the safety, it's the cost of the safety. The sort of regulations and design constraints that make another Chernobyl essentially impossible are also part of why Hinkley C is costing £40bn to build and taking 20 years to complete. And Sellafield is looking to cost over £130bn to clean up.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/23/sellafield-cleanup-cost-136bn-national-audit-office
Charlie_Yu@reddit
Humanity fucks up twice the last 50 years, each time rendering an area bigger than London inhabitable for a thousand years. I think we’ll fuck up more.
jsm97@reddit
Chernobyl is perfectly habitable and many people have moved back to the area. Before the war it was a tourist attraction, I visited in 2019. The issue is that it's still not suitable for agricultural purposes.
Big-Incident1@reddit
Technology advanced lot since then
EquivalentMap8477@reddit
Who operates the technology
silentv0ices@reddit
You build margins of safety into the technology. A good example of this is lifts.
Charlie_Yu@reddit
2011 was not a long time ago
pm_me_boobs_pictures@reddit
Nuclear is a poor option at geologically active areas. Maybe plonking them in the ring of fire isn't the best plan
Big-Incident1@reddit
You should check out the modern nuclear tech it's great, and will be modular shortly!
Temporary-Guidance20@reddit
it's just boiling water. it's all it does.
PaleMaleAndStale@reddit
Those three incidents are great examples of why we shouldn't worry about nuclear energy, if only people would think critically. Construction of 3 mile Island started in the 60s and the incident occured in 1979. Think about how much technology and engineering has advanced since then. The Chernobyl plant also dates back to the 70s and the cause of the accident was idiotic levels of human incompetence. Fukushima was built in the 60s and, bizarrely, in a zone of high volcanic activity. Most nuclear power stations across the globe are decades old and yet we have only had a handful of major incidents in half a century. Reactors made with current technology and engineering standards would be infinitely safer.
lifejoiy@reddit
I mentioned to someone once that I thought nuclear was our best bet for reliable low carbon power and they genuinely said “you want a Chernobyl here?”
no honey, I just want to not pay £350 a month for electricity in Jan
Odd-Contract-364@reddit
Like OP said himself fearmongering and misinformtaion
Dimmo17@reddit
Ironically whilst spreading misinformation about the UK, as our polling and current government investment comitments shows we are generally a pretty pro-nuclear nation.
Whilat also repeating tired tropes about renewables.
ansonc812@reddit
Frankly if we arenmt that anti nuclear, germany/austria some central europeqn countries are even worse
nathderbyshire@reddit
Probably a case of the minority being the loudest
shadowhunter742@reddit
Don't forget nimbyism. Big issue for lots on infrastructure
No-Strike-4560@reddit
Just spread a rumour that radiation nuclear reactors makes your cock swell to 3 times the size and we'd be rolling in the things.
Mr_DnD@reddit
They already did, it's called Sizewell ;)
No-Strike-4560@reddit
Buh -dum- tish ;)
Wiz0rd23@reddit
Rolling in swollen cocks!?
Keep your fantasies to yourself.
Tammer_Stern@reddit
To be fair, Windscale and Dounreay haven’t really given us a trouble free experience. I appreciate that modern stations are a lot safer though.
CosmicQuestions@reddit
Throw in some lack of critical thinking skills, naiveness and general stupidness.
Mavericks7@reddit
I think with matters of national significance for infrastructure.
The public opinion should be assessed but not be withheld to
altruisticmisanthrop@reddit
I'm open minded and willing to be informed. I read that no country had ever made a profit from nuclear energy ie every country using it has put more money into nuclear than they'd got out of it. Then again re cost, solar was currently costing us 6 times less to geebrate than coal. However, customers have to pay 6 times higher prices because deals were struck with solar companies that allowed them to charge the same rate as coal generation charges. If we can just resolve that, prices would tumble and reflect the cheap cost of solar and wind. Very happy to be educated on how nuclear can better these costs if I've been told untruths though. Thanks
One_Evidence_500@reddit
Lots of old people remember the Windscale fire
CarpeCyprinidae@reddit
And the fact that they are old and still alive proves it wasnt that big a deal
NuclearCleanUp1@reddit
That is a terrible way to treat safety events. The UK targets below zero incidents. That's why the nuclear industry can boast so few deaths
There have been many nuclear accidents in the UK and we are just lucky but we must commit to improving safety. Such as:
The Magnox swarf silo pond draining into the ground.
Dounreay washing spent fuel fragments into the sea where they turned up on beaches.
The chapecross fire.
The Dounreay hydrogen explosion.
Kitchen_Part_882@reddit
I skipped that one purely because it was before my time...
Apparently, it was the same severity as the 3-mile island incident at a 5 (which I mainly remember because it happened around the time of the release of the film "The China Syndrome"), Chernobyl and Fukushima were both 7s.
RoyalT663@reddit
It'd nit limited to the UK. It's all.over the developed world. It's also not a coincidence. Who guessed it! Yes, there is substantial evidence- though as yet no smoking gun - that fossil fuel interests have been financing nuclear energy disinformation to shift public opinion. Since they have known for a long time, that it was the only realistic competitor to replace fossil fuels at scale.
Anonymous_1112@reddit
It might have been this historically but I think the whole fiasco with the Hinckley Point plant recently has put the public off nuclear power because of how expensive these stations are to build. And the fact that infrastructure projects in the UK are almost guaranteed to go over budget and be delayed doesn't help much with that
Beanbag_Ninja@reddit
The problem isn't that nuclear power stations are horrendously expensive; the problem is that in the UK we make them horrendously expensive, either through corruption, incompetence, or all of the above.
jordansrowles@reddit
*puts on tin foil fat*
How much of that is funded/deliberately pushed by the petrochem industry
Defiant-Plantain1873@reddit
Currently the oil industry pushes for nuclear, because of a few reasons.
1) nuclear takes ages to build, so you spend ages building a nuclear plant, and in that time you have to keep buying fossil fuels to keep the lights on
2) it’s more expensive than renewables, so you can build less capacity for your money, meaning even when it’s finally built, you will likely still have to pay for more fossil fuels than if you had built renewables because of the fact that the cost per MWh is so much higher with nuclear
3) the companies that own fossil fuel extraction places (aka mines) also happen to own the uranium mines (crazy, i know) so you switch from one fuel you dig up out the ground, to a different fuel, owned by the same people
Watsis_name@reddit
One out of three ain't bad.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Agreed the green party in Germany crippled the whole country and later it turned out they deliberately lied about it so that the country keeps importing Russian gas.
mpt11@reddit
And burning lignite don't forget that.
Shoddy-Minute5960@reddit
Also cost and time for new projects. Like 3x budget and plus 20 years.
ARobertNotABob@reddit
"Nuclear Power? No Thanks!"
That little sun was "everywhere" in the late 70s, in schools too, with sheets of stickers distributed by Greenpeace as I recall.
Glittering-Sun-1438@reddit
This type of propaganda has no place in schools
LobsterMountain4036@reddit
The real problem with it is that it’s usually slow to build and expensive compared to other green energy.
TinyZoro@reddit
Reddit is so certain about this being the answer. But the real answer is economics. The cost of nuclear goes up every year and the cost of other energy generation goes down. That's all there is to it.
Ok-Ambassador4679@reddit
When it comes to almost any topic on how to govern our lives, "People are just uninformed" is the most appropriate and concise way of putting it.
_HGCenty@reddit
Two main reasons, not necessarily mutually exclusive.
One is the safety fears. No matter how safe you may be able to present nuclear statistically, events like Chernobyl and Fukushima leave a lasting emotional reaction in people against nuclear energy. Plus the disposal of nuclear waste is a genuine safety concern to which there are no perfect answers and somewhere is going to end up as a toxic site for nuclear waste.
Two is the general nimbyism in the UK. Locals are generally against new infrastructure, nuclear, solar, wind, etc. Nuclear power stations take much longer and are much more difficult to build than wind turbines and so people will point to going for the simpler option given the UK doesn't have a great track record of building infrastructure to time and cost.
lifejoiy@reddit
Totally agree about the nimbyism
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
There's safe reactors like the peddle bed reactor that exist
NuclearCleanUp1@reddit
Another new experimental reactor instead of sticking with the EPR.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Yeah fair
VolcanicBear@reddit
They're not saying there aren't any safe reactors, they're saying people get a bit emotionally involved and ignore the statistics, ignoring actual information.
For reference, they cited Chernobyl as a reason people want to avoid it. Chernobyl happened 21 days after I was born (on the day of my friend Damian's birthday). I'm 39. Anyone who cites a 39 year old disaster where safety mechanisms were actively ignored as a reason to avoid nuclear energy is very obviously not thinking about it properly.
janusz0@reddit
True, but I keep thinking about life after a “bunker buster” hits Sizewell C.
soundman32@reddit
You don't need a bunker buster to crack open Sizewell C. Almost any decent sized bomb dropped from a plane would do the trick. The containment dome is to contain an explosion, not an implosion.
nothingpersonnelmate@reddit
Had to look this up because it surprised me - Hinkley C in the UK has a dome ~1.8m thick of concrete. A 2000lb Mark 84 bomb can go through 3.4m of concrete. So yeah you're right, doesn't need a specialised bomb, just a large conventional one. Though as others have pointed out, if that's happening we've got bigger problems.
silentv0ices@reddit
As you have lots of available electricity give each site a few dragon fire laser defence systems. Enough cheap electricity and you could ring the country.
janusz0@reddit
I think you’re going to need a bigger laser. How long will it take to ablate a massively thick bomb casing? Dragon fire may penetrate the skin of normal aeroplanes and missiles. It may interfere with the bunker busters guidance system, but it’s a gamble.
janusz0@reddit
Aren’t these containment domes supposed to be tough enough to withstand an aircraft collision? (Not sure how big a ‘plane or how fast). So I’d expect a small bunker buster to be in order.
boomerangchampion@reddit
If Britain is being hit with bunker busters a bit of radiation will be the last of our worries tbh
cypherspaceagain@reddit
I largely agree, but I don't necessarily think it's the wrong approach to judge anything by the idea of "how badly can humans fuck this up". Humans consistently and repeatedly fuck things up. No such thing as a complete failsafe or an idiot-proof system. Not that that's what's going on in most people's minds, of course.
pb-86@reddit
If it eases you at all, I'm a nuclear engineer and it's amazing how often large disasters are mentioned and kept on people's minds. Everyone knows how safe we have to be and what the consequences could lead to, and we don't mess around. I spent 10 years as a design engineer in water prior to this and nuclear is leagues ahead in safety, professionalism and education.
pab6407@reddit
How easy is it to guarantee containment when impacted by a airliner full of fuel?
pb-86@reddit
For all the times in history this has happened? I'd be more concerned about regular bombs tbh, but we'll never sustain ourselves with our own energy if we don't build reactors so let's just concentrate on that first. We can concern ourselves with the what-ifs later
As has already been said above, reactors are much safer than Soviet ones built 50 years ago
3Cogs@reddit
My biggest concern is the continued and maybe accelerating amount of fossil carbon being added to the atmosphere. That kind of risk is worldwide.
I live near a decommissioned coal plant. I would accept a nuclear station there. Easy to say though, it's never going to happen, people want an energy rich lifestyle without the bother of generating, storing and transmitting it. Not anywhere near where they live anyway.
pb-86@reddit
Shot in the dark, Fiddlers ferry?
On the coal side of things, the new SMR's labour backed the other week will likely be built in the place of old coal sites. They already have the infrastructure (like access to the national grid) in place, so would make a lot of sense
3Cogs@reddit
That's the one, but people are unhappy about a proposed battery storage plant on part of the power station site and adjacent golf course. I can't see them embracing a nuclear reactor. Even if you know it's perfectly safe, you also know what people are like and see the value of your house going down.
Me, I'd rather a livable planet for the kids. It's the least we can do.
pb-86@reddit
I'm not far from fiddlers either, and it's perfectly located for an SMR. But yeah, there would be backlash if it was even considered. That said, the government are removing restrictions to make it easier to grant planning for one.
I actually took a photo of fiddlers ferry with a drone a few years ago with a drone that really shows what a mess these places are. I'll edit in a link to it
3Cogs@reddit
That'll be interesting to see, thanks. Someone got into the site and back out completely stealthily a couple of years ago and posted on 28dayslater. I downloaded all the pics before they disappeared, which they did.
My late dad worked there though the 70s, most summers on the shutdown, they would take 2 units offline and service them. He was a pipefitter and welder, worked away on one of the AGR builds as well. For that, I'm always interested in the place.
pab6407@reddit
I suspect many of the fields around such sites will acquire wind turbines or solar panels for the same reasons.
3Cogs@reddit
The site itself covers a large area but some of that is earmarked for commercial use and it currently has a big lump of a power station in the middle. The site itself is quite hemmed in by an A road, a river, an incinerator and a golf course (part of which I think they want to take for proposed battery storage).
If it's a golf course they sacrifice then wildlife might have a better time under a solar array instead but I don't live that close so I would say that wouldn't I?
pab6407@reddit
Funnily enough it's reckoned that the area of renewables required to power the UK is similar to the current area of golf courses.
cypherspaceagain@reddit
I get it, it's just, you know, I've met people.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Agreed
RoughTricky1@reddit
The only way we actually get better at building is to actually finally start doing big projects, the more we do the less chaotic it’ll be, most of our infrastructure is really old and crumbling. We can’t just keep ignoring the need to improve it.
scotland1112@reddit
The problem is no government wants to take on a long term big project that won't end before the next elections period.
mpt11@reddit
See we used to be able to design engineer and build not just nuclear but all sorts of power when we had the cegb. The privatisation effectively killed the UK power industry and most of the good engineers are no longer there, it was cheaper to buy modular power stations from people like GE, alsthom, Siemens etc.
Queewe_e@reddit
The reactors we built weren't great though. AGR plants need more highly enriched fuel than comparable PWRs, which contributes to significantly higher operational costs.
Ambitious_League4606@reddit
Well people need to get over it. We've got expensive energy and need to find solutions.
DividedContinuity@reddit
the cost is currently set by the price of gas which is still historically high following the Ukraine war.
We'd need a lot of nuclear to eliminate a significant amount of gas from our power generation, and new nuclear (Hinckley point C) is forecast to cost roughly the same per megawatt as current gas generation.
Cheap energy is solar and onshore wind, but then you still need something like gas to cover gaps in generation, and our energy prices are set to the most expensive source of power (currently gas).
Nuclear doesn't look like the solution to expensive energy frankly. I think we need to reform the uk energy market.
Past-Chipmunk-8532@reddit
You think the energy companies would drop the prices? 🤔🤔
Big-Scallion3644@reddit
Yea,nuclear it’s dirt cheap.
Ambitious_League4606@reddit
It's not bad actually - the new technology is bad ass
Defiant-Plantain1873@reddit
The new technology is non-existent.
Nuclear is mega expensive, and the only way to make it cheaper is to remove regulations, which is about the last thing you’d want to do with nuclear power
Ambitious_League4606@reddit
"New nuclear technologies are emerging, with a focus on Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) and advanced reactor designs. SMRs offer advantages in terms of size, manufacturing, and deployment flexibility, potentially making them a key component of a low-carbon energy system. These technologies aim to improve safety, efficiency, and waste management compared to traditional reactors"
jublons@reddit
Well regarding the waste this video explains how it can be reused. https://youtu.be/IzQ3gFRj0Bc?si=1nkdjpHWivh87zZo
It's more about the companies who are lobbying against nuclear power.
Spiritual_Photo7020@reddit
The UK have a reprocessing plant at sellafield it's terrible. Also said repcrossing location at sellafield has a leak , new report suggested £136B and 100 years to fix. Sellafield leaks are not the imagination or lobbying of activists.
The government should have continued research into Thorium reactors.
Vconsiderate_MoG@reddit
Yeah but also Sellafield wasn't exactly reassuring...
No_Engineering_924@reddit
My problem with it.
It takes sooooooooo long to build, by the time our country builds anything. It's already like a decade old and newer things will exist.
But, the jobs and skills it creates are worth it. From the plant itself to the surrounding areas.
Orange-Squashie@reddit
I don't know why the world is so anti nuclear. It's so brain dead. Then again, people are crazy about not eating meat lol.
Leader_Bee@reddit
Nuclear power is a NIMBY problem.
scrotalsac69@reddit
I think broadly people want it, however if it happens to be in their area they don't want it at all
Lukeautograff@reddit
NIMBYs
SnooRegrets8068@reddit
Would you like one next door?
Lukeautograff@reddit
Be hard for me as I live in the centre
Wouldn’t mind otherwise
SnooRegrets8068@reddit
Easy to say when it can't possibly be next door
Desperate-Use9968@reddit
It isn't. Wtf are people in this thread on about?
kibi_zero@reddit
No one wants to be the place that they dump the waste
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
We can just recycle the waste and keep reusing it now
bigcancerchallenge@reddit
We can't be that anti-nuclear energy if we have 5 plants in the UK and keep voting in parties that haven't pledged to reduce that number.
Gerrydealsel@reddit
Because of what happened at Windscale.
Mean-Attorney-875@reddit
The UK isn't. The media is
mancunian101@reddit
Because it’s better to build solar and wind farms all over the country side than a couple of modern nuclear power stations…..
In all seriousness, there’s probably some apprehension due to wind scale, and I think that from a government perspective the project to build a new nuclear power plant takes so long that there’s no will to commit to it.
Blair should have kicked it off in the 90s
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
How is it better? They can't even give sustainable power
Sabreline12@reddit
There's this thing called power storage pal.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Where is it? Where is a battery large enough to store a country's energy and then convert it back into HVAC? As an Electrical engineer I'm curious to know what you think exists right now that can do this.
Sabreline12@reddit
Huh? You can have more than one battery lol. There's literally widespread battery storage in places like Texas and California. You should be aware nuclear can't respond to changing demand on its own either. But I've a feeling you're of those nuclear-philes that spreads misinfo about renewables to make nuclear look good.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
You’re speaking in generalities like “we can just use more than one battery” as if scaling batteries is trivial and already solves grid-level intermittency. It doesn’t. There is no working example of a national or state grid running on wind + batteries and California your own example proves that.
California has the most aggressive battery rollout in the U.S., with just over 10 GWh of utility-scale battery storage as of 2024. That sounds big until you realise California’s daily electricity demand exceeds 600–700 GWh. Their entire battery fleet covers barely 1.5% of one day’s demand, and that’s assuming perfect efficiency and full charge, which never happens in practice. They still rely heavily on gas peaker plants and imports during demand spikes or lulls in wind and solar. Every time there’s a multi-day heatwave or a solar production dip, fossil fuels step in not batteries.
Now apply this to the UK:
A 3-day wind drought at 40 GW = 2,880 GWh of backup needed At.$300/kWh, that’s £864 billion in batteries not including cycling degradation, land use, or maintenance, the risk of them catching fire and explosions and you’d still need to overbuild wind 2–3× just to keep them charged.
There is no scalable long-duration storage technology commercially deployed that solves this. Flow batteries? Still niche. Iron-air? Experimental. Pumped hydro? Geography-limited and maxed out in the UK at 2.8 GW total. Hydrogen? 30–40% round-trip efficiency, massive infrastructure gaps.
Meanwhile, nuclear can ramp France has been load-following for decades, and next-gen reactors (SMRs, load-following EPRs, etc.) are being designed to dynamically pair with grids and even buffer surplus power into thermal storage or hydrogen.
damhack@reddit
You’re talking about old battery technology. There’s a plethora of newer grid-ready storage tech such as iron-air and CAES. Multi-day storage with fast charge/discharge.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
CAES is not new. The Huntorf (Germany) and McIntosh (Alabama) plants have existed for decades but combined, they offer less than 1 GWh of usable energy.
CAES requires specific geology (salt caverns) and still uses natural gas for reheating in most designs (making it not zero-carbon) but I don't think we care about it.
Advanced adiabatic CAES (no gas) is still in lab or early prototype stages no full-scale version exists.
damhack@reddit
CAES is being piloted in the salt mines of Northwich and at the old Shell Carrington site near Manchester. Both are newer versions of the older tech.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Let's talk when they are able to power the country
damhack@reddit
That requires investment. The extortionately expensive nuclear industry, and the mining companies who own oil and gas exploration as well as uranium ore extraction, want to maintain their government investments and keep cheaper, cleaner renewables out. Would be good to see investment that provides an apples-with-apples real world comparison.
SeatOfEase@reddit
Doesnt sound like a good faith argument. Wheres the nuclear explosion that can power an entire countries energy needs forever? Where???
EXACTLY.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Read my comment under it
damhack@reddit
Iron-air batteries and compressed air energy storage for starters. Efficiency isn’t an issue because renewables can over-supply. Iron-air can for example store for tens or hundreds of hours at a time and discharge quickly to grid. When externalities are factored in, nuclear power stations are fairly inefficient and extremely expensive.
Difficult_Listen_917@reddit
Sarcasm
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Ah sorry mate with the amount of dummies I've faced who'd say exactly that
Striking_Smile6594@reddit
Ideally we need both. Nuclear and renewables together are the solution if we are going to move away from fossil fuels.
Ok_Attitude55@reddit
Because the uk was at the forefront of nuclear energy we had several of the teething problems when it came to safety. See windscale for example.
Our press is infamously sensationalist.
Our infrastructure projects are infamously mismanaged and inefficient.
Between these three factors, the public are suspicious of nuclear power.
Still, all the evidence shows the public is broadly supportive of nuclear energy, and has become more so over the last 20 years, behind Europe average but ahead of many European states individually and roughly similar to US.
solarflares4deadgods@reddit
Misinformation plays a big part, I think. If you asked a chunk of the population what they think nuclear waste looks like, a sizeable amount of them will evoke images of barrels containing glowing green goo rather than compacted solid matter encased in concrete.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Well now we can just recycle nuclear waste so that's also a non-issue
solarflares4deadgods@reddit
Exactly, though most people haven’t heard about that development yet, unfortunately. (Honestly, I think they’re missing out, but I might be biased as nuclear anything is one of my special interests, lol)
ShaftManlike@reddit
Greenpeace were too good at messaging a few decades ago and that FUD still persists.
Unfair_Procedure_944@reddit
Are we anti nuclear? That’s news to me. There’s only one reason anyone is anti nuclear: ignorance. They hear nuclear, they think weapon, that’s the limit if their intellect. They have no idea or understanding of what “nuclear” means, or how we harness it, for warheads or for power production.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
From the overall comments I see it's just older people who grew up in fear but it's not limited to just them. Many "climate activists" who couldn't pass science
Unfair_Procedure_944@reddit
I could understand perhaps why some of the older folks might be that way, but there’s still no excuse. One of the most vocal advocates for nuclear I know is my Nan, and she’s pushing 90! 😄 The climate activists who object to nuclear are the most moronic. Nuclear is their best option, objecting to it speaks volumes about how they don’t really want to find solutions, they just want to shout and complain constantly.
Neat-Ad-8987@reddit
Most, if not all, environmentalists do not understand the concept of “baseline power.”
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Exactly. I don't think people who are non-engineers should have opinions on energy and national security
Outrageous-Echo-765@reddit
This is what researchers are saying about baseload:
https://www.e3g.org/news/e3g-expert-interview-shifting-paradigms-in-electricity-systems-from-baseload-to-flexible-generation/
Many, many such cases.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
I read the article and it very poorly suggested that on days where we don't have wind and or sun we fire peaking plants where the backup plan for wind and solar is just burning gas to make up the shortfalls.
“Flexible generation” = gas plants (most of the time) When they say “we don’t need baseload,” they’re not saying we’ve invented 24/7 renewable energy.
What they mean is:
Even in countries with high renewable penetration like Germany or California, natural gas remains the backbone of grid stability — not because anyone loves it, but because no other technology currently ramps up fast enough, at scale, when renewables suddenly drop.
The UK burned 40% natural gas for electricity as recently as 2023.
Germany, despite over €300 billion in renewables, has had to rely more on gas after shutting down nuclear.
California’s batteries help with 1–4 hour peaks, but when the sun sets and the grid needs backup, they still fire up gas peakers.
Outrageous-Echo-765@reddit
Yes, that's exactly what the article is saying, and that is how modern grids operate.
Baseload is not the backbone of grids anymore, this isn't the 70s. Dispatchable energy is.
RaxPomana@reddit
What a silly thing to say. You may not have an opinion on something that they aren't qualified in to a degree level or career. No opinion on education, farming or trade for you I guess.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Fair enough
damhack@reddit
Renewable storage is close to being able to supply base load. Worth double-checking what the nuclear industry lobbyists generally misinform the public about.
NuclearCleanUp1@reddit
Because our Nuclear Program is one of the most expensive to clean up in the world.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Why do we suck at everything man even the US does it cheaper
NuclearCleanUp1@reddit
Notice the USA isn't included on that graph?
The USA has 15 sites that the Department of Energy is decommissioning.
The Hanford Site is estimated to cost $323 billion to $677 billion to decommission.
That is just one site.
So the US isn't doing so great either.
Cleaning up the cutting edge of nuclear science from the 40s and 50s is very expensive.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
No it wasn't in that graph but I've looked at various studies and we do things for much more and get less than even the US
NuclearCleanUp1@reddit
The USA is very good at decommissioning normal reactors.
We can do it too. Look at Bradwell. Ready for final decommissioning but it had steady funding and with few surprises.
benroon@reddit
It’s the word nuclear that spooks the village idiots. If you called it ‘Lavender Energy, there would be reactors on every corner’
spubbbba@reddit
I don't think the UK is particularly anti-nuclear.
Reddit seems to have a group of very dedicated nuclear super fans. Any time the UK Green party is mentioned in any capacity there will be multiple posts complaining about their anti-nuclear stance. Even when the story has nothing to do with energy.
It's not like they are ever going to get a sniff at real power or have much influence over the government. I don't hear the nuclear stance of the other parties discussed much at all.
DippyDragon@reddit
The UK is like this on every issue. Extensive freedom of speech and tolerance means any issue can become sensationalised in the media from a small vocal minority.
This leads frequently to a media story misaligned with the truth.
Two things are certain in the uk for almost everything:
The spread of opinion is comparatively wide compared to other countries due to the freedoms and diversity the UK fosters and supports.
The vast majority don't care unless it impacts them personally and often only when it impacts them financially.
To evidence a quick google will show the UK is anti-trains, anti-buses, anti-solar, anti-water reservoirs, anti-cars, anti-cyclists etc etc obviously none of these things is actually true, also we just dont like each other very much /s
EUskeptik@reddit
I worked in the nuclear power industry for much of my career and I am unconvinced it is the best option for the future.
Nuclear is by far the most expensive way to generate electricity for the future. You only have to look at the guaranteed future rates per MWh guaranteed to EdF by the Government. We are told the cheapest power comes from onshore wind farms. It’s around one quarter the cost of nuclear.
The UK already has the most expensive electricity in the developed world, and by some margin. More nuclear will only make that situation worse.
There is also the issue of nuclear waste which has yet to be dealt with. A reprocessing plant (THORP) was built at Sellafield at the cost of many £ billions. It didn’t work properly. An accident occurred and THORP had to be abandoned after just a few months. It now lies empty, unused.
In its place, dry storage facilities were built adjacent to most nuclear stations. Spent fuel is stored in them until a viable solution can be found. No solution has been found in the last 30 years.
High level waste is stored in ponds at Sellafield. This is the really nasty stuff. No long term storage solution has been found despite half a century of trying, so it lingers in structures which are becoming life-expired.
Low level waste is buried at Drigg, near Sellafield because no-one knows what to do with it. Every few years, Sellafield is allowed to purchase yet more agricultural land to bury yet more waste,
The waste situation is pure dysfunction. Superimpose more nuclear stations on this situation and the dysfunction gets worse.
Nuclear paid my salary for a good proportion of my working life. I don’t want to seem ungrateful or disloyal, but is nuclear a solution or a problem? The politicians must decide in the face of a hard sell by the nuclear lobby. They are already making what seem to me to be some truly terrible choices.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
It is very strange because Nuclear turns out to be cheaper over a long period of time & wind given its downtime makes it expensive. It's very strange, I found one study saying one thing the other saying something else.
France is a prime example, the cheapest energy in Europe (lower than many places in the world) but it's 70% nuclear powered.
I'm convinced (as an electrical engineer) Wind energy has too many hidden costs that don't get factored in because it's hard to calculate the cost of it not running
NuclearCleanUp1@reddit
Possibly. It depends.
French Nuclear 85% Capacity for 20 years with a discount rate of 10% LCOE (USD/MWh): 32.74
French PV Utility Discount 10% LCOE (USD/MWh): 42.16
French New Build Nuclear discount 10% LCOE (USD/MWh): 96.89
https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/pl_51110/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020-edition?details=true
Keeping older reactors going is definately the cheapest energy source but if you're building infrastructure today, the costs can vary a lot.
If you start comparing between countries the costs can vary a lot!
horseradish_smoothie@reddit
Define a long period of time. The NDA only this month estimated that it'll take another 100 years to clean Sellafield at a cost af £136B.
DividedContinuity@reddit
True, but a lot of that is related to nuclear weapons rather than just power generation.
People do ignore or underestimate the long tail costs and problems of nuclear waste though, and I'm not talking spent fuel, the irradiated equipment and concrete has to go somewhere and in a wet place like the UK there aren't great options for underground storage.
NuclearCleanUp1@reddit
The UK's nuclear power program is hard to disentangle from the weapons program.
MAGNOX reactors were designed to breed plutonium.
AGRs were built of this design and failed to hit their efficiency goals.
No reactor in the UK is the same as the last one, each one was a new experiment.
Nuclear Restoration Services are decommissioning the UK's MAGNOX fleet and Dounreay and it costs £540 million and £228 million a year respectively with 50 years still to go if things go as planned.
And inflation will push those numbers up.
Possibly it will cost £70 billion to clean up.
It definately won't cost £20 billion like the UK has in the Nuclear Liabilities Fund.
EUskeptik@reddit
Anything turns out to be cheapest just before it is life-expired because the capital costs have long been written down.
French nuclear electricity is only cheap because Electricité de France (EdFj competes with the French Railways (SNCF) for which company has the highest corporate debt in the developed world. The debt is held by the French government, which owns both companies, and interest is not charged. Each had a debt of over €80 billion.
That explains why French nuclear electricity is among the cheapest in Western Europe and why z French rail fares are a fraction of the UK’s. Do not be fooled.
Are you aware that our government pays wind farm owners hundreds of millions of pounds for electricity generated at night but not used? The rates charged for wind generated electricity actually fed to the grid are the lowest of any form of generation except long-established hydro.
Sabreline12@reddit
This is just not true.
NuclearCleanUp1@reddit
First Generation Reprocessing Plant had a violent chemical reaction contaminated the plant and staff with Ruthenium 106 in 1973.
After that the plant was closed.
MAGNOX REPROCESSING PLANT came online in 1964 and THORP 1994.
Still_Wrap4910@reddit
For someone apparently from the industry you've got a shocking amount of that wrong. THORP was operational until 2018 and the accident you refer to wouldn't even be a level 2 on the INES scale these days. There is zero HLW stored in ponds, there is fuel waiting to be cooled decanned and stored appropriately, HLW is only stored in radiologically secure cells and vessels and there has been zero agricultural land purchased this millennium for disposal of waste and the site boundaries haven't changed in nearly a decade, much to the detriment of those trying to build the newest generation of storage facilities within it's bounds, if your gonna chat shit at least try and be credible.
Spiritual_Photo7020@reddit
The £136 billion nuclear cleanup project that the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is concerned about is located at Sellafield, a nuclear site in Cumbria, England. The PAC has criticized the slow pace of decommissioning and rising costs at the site, highlighting risks associated with the project, according to UK Parliament.
Kaliasluke@reddit
The biggest problem with nuclear is no one knows how to build it in a cost-effective, timely manner. SMRs might solve this problem, but as of today they’re hypothetical.
Take Hinkley Point C - the government needed to offer 35-year CfDs at £92.50 per MWh - and even then, it’s barely viable and has needed extensive government intervention to keep it going. It was supposed to be completed this year, but is now delayed until 2030 at the earliest. The original budget was £18 billion, but the cost is now expected to be £31-35 billion in real terms - nearly double the cost before inflation and 5 years left to go.
By contrast, offshore wind farms are being financed with 15y CfDs at £73 per mwh and can be fairly reliably built in 2-3 years (although some have admittedly experienced significant delays).
It’s also worth noting that our high electricity prices are largely a deliberate policy choice. Our government has chosen to rely on private sector financing to build renewables, with the costs of subsidies fully passed through to consumers. German industrial companies have much lower electricity costs purely because the German government doesn’t ask them to contribute to the cost of renewables subsidies.
fojo81@reddit
I'm British and I'm pro-nuclear power stations. I understand they can be stupidly expensive to start building but they can be cheap to run once operating. Due to 80 years of experience and research and development current year technology is far, far better at dealing with waste and modern nuclear power stations are far more efficient than before.
orbital0000@reddit
Vested interests
seklas1@reddit
Because historically there’s been accidents with nuclear power plants and even though they produce a lot of energy and generally clean too and mostly safe, those few accidents and risk of radiation is putting people off. UK is quite small and nobody wants to have a nuclear power plant in their back garden and ultimately it has to be facing somebody’s garden and be in close proximity. Beyond potential risks, it would decrease land value for locals massively too.
screwfusdufusrufus@reddit
Because Thatcher was in the pocket of the oil and gas companies and purged our nuclear research programs. We still haven’t recovered
chicken-farmer@reddit
The Sellafield coverup won't have helped.
No_Potato_4341@reddit
Is it?
SnooRegrets8068@reddit
Not really it's just expensive and takes ages.
What people actually don't want is one next to them. Very few people are going to be fine with one setting up next door. Tho they expect other people to be.
Sabreline12@reddit
Anti-nuclear is when spending billions on new reactors and planning more.
red_black_red0@reddit
No, as per all questions here, but it won't stop the endless bait posts.
WoodSteelStone@reddit
Exactly, few seem to question the premise of a post.
Impressive_chap@reddit
Poorly informed people who swallowed anti-nuclear propaganda in the 50s-80s and have continued to take it as gospel (ignoring all technological advancements across energy generation and waste disposal). Look at the influence the green party & Lib dems (particularly in the coalition government) have had in derailing nuclear energy in this country over the last 20 years to see how messy it is entrenched in establishment thinking and activist groups (you do have to wonder who gives the money to these organisation to keep our energy costs the highest in the world)
Greens: https://greenparty.org.uk/about/our-manifesto/powering-up-fairer-greener-energy/
Lib Dems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=yO82IZEk_gA
goobervision@reddit
It's not, we are funding SMRs now and Hinkley.
No_Technology3293@reddit
Not to disagree, I'm very much a supporter of Nuclear energy and have worked within it for a huge chunk of my engineering career of over 20 years.
But if you think energy prices would be vastly less in nuclear you are entirely wrong; the guaranteed strike price for HPC is only slightly lower than Gas wholesale at the moment. Gas being the most expensive fuel in the energy mix and therefore sets the wholesale price and thus the price cap we are charged by.
Nuclear removing our reliance from France is also mostly incorrect, HPC and Sizewell C are both EDF owned and operated, managed by french people to a french design(albeit based on an initial UK design).
To denigrate renewables such as solar would be wrong too IMO; the fallacy of it not being sunny and warm in the UK meaning solar isn't viable misunderstands how solar works, it's not on sunlight and heat it's by UV rays hitting the panels which happens whether it's cloudy or not, it may reduce it's generation but it won't stop it. Lastly the UK as a whole are in the energy sector are generally not putting solar arrays by themselves, they are being co-located with battery storage and often alongside Windfarms too.
I totally agree that the scaremongering and misinformation about nuclear is a huge problem, but no sensible government/country is putting all their eggs in one basket when it comes to energy, a mix of nuclear and renewables will be the backbone of our energy sector moving forwards.
As you mention Germany, I'd far rather be reliant on energy through IFA1&2 than being in the position they put themselves in when the cartel blanche over reacted and switched off all nuclear after Fukushima and ended up too reliant on Russian gas lines to power their CCGT power stations.
BalianofReddit@reddit
Am I right in saying nuclear is a good option to fill the same role as Gas in our current energy mix. As in, we turn it on/up to top up the rest of the grid when energy use is high?
Outrageous-Echo-765@reddit
It is not a smart idea to spend 30B on a power plant, just to let it sit idly when it is not needed. CCGT gas plants have capacity factors of roughly 60%, really not ideal from r a nuclear plant.
Nuclear, once built, should be running at full power as often as possible, or you risk not making a return on your investment.
This is why Hinckley has a CfD which gives them priority when selling to the grid.
No_Technology3293@reddit
Nuclear is a very good base load. Any big power stations like nuclear, coal or gas don't like to fluctuate their output and can take days or weeks to switch off and on.
So the same as gas but your example is slightly off, you basically want some of these power stations generating all the time, with renewables or similar picking up the demand spikes; the difficulty here however is typically renewables generate the most power when we need it least; which is why energy storage is a very important step and of course with battery storage improving our reliance on traditional generation methods on a large scale will become less critical in theory, but with the new generation nuclear coming online and will be operating for 40years minimum we have time to get storage right
Defiant-Plantain1873@reddit
Gas and coal can turn on instantly and turn off instantly. Nuclear is the only one that can’t. And nuclear is the only one where running at full capacity is the same cost as running at half capacity, so in practise you always run nuclear at full load no matter what, even if it means having to pay turbine operators to stop producing.
No_Technology3293@reddit
It's irrelevant now but coal absolutely could not turn on instantly; I worked in coal fired power stations and went through multiple outages on them.
Gas may be quicker than I initially said(it's about the only form of generating plant I haven't worked on) but also cannot switch on instantly, even wind cannot switch on instantly. Anything really that requires to boil pressurised water to steam to spin turbines won't switch on instantly. It varies boiler to boiler but best case it's hours, but more than likely days to come out of an outage as in practice power stations don't sit and do nothing when they are not generating, they do maintenance on the plant.
They can all instantly switch off though; it's an absolute necessity for them all to be able to in an emergency. The shutdown period after they stop generating up to the point where they are cold and can be worked on differs granted and typically you wouldn't switch any power station off instantly in practice you would bring them offline in a control manner which again can take a day or more depending on how long they are going offline for and for what reason.
Defiant-Plantain1873@reddit
No. It’s not equivalent. Gas can be turned on or off and anything in between in minutes. Nuclear can not.
You can turn it off, or you can turn it on, and there is very little you can do it terms of running it at less capacity. For nuclear, you want to run it at full capacity, running a nuclear reactor at half load practically doubles the price of the electricity produced.
So then you end up running your nuke plants 100% all the time, and then you have to turn off your renewables (which are cheaper, the government has to pay the wind turbine owners to pump the brakes) to accommodate for the fact that you are over producing.
It’s not a drop in fix, it’s a very different set up
Forsaken-Original-28@reddit
Only if we want to keep paying high energy prices
mpt11@reddit
No. Nuclear sits at baseload. CCGTs are generally fairly quick to start and load and are used for things like frequency response which nuclear cannot do to the same degree
Kim-Jong-Long-Dong@reddit
That is also my understanding of the situation. Its not a solution but a much better stop gap than gas
BalianofReddit@reddit
Strategically more reliable and less prone to supply shocks, too.
We can stockpile nuclear fuel much more effectively than gas. We're allies with some of the largest uranium ore exporters in the world, too... which is nice...
trefle81@reddit
Is there an issue in your view with raw fuel for nuclear generation? I've seen some commentary from people not otherwise particularly hostile to nuclear power, pointing out that uranium is one poster child for stranded assets and that it makes us reliant on some pretty unpredictable parts of the world for mining the stuff. Or is this mitigated by the small amounts needed (relative to fossil fuels) or by recycling spent fuel?
No_Technology3293@reddit
It's honestly not something I've ever really considered before, fuel scarcity in nuclear hasn't ever really been raised as a concern within the industry as far as I'm aware. It is relatively small amounts needed so that may be the biggest factor, I'm really not sure though.
Old_Roof@reddit
What are your thoughts on SMRs?
No_Technology3293@reddit
I don't think they will be all that prevalent on the national grid. Their beauty and key purpose is to supply high demand/energy hungry areas. I think you will see them being built in industrial areas/ports etc where the demand is high and we currently have bottlenecks in the transmission network to transport power to them as we move more into larger scale renewable energy which is typically generated far away from these things whereas traditional boilerhouse style generation was mostly nearby.
Technology wise they seem great, and finally becoming a viable option after many years of development. They were initially invisaged for bringing nuclear power to sparsely populating countries without a national grid like ours. The first presentation of them they were being targeted for Africa; although the issue there was always cooling.
Old_Roof@reddit
Cool. Sounds promising
Alert_Tone2049@reddit
Agree, but as a point of clarity EDF is very much a minority shareholder in SZC - government owned at the moment until private equity confirm investment and that shareholding is diluted.
No_Technology3293@reddit
Yes; but EDF will build it to the EDF EPR design and operate it, they will almost certainly become the majority shareholder too once strike price negotiations are completed.
mpt11@reddit
Isn't it an EDF and Chinese design?
No_Technology3293@reddit
No, the EPR design predates Chinese involvement with EDF.
If my memory serves correctly the EPR design was jointly carried out by several European nuclear companies, and is linked to the Rolls-Royce PWR design adapted for commercial generation; EDF have used that base design on several reactors now and have tweaked the island/BOP designs to their own company specs.
ExtensionGuilty8084@reddit
Ding ding! 🛎️
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Oh no doubt, it's far too late in some ways
James-Worthington@reddit
“I'm also surprised how many people in the UK think nuclear power is non-recyclable when it's upto the country to recycle it and use it again so nuclear waste is also a non-issue.”
Unless I’ve missed a crucial development somewhere, I wouldn’t describe nuclear waste as a non-issue.
nmuk86@reddit
NIMBYism.
Generally people seem quite positive about nuclear. But noone wants it near them (town, country etc.).
This isn't just about nuclear though. The NIMBYism attitude seems prevalent for nearly any new development of anything
dogmadave1977@reddit
Cause they keep thinking about letting china build tne new reactors.
Delta_Mike_Sierra_@reddit
I'm not anti nuclear, I do believe it is important for the UK's energy mix. My concerns rise from the sheer cost and time it takes to get operational. Hinckley point c will take about 15 years to build at triple it's initial budget to deliver at most 3GW. It will then need a large set per MWh in order to then be viable, this will need to be paid by somebody, likely the average user. This compares to general renewable which for the same amount of can deliver much higher peak power and in a much shirt time frame. Granted as we all know renewables are not regular so redundancy systems are needed (BESS for example). Moreover it is mostly private money, very little public money is going to direct renewable projects. Overall both are needed but nuclear is not the silver bullet some believe it to be.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Man it's very weird, the UK just can't build. It's not a "nuclear bad" issue but it's how politicians and managers are able to micromanage and overrule actual engineers in these projects. HS2 is the same.
Wondering_Electron@reddit
It isn't weird at all. The UK actually doesn't have an indigenous capability to build large civil plants, hence why we need EDF.
However, the recent news of Rolls-Royce winning the govt SMR competition changes that.
3Cogs@reddit
We had it. I'm in Warrington, it was the design centre for the UK's reactors. It was scaled back and elements privatised about 30 years ago. Another farsighted policy decision by those who govern.
NuclearCleanUp1@reddit
MAGNOX and AGR were their achievements.
Brilliant reactors that were efficient, safe and economic....(Not!)
africanconcrete@reddit
EDF are not building anything. They are funding it.
The concrete works of the plant is being built by Laing O Rourke (UK construction company) and Bouygues Construction (French but majority of employees on HPC are UK based).
Most of the mechanical and piping works are being carried out by British firms. Some of the highly specific parts, such as the reactor pressure vessel are being manufactured by a French company (they built the ones for Flamanville).
The highly complicated outlet and inlet works that bring the cooling water in, are being built by Balfour Beatty. Another UK company.
Wondering_Electron@reddit
EDF is responsible for building the reactors. Who they choose as contractors is immaterial.
You don't how this works do you?
africanconcrete@reddit
Framatome are building the reactors. EDF are a shareholder of Framtome, so are Mitsubishi.
https://www.edfenergy.com/media-centre/first-nuclear-reactor-for-a-generation-is-fitted-to-british-power-station
"The “reactor pressure vessel” (RPV) is a 500-tonne steel container that holds nuclear fuel used to make heat to produce steam for the world's largest turbine, from Arabelle Solutions. The RPV, manufactured by Framatome in France, arrived at Hinkley Point C"
https://www.framatome.com/en/about/profile/
EDF are the client, who are co-funding the plant.
They formed a subsidiary called NNB (New Nuclear Build) who is responsible for managing the project. They appoint the designers and contractors.
The contractors such as Bouygues, Laing O'Rourke, Balfour Beatty, Framatome, GE etc etc are the ones who build it.
You don't know how it works.
Wondering_Electron@reddit
https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/nuclear-new-build-projects/hinkley-point-c
I am not sure if English is your first language.
"At Hinkley Point C we're building two new nuclear reactors, ..."
EDF are designated as the developers and have control of its construction.
What is so hard to understand?
africanconcrete@reddit
Yes they are the developers.
The contractors are responsible for the construction.
Construction - "the work of building or making something, especially buildings, bridges, etc"
Stop playing semantics.
The vast majority of contractors, labour and staff that are physically building Hinkley are UK based.
Defiant-Plantain1873@reddit
It is a nuclear bad issue though. We live in a world with renewables. When nuclear first came about, it was great because the other options sucked.
Now we have hundreds of better options and people are still trying to use nuclear for ideological reasons despite the fact it’s not economical, nor is it adaptive, nor is it time-efficient
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
What's a better baseline load option than nuclear?
Sabreline12@reddit
Nuclear is very costly and slow to build everywhere, but people are desperate to blame that on anything apart from nuclear itself.
3Cogs@reddit
We built safe and reliable reactors in the past, and that was with the design and engineering technology of the sixties and seventies. Some of them are still operating after 40 years.
Sabreline12@reddit
Still very expensive and long to build. You'd hope they're at least safe with how much they cost.
mpt11@reddit
As I said in another reply. We used to be able to. Til thatcher and privatisation
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Yeah she basically killed off Engineering industry and castrated this country's ability to build.
bateau_du_gateau@reddit
It’s not weird at all when you understand the real goal of these projects is to shovel money into the pockets of those non-technical people. A thousand lawyers making a million each, 100,000 civil servants, it very quickly adds up to billions a year and if any engineering happens it’s only by accident
africanconcrete@reddit
The people in charge of the building of HPC are listed on available websites.
Care to point out which one is unable to use a computer and is non technical?
Nigel Cann - 43 years experience in nuclear power stations.
Stuart Crookes - 35 years working for EDF, started as an apprentice on a nuclear plant, degrees in advanced physics etc? Is he unable to open a computer?
Rob Jordan - over 30 years experience buolding power stations worldwide. Commissioned several nuclear stations and others. Perhaps he is the one who is unable to open a computer?
Big-Scallion3644@reddit
So true, just look at the hs2 show.
africanconcrete@reddit
The French and Finnish couldn't build the same power station design on budget or time either.
What happens is as simple as this -
To get the project signed off the costs and time to build are underestimated so it seems viable and an easier sell. It is a form of bias that features on all these mega and giga projects the world over. You will hear platitudes like we learnt lessons from the last ones, we are using modular techniques, blah, blah, blah.
Fun fact, in the early years of HPC, we reached out to the French construction company that was building the exact same plant in Flammanvile. The same company that is building HPC. The reply we got was not a chance. The project had broken them, not a single engineer, project manager etc wanted to come and build another one.
They gave us lessons learned reports. I recall one report said absolutely what ever you do, dont build this particular staircase this way and build it before that structure.
Lo and behold they built it the same way as Flammanville because when push came to shove, time pressures were on and they defaulted to the most difficult option. The other structure ticked more boxes politically and was therefore prioritised over this staircase.
We followed their advice on placement of cranes from their lessons learned. The law of unintended consequences hit us and it ended up worse than what they had.
As the project progresses the real costs are drip fed into the press in smaller incremental amounts, with the odd spike. Global issues will be used to lay blame and distract away from this process.
A project of this scale and complexity are difficult for humans to fully comprehend and we are beset by biases, political influences and this is why they always seem to be built slowly or expensively.
In reality the people out there are doing one hell of a great job, against some extremely challenging, complex and complicated challenges.
The UK can build. Society needs to accept that these things take time and cost a lot of money.
To understand this concept more read the brilliant book by Brent Flyvbjerg called: How Big Things Get Done.
HS2 is suffering from the same issue. This was very well detailed in this report -
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/hs2-ltd-ceo-details-civils-slippage-as-stewart-review-recommends-project-governance-overhaul-18-06-2025/
I_Rarely_Downvote@reddit
It's prevalent in every industry here, there's about 3 managers for every person actually doing the work and they all slow it down in some way so they can put their name on the project.
Coolio2510@reddit
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago , the second best time is now.
Billy_McMedic@reddit
Here’s the thing.
We are stuck in a self perpetuating cycle when it comes to infrastructure projects it seems, we decide to try out a new project, spend time and money getting people trained up, encounter snags and other issues which are bound to occur when it’s the first time your attempting something, get burned by those issues and decide not to pursue it any further even if we’ve learnt the lessons and now have the experienced staff, the people we trained up move on to other things because of the lack of projects to use those skills on, all the learned lessons are lost, wait a couple decades and repeat the cycle.
High Speed rail and nuclear power are 2 examples of this cycle, and it just gets us stuck in a pit. What should happen is that once the initial attempt is done, immediately start work on more projects of a similar nature, get these people that now have the experience in working these kinds of projects and working through the encountered issues continue on, learning the lessons as they go. When the WCML had its first phase of electrification back in the mid 1900’s, it ran wildly over budget and over time, however it was the first large scale electrification project British rail had undertaken, and once the first phase was completed, they took the time to step back, learn the lessons (one of the problems was the overhead line design they used was massively over engineered to the point of waste) and then to get back to it, first finishing the electrification of the WCML in decent order, and then turning around to electrifying other routes, eventually culminating in the electrification of the east coast mainline which was completely on schedule and under budget, as a result of the vast knowledge base British rail had built up.
Similar stories could play out with nuclear power plants and high speed rail. Yes any new power plants won’t come online for years to come, but right now we are cursing the fact that 20 years ago nobody thought to start up on a big round of nuclear construction, who’s to say in 20 years we won’t again be cursing the people of today for doing the same thing right now. The best time to start construction was 20 years ago, the second best time to start is right now.
It’s a fatal flaw which has poisoned British society, “oh we can’t build anything so why bother?”, if we always thought like that then this country would be unrecognisable and worse off for it. Throughout history the UK has been at the cutting edge of innovation, taking massive gambles on technology which turns out to be world changing, the railways is one such example. We are surrounded by examples of our ancestors taking the risk and diving head first into projects which wind up bettering all of our lives. We “can’t” build anything because we have been lazy and poisoned by apathy, the ability is there but the mindset isn’t, and government after government has been happy to bend to this mindset in an attempt to appease voters and secure their own jobs, rather than doing their god damned jobs and working to make things better. It’s one of the reasons I feel quite favourable to the current labour government, because they have opened up the taps on funding for public projects to get this ball rolling. They haven’t been perfect about it but they are doing a hell of a lot more than other governments have, they actually seem to be building a long term plan to start improving the situation we find ourselves in, one that goes beyond the next election cycle, and are currently laying the foundations necessary.
Azzaphox@reddit
And yet amazingly the UK was initally a world leader in railways, industrialisation etc.
Its not that we cant do it, it's that we are not persistent in keeping on trying.
NuclearCleanUp1@reddit
Spent fuel can be reprocessed but there is a reason the UK abandoned its reprocessing programme.
HarryPopperSC@reddit
Step 1... Start a Facebook campaign pushing misinformation about how nuclear power plants will deter immigrants from coming to the UK.
Step 2... Run in a general election and propose building mass nuclear power.
Step 3... Profit.
Fluffy_Register_8480@reddit
I feel like nuclear energy is so expensive and the waste products so dangerous that we might as well put the ££billions we’d spend building one nuclear power plant into tidal power research and other renewables - cleaner and truly infinite power sources that guarantee energy security. If we cracked tidal energy and battery storage, we’d be a net energy exporter again.
soulsteela@reddit
The new build nuclear plants aren’t going to help pull down prices, we’ve guaranteed the French government they can set the price, we are subsidising what France and the Netherlands pay for power and transport.
jlangue@reddit
Because it’s costly and there is no hundred year plan with its weight. It is primarily for weapons use but if you have been paying attention each nuclear plant in Ukraine is being used as a potential weapon against the them. One has been hit by a rocket.
Stevebwrw@reddit
I am pro nuclear. A well built and run plant is not especially dangerous. It is climate change benefit.
SentientWickerBasket@reddit
People are nervous about the potential, however tiny, for a catastrophic disaster. We're a small country with dense population centres; a heavily contaminated exclusion zone could harm large numbers of people and take a considerable bite out of our land area.
However, the fears, while I disagree with the cost/benefit, are valid to have. There have been devastating accidents with (practically) permanent effects in the history of nuclear power. Talking down to people like much of this thread is doing is not going to help anyone.
Big-Scallion3644@reddit
It’s propaganda that made people fear nuclear, , it was too cheap so demonised. The death too from that catastrophic disaster in Chernobyl was 31 people. 50,000 people die from the effects of Coal powered electricity stations even know.
SentientWickerBasket@reddit
Er. Maybe in the heat of the disaster itself, but yeah, it's more than that.
CarpeCyprinidae@reddit
About 60 now. Still in double not triple figures when original estimates were in 4 or 5 figures
Big-Scallion3644@reddit
Nah it’s honestly not, look into it, they used it as an industry to get money.
richmeister6666@reddit
We live in one of the most seismically stable areas on the planet, the only way a disaster would happen if there was a huge series of unthinkable complete incompetencies and human error that’s probably now impossible because of technology. Overall we’re probably where the risk is the least.
damhack@reddit
How do you explain 3 major events at Windscale and Sellafield then? Britain isn’t seismically stable and even if it was tremors are not the main cause if nuclear incidents. Stupidity and other non-seismic natural forces cause incidents.
Weird_Persimmon1777@reddit
Maybe its down to a general lack of trust in the competency of how it will be run. Trust in institutions is declining, there was a survey recently that showed it massively decreased over the past decade or so. With rubbish train companies, potholes in roads and bankrupt councils, sewage in seas, the Post Office scandal, Grenfell.. There are so many examples of incompetent companies and the shit or greedy running of services, maybe its a loss of faith? I'm not saying the technology isn't there to make it safe, more an estimate of public perception.
KeyLog256@reddit
The issue there is you can't badly run a Western nuclear reactor into a Chernobyl style disaster. Even if some bad actors took over the plant by force and deliberately tried to make the reactor explode, it would simply shut down.
Weird_Persimmon1777@reddit
Yes, but most people may not know that.
jsm97@reddit
The problem with those fears is the nuclear accidents totally overshadow the many other industrial accidents that occur all the time. Two years before Chernobyl there was a gas leak in Bhopal, India which exceeded Chernobyl in both death toll and clean up cost and yet nobody has ever heard of it. Many people fear nuclear power for the same reason they fear flying despite the fact they are many times more likely to die in a car crash on the way to the airport.
Far-Adhesiveness3763@reddit
Because Chernobyl fall off
Midgar918@reddit
I heard a member of the public on lbc a while ago saying we shouldn't have nuclear plants because we apparently get tsunamis..
H16HP01N7@reddit
Because people are sheep, and will believe anything that the Mail tells them...
If we're generalising people...
Don't @ me.
AppletheGreat87@reddit
Wait till you find out where France gets most of it's electricity from...
But seriously, I don't think the UK is that anti nuclear but i also think that most people are quielte stupid and very uninformed. A lot of people like the Green Party and it's messaging and don't necessarily understand that they're anti nuclear and by the time they do they don't question it. Also it's not like the UK has a great, well funded education system that prioritises scientific literacy.
Significant_Return_2@reddit
I don’t think the UK is anti nuclear energy.
A few people are, but they’re largely misinformed about it. The majority of people realise that it has its place, alongside other formats of power.
It’s not THE answer, but it’s certainly part of the answer.
damhack@reddit
It’s the most expensive answer on purely price per MWh and cleanup costs. Go figure why supplier corporations want us to go nuclear crazy.
Miserable-Ad7835@reddit
The UK is anti any sort of progress.
PepsiMaxSumo@reddit
Despite being the world leader in science and innovation
Miserable-Ad7835@reddit
Yet every single project we attempt, goes waaay over budget and is delivered 5 years late.
PepsiMaxSumo@reddit
Due to changing governments, overzealous planning laws, over reliance on committees and most recently multiple ‘once in a lifetime’ events
Miserable-Ad7835@reddit
Changing governments, overzealous planning laws and reliance on committees, which tend to be anti-progress in general, just back up my point about the country as a whole being anti-progress.
Recent once in a lifetime events, yeah, I'll give you that, but I can also guarantee the UK will milk them as an excuse for far longer than anywhere else.
rainbowroobear@reddit
this
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Agreed 😂
Nimble_Natu177@reddit
Because Nick Clegg is a tool.
JAGERW0LF@reddit
“building new reactors would take too long: they wouldn’t “come on stream” until about 2021 or 2022”
Nick Clegg 2010
nothingpersonnelmate@reddit
Fortunately we ignored him, went ahead with Hinkley C that same year, and despite his pessimism it's expected to come online around 2031.
ravisodha@reddit
Nah, I blame Henry VIII
damhack@reddit
Tidal and wind generation with air battery storage is cheaper and doesn’t produce pollutants that last for tens of thousands of years nor leak into the atmosphere and water table causing widespread cancers. Nuclear is neither cheap nor clean. It costs a fortune to build, uses raw material extraction from African mines at great environmental cost to their local populatiins and rarely recoups the original investment. It only benefits French and American companies and we end up with the costly waste disposal problem. Nuclear is as much a money-spinning con as hydrogen and biofuel.
CommonIsekaiHero@reddit
One of the big issues I’ve seen in my circles is the costs involved. A lot of people think it will be expensive because Peter Dutton here in Australia planned on expensive nuclear
Dplex920@reddit
The public are unreasonably fearful and ignorant about it
The politicians are lobbied aka bribed by oil companies
k8blwe@reddit
Uninformed and fear. It one goes wrong then its a big problem. A lot of people think waste is a big issue too even if the reactor was fully safe. Even though it can be recycled and reused. And storing it isn't a problem either.
I wish people actually looked into it. Would help give us cheaper and cleaner energy
Wooden_Site_1645@reddit
Decent write-up on nuclear’s issues, including where it fails on its own terms here: https://newsocialist.org.uk/stop-trying-make-nuclear-power-happen/
Terrible-Group-9602@reddit
It isn't?
Wondering_Electron@reddit
UK isn't.
Uninformed and ill educated people are anti nuclear.
Spiritual_Photo7020@reddit
I suppose you are well informed of the new report about the sellafield processing container leak that will cost at least £136B &100 years to fix .and we all know how accurate these estimates are but it's only public money .
Useless_or_inept@reddit
Don't forget the NIMBYs!
IanM50@reddit
Nuclear energy costs a fortune to build, takes decades and costs a fortune to dismantle at end of life. In addition it only take one hot from an enemy during a war to switch it off for months, if no ever.
The UK has a huge amount of wind offshore. Wind turbines and solar are both quick and cheap to install and in a time of war are small and all over the place making it far more difficult for an enemy to take offline.
In the time it is taking to build and commission one new nuclear reactor, roughly 3 times the amount of wind turbine generation has come on line and at a much lower cost. Why bother building nuclear.
BroodLord1962@reddit
Investment in tidal power should be the way to go, after all we are an Island
FEMXIII@reddit
The problem for me, isn’t really the waste products or even the risks associated with the operation.
My issue with nuclear is how ridiculously long it takes to build them, and how much it costs.
I’d love to see is move to more solar, wind, and uphill pumping hydro batteries.
EnbyArthropod@reddit
Sellafield / Windscale leaks and accidents; Dounreay plutonium particles; Chernobyl causing sheep irradiation.
France has either been really good at covering up or not been affected as much.
Zealousideal-Ad-2728@reddit
It’s interesting not more people in this thread aren’t bringing this up. The 1957 Windscale fire at Sellafield, which released radioactive material over parts of the country and was partially covered up at the time. A lot of people in this thread are talking about nuclear accidents as if it’s a hypothetical.
xVENUSx@reddit
But it happened in 1957, reactor tech is many times safer now. Why are you stuck in the past?
Spiritual_Photo7020@reddit
Sellafield nu lear processing plant is leaking now will cost the £136 billion and 100 years to clean up. Probably better alternatives considering how bad these estimates always are.
boomerangchampion@reddit
It's like refusing to drive a car because the Model T didn't have airbags
SleeplessPilot@reddit
Might want to look into the Windscale disaster.
People get a bit antsy about radioactive fallout.
GreatBritishHedgehog@reddit
The “Green” party haven’t exactly helped
SeatOfEase@reddit
Yeah the famously influential green party who used their many years in power to....
dead_jester@reddit
Your preposition is completely false:
The U.K. government just gave the go ahead to spending £14billion building a huge nuclear reactor at Sizewell. They have also lined up several other nuclear reactor projects, including the roll out of a number of 470 Megawatt SMR’s across the country built by Rolls Royce.
There are definitely some British people who are very vocally either NIMBY or genuinely anti nuclear, and they have a right to their opinions, but saying the entire country and the U.K. government is against nuclear power plants is demonstrably untrue.
Misrepresentation of the truth of U.K. nuclear investments doesn’t help the discussion in any way.
ClevelandWomble@reddit
Because it requires really expensive facilities; disposing of the residual radioactive waste from reprocessing fuel is problematic at best; decomissioning old plant is a nightmare and working plants are terrorist magnets. Otherwise, it's just peachy.
There are better and safer nuclear technologies but we seem to end up buying older foreign designs that don't address any of these (real) problems.
WestleyMc@reddit
I think most of the population are ok with it, but NP is one of the many things ‘people’ want, but they do not want near them.. and with the uk being so small, it’s always going to be close to someone!
Defiant-Plantain1873@reddit
It’s shit, that’s why.
Redditors will try and convince you nuclear is wicked awesome and we should build a bunch of nuke plants and all our problems will be solved.
But that’s not true, and the big problems with it always come down to two things. Time, cost.
Takes too long to build one, costs far too much.
Take for example, Sizewell C, approved 2010, expected turn on date 2031. Cost so far £45bn. Wow, what a deal. In that same time period we’ve built multiple times more capacity in renewables, and for the same amount of money we could have built more capacity in renewables than the nuclear plant will provide, even if you account for the cost of batteries to store energy for low production times.
It’s tech of the past, and unless you’re a massive ship or a submarine or a spacecraft, there’s not really a place for it in the 21st century.
It’s expensive, it’s unadaptable, it takes ages to build, you have to actually get uranium from somewhere and i’ll tell you what, there aren’t any uranium mines in this country.
KeyGuitar9345@reddit
People are stupid, misinformed and generally old people who are the driving force to direct UK politics are closed to new ideas. This country is a museum dedicated to sustain pensioners at the lifestyle they're used to
MonitorJunior3332@reddit
The UK is not anti-nuclear energy. We have operating nuclear power plants and the government is currently investing billions into both small and large nuclear power plants
el_grort@reddit
We just haven't gone as hard for them, but that's honestly I expect largely because they take a long time to build and get turned on, and cost a lot, and frankly, politics here hasn't really been good for any projects like that for about two decades at least. It's also teeing up a win for what is likely your opposition in our political environment. Add the large upfront costs, it's not that surprising they are fairly sparse compared to projects which are quicker to spool up (wind turbines, solar, etc).
Monkeyboogaloo@reddit
Because we were a very early nucler power.
We has a gereration who saw tge destruction.
And they decided that coal, gas, wind and water was a better.
Borgmeister@reddit
Fear of Windscale, Threads, Chernobyl and Captial Expenditure - in no particular order.
carolomnipresence@reddit
In just 80 years of there have been several major incidents that have had an international impact, will remain a problem for the foreseeable future, and there remains no solution relating to the waste they generate. Oh, and a maniac in charge of the US has just bombed 3 facilities in Iran. The problem with nuclear power is that it is in the hands of human beings.
pagman007@reddit
Currently i am anti-nuclear because it is too late.
By the time we build any, we will be in the same situation as we are now going 'fuck i wish we had built more sustainable solutions such as solar and wind and and instead of spending 20 years building nuclear reactors we have to pay china for
OwlDust@reddit
We're not. There's just a loud minority like the Green party and misled individuals who oppose it vociferously.
richdrich@reddit
It costs substantially more than wind power or hydro, even in UK conditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
(This is especially true with the tail costs of decommissioning and waste handling, and the indemnity cost of major failure risks - carried by the state, as at Fukushima).
The only reasons to have nuclear energy are: - need to support a nuclear weapons programme - this was the historical motivation for the UK & US - belief that radiation is much less harmful than generally accepted and hence we can dump waste in landfill, tear reactors down quickly, live next to a melted down reactor, etc. - desire to keep the fossil fuel industry going, on a basis for waiting for nuclear plants that will never get delivered (see UK) - job creation scheme for skilled workers
Martipar@reddit
The waste is an issue, not just waste fuel but the major waste such as PPE and equipment that just has to be buried. We have the technology, right now, to use solar and wind power so why go for something as archaic as nuclear energy?
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Excuse me?
Also btw nuclear waste is recycled and refused, it's a non issue
Martipar@reddit
You cannot recycle an irradiated fork lift truck, the vast majority of nuclear waste is low level waste such as equipment and PPE. The emissions of the fuel being transported from where it is mined to where it is used exceed those of the transport of solar energy from the sun to the ground, wind also transports itself.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
I'm sorry if it's harsh but you don't know what you're talking about mate. I'm really of the opinion that not everyone understands nuclear and shouldn't have opinions on it. We don't use forklifts to transport nuclear waste that's not how it's done but was a good chuckle.
Martipar@reddit
Do you not? Why do Mitsibishi make them then https://www.mhi.com/news/1104271423.html
What does the main image on this document about nuclear waste show? https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65e08bfa2f2b3b00117cd788/Logistics_Services_Brochure.pdf
What about this quote from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
On acceptance, the equipment required for transfering the waste (e.g. a forklift truck) to the store should be selected and the store operator should prepare the appropriate documentation required to store the waste. At the store a suitable location for the waste should be identified and the location details recorded. The information provided by the consignor
https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/TRS402_scr.pdf
I'm sorry if it's harsh but you don't know what you're talking about mate. I'm really of the opinion that not everyone understands nuclear and shouldn't have opinions on it and that's totally ok.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
I'd recommend you watch this
https://youtu.be/IzQ3gFRj0Bc?si=i0rSXqDzjRWIlxOS https://youtu.be/aDUvCLAp0uU?si=xL5bMjQAWAZvdACM
Good digestible videos for you, great starting point
Martipar@reddit
No.
We need to step back a bit, you stated
"We don't use forklifts to transport nuclear waste that's not how it's done but was a good chuckle."\~
You have been challenged with solid evidence from multiple sources and you even had the audacity to state that it was I who did not understand the topic at hand. Youy can't pretend that didn't happen and send me two youtube links. So stop, go back and tell me why you felt it was necessary to state:
"We don't use forklifts to transport nuclear waste that's not how it's done but was a good chuckle."
Which is now proven to be a lie and a clear indication you do not know the topic at hand. Either you explain why you lied or you concede that you are a poseur with no knowledge of nuclear generation from the mining and transportation of the fuel, the handling of all waste and the decommissioning of old power plants.
Explain or concede. It's your choice.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Sure, I’ll take full responsibility for what I said earlier “we don’t use forklifts to transport nuclear waste” was misleading and wrong. What I meant was that off-site transport moving waste between facilities uses shielded dry casks, rail containers, and specialised heavy-haul trucks, not forklifts. But yes, forklifts are one of the many tools used on-site within nuclear facilities to move sealed drums of low- and intermediate-level waste it seemed so weird to me why you'd pick forklifts as an argument against nuclear waste that I couldn't even think why you'd oppose something unless it's inter-site transport out in the public.
The IAEA itself states:
After Fukushima, Mitsubishi deployed radiation-hardened forklifts for safe debris handling. These machines are typically shielded, remotely operated, and used in highly controlled zones so definitely not out in public to dump things. Some equipment, over time, becomes irradiated and is treated as low-level waste (LLW) which makes up ~95% of nuclear waste volume, but less than 1% of total radioactivity.
In Sweden and France irradiated metals are melted down inside shielded induction furnaces, then reused to make waste containers or radiation shielding blocks all staying within the nuclear sector. It’s a well regulated, closed-loop process.
On your claim that
That sounds absurd, it's not how emissions are measured. Yes, the sun delivers photons freely, but the carbon cost of solar comes from mining silicon and rare earths, manufacturing panels, inverters, battery storage, grid upgrades, and maintenance. According to the IPCC, nuclear power averages 6–15 gCO₂e/kWh, while Solar PV in cloudy regions like the UK average 30–60 gCO₂e/kWh (UNECE lifecycle analysis). Wind is competitive, but nuclear is still one of the lowest-emission, high-reliability sources available. Uranium is so dense that a single truckload of fuel powers a 1 GW plant for 18–24 months whereas solar and wind require constant material inputs and large land footprints. So while my forklift comment was off, the broader point remains that nuclear logistics are robust, and it’s policy, cost overruns, and public perception, not forklifts or fuel transport I don't know how it can ever be an argument against.
Martipar@reddit
Solar panels last, with current technology, 25-30 years, the same volume of uranium does not last that long.
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
Alright man you don't like nuclear, I get it
janusz0@reddit
It all sounds cutting edge until you realise it’s just another way to boil water. What happened to the 1950s tech that converted radiation directly into electricity? (“Nuclear batteries”, too dangerous to put in your ‘phone, but perfect for a secure local powerstation?)
Xtergo@reddit (OP)
The modern ones use pressurised gas, there's new designs coming every other year.
nolinearbanana@reddit
No - we don't have the technology to run our energy supply on solar and wind.
People like you are the sole reason we currently have the highest energy prices in Europe - because you believe this ridiculous notion which means you are anti-nuclear, politicians listen and are also anti-nuclear and we don't build them. Result - we have to maintain a large number of gas turbines and even when we barely use them, it means we pay sky high energy prices for ALL our electricity.
Martipar@reddit
How do those capitalist boots taste?
Cloudsareinmyhead@reddit
I could ask you the same thing
Martipar@reddit
On one side there is decentralised en]ergy production with people putting up solar panels and turbines on their own land and the other is the current system of centralise energy production charging customers for product dug up from the ground, transported around and consumed. They are not the same, if you think they are you are in need of further education.
Cloudsareinmyhead@reddit
The amount of land needed for nuclear compared to solar or wind is tiny. I'm not saying we should bin off those sources of energy, we shouldn't, but we can't just keep on burning gas for our energy needs and wind/solar wouldn't be able to fill the gap in demand. We need more nuclear if we want to have more than a snowball's chance in hell of hitting net zero.
detailsubset@reddit
Over the last 20 years the mining of rare earth minerals, used in solar panels, wind turbines and batteries, has already produced more radioactive waste than 70 years of nuclear power generation. And nuclear power stations dispose of their waste safely, a significant amount of mining waste is washed into waterways and ground water.
All the combined nuclear waste, produced by power generation, in the last 70 years wouldn't fill an average sized football stadium.
Nuclear is the cleanest form of energy there is, waste included and it's only getting cleaner.
DameKumquat@reddit
Both solar and wind are intermittent. As solar expands and battery storage for wind improves, we can reduce both fossil fuels and nuclear, but currently we need some nuclear to replace aging facilities and gas etc.
Martipar@reddit
That's what batteries are for.
Domestic energy needs can easily be dealt with wind, solar and battery storage. Industrial needs are a bit more complex but nuclear is not the answer, you'll find most people focus on the energy generation and not the mining of uranium, waste management, fuel transportation, low level waste and decommission of nuclear power plants all of which are a lot more complex than any other energy generation type.
DeCyantist@reddit
Because it is cheap, clean and reliable.
Iamthe0c3an2@reddit
People saw chernobyl and fukushima and think nuclear bad, irrespective of evidence that its the safest form of energy compared to fossil fuel.
luffy8519@reddit
Is the UK anti-nuclear energy?
This poll shows that 48% of the UK were in favour of nuclear power, with 31% opposed.
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/43941-britons-are-becoming-more-positive-towards-nuclear
illarionds@reddit
Well, the last time we tried to build a new nuclear plant, it wasn't terribly successful. Massive time and cost overruns, and the government of the day signed a contract guaranteeing buying the output at a minimum price many thought absurd.
I'm not "anti nuclear energy". I am very very skeptical about our ability to invest in new nuclear in a sane and affordable way.
A quick Google will find you dozens of articles about Hinckley Point C and Sizewell B.
And my back-of-a-fag-packet calculation says Hinckley C is about ten times as expensive per kW of generation capacity as a new solar farm would be. You might quibble with the exact numbers, but there is no doubt whatsoever that nuclear is a lot more expensive than solar (or wind, for that matter).
It's not that nuclear is bad - and if we'd invested in it effectively decades ago, we'd be in a better place now - but there just doesn't seem to be much reason to invest in new nuclear now. Renewables have already surpassed it. Battery storage costs have fallen more than 90% over the last decade, the old arguments about renewables being inconsistent are looking increasingly out of date.
exhauated-marra-6631@reddit
I've been on the site where most of Europe's nuclear waste is stored. There's a lot, and we're coming up to 15 years of zero progress in finding proper long term storage for it. Fix that, and I'm 100% on board.
Minute-Yoghurt-1265@reddit
It's that 5g corrupting minds...
mrginge94@reddit
Have a read about Sellafield.
Nuclear is a great idea until you leave for-profit companies to deal with the waste and end up with it thrown into pits leaching into the surrounding environment.
Mr_DnD@reddit
We aren't.
Polls put the UK at relatively pro nuclear energy.
Two things that stop it:
One: NIMBYS (people want nuclear they just don't want it near them)
Two: It's a massive CAPEX thing. Huge upfront investment very expensive, pays off long long after the govt who put it in gets any credit for it ;)
AchillesNtortus@reddit
Mostly misinformation and a distrust of expert knowledge. Radiation damage is silent and mysterious whereas the perils of coal fired power stations are well understandable by the general public.
The fact that the radiation alone emitted from coal ash per MW generated is far greater than uranium. And this doesn't count the pollution from combustion or the deaths and diseases from coal mining, far greater than in the case of uranium.
It's the same lack of risk comprehension that governed flying after 9/11. So many people drove rather than take the planes even after all the security measures in place. The chance of being injured or killed in an auto accident is orders of magnitude higher.
Vargrr@reddit
It is relatively safe, but there are two issues with it that cannot be ignored.
What to do with the uranium rods after they are used? Currently, we just seem to bury them in barrels and hope they don't leak? It doesn't feel ecology sound - though maybe someone that knows more can say something.
Whilst accidents are very rare, the Uk has one of the highest population densities. Not a lot of land, but a huge amount of people. One big incident could very easily affect a lot of people because of this density.
SaltTyre@reddit
Because people have little faith in government or private businesses keeping up critical safety regimes and maintenance investment. Stakes are high when nuclear goes wrong
Dazzling_Theme_7801@reddit
MRI got it's name due to the science behind it being called nuclear magnetic resonance, but the nuclear parts sounds scary, so they changed it to MRI.
Timely-Sea5743@reddit
I don’t think the UK is anti nuclear at all. I think the UK is poor at long term thinking, and building infrastructure. Name 1 infrastructure project that hasn’t gone over budget and delivery date? Hinkley Point? HS2?
Remote-Citron-9383@reddit
Red tape and politician's usually hand out contracts to their mates. HS2 what a right royal fudge up that is.
Remote-Citron-9383@reddit
Even though there are huge upfront costs to build new reactors, long term they are cheap to run, it's the deactivation costs that are huge and the waste control also, that said, usually it's down to the people in power having their fingers in the pie of what makes them the most money from personal investments and with green energy they can make an easy case to win contracts just because it's " green ".
queen-bathsheba@reddit
Nuclear waste is not a Non issue.
How much is it costing to decommission Sellafield. I'm sure next gen nuclear power stations will have better planning.
mcfedr@reddit
Is it? As I understand several nuclear projects are underway, and several nuclear armed jets were just ordered.
The UK has a problem with corruption and bureaucracy in large projects. But that's in all projects, but just nuclear ones.
AnOtherGuy1234567@reddit
The main nuclear power station site in the UK is Sellafield. Over the years its had three different names, Calder Hall>Windscale> Sellafield. With the name changes being prompted by a major nuclear accident.
Sellafield today is bit of a byword for a frigging disaster. It's home to three of the ten worst industrial pollution sites in Europe. One container for liquid radioactive waste from the 1950s has been leaking for over a decade and won't be fully drained for decades to come. With nobody being too sure where it's leaking to. At one point the local population were being told to avoid seagulls (not easy) due to them having radioactive bird shit.
The THORP unit there (Thorium Oxide Reprocessing Plant). Which was supposed to deal with a lot of radioactive waste and turn it into "new" nuclear fuel. Never worked, at best it reached 10% of its designed annual capacity. With the workers literally hammering low enriched fuel rods to get them to fit in the holes.
It is also a major IT disaster with the National Audit Office. Saying that they're systems are thoroughly penetrated by Chinese and Russian hackers, with it being virus riddled.
Their management's response for decades has been. Things might be bad now but you should have seen how bad the previous managements were.
UK safety regulations means that the new UK reactors. Need a few multiples of the amount of steel and concrete that the French designs that they're based on need in France. Heavily adding to the expense and time of building them and that's once you've got past the planning inquiry stage. Which can take over ten years.
We also still have no long term plan for storing nuclear waste.
But of course the biggest problem. Is that Greenpeace and CND have been thoroughly penetrated by the KGB/GRU since st least the 1960s. With Russia heavily against Britain having nuclear weapons or a nuclear industry.
acidus1@reddit
Due to The event.
awwwwJeezypeepsman@reddit
People just think of Chernobyl and think absolutely fucking not. The future is mostly nuclear and renewables!
Throw2thesea@reddit
Do you have a link to an independent/ peer reviewed report explaining how nuclear waste can be safely treated / recycled? Id like to know more.
ratherbefuddled@reddit
People are really bad at evaluating risks where the consequences are catastrophic but the likelihood extremely low.
mh1ultramarine@reddit
The average person's education on nuclear power is Simpson and that cheinoble Netflix thing
petethepete2000@reddit
Because for 2 hours the whole of Britain was powered by solar and wind energy once.. Britain has massive renewable energy heading to full clean energy. We have the solution to climate change, climate collapse is a choice. A world full of nuclear power stations means hundreds more nuclear disasters, how many can an already ecologically strained planet take
Independent_Push_159@reddit
A big problem is that even though there is approval for several new power stations, they are just not coming on line - not due to opposition but due to technical and logistical difficulties. When anyone talks about them being needed due to the urgency of the climate crisis, their argument is simply destroyed by looking at how long the lead in time is.
It's been decades since the last new nuclear power station came on line and that took 8 years to build.
We have one power station in the pipeline, which was approved in 2016, was supposed to be finished by 2025, but currently is projected for 2031.
Planning for Sizewell C has been ongoing since 2008 and is still not resolved.
All this under the stewardship of pro-nuclear energy governments throwing money at the problems. I see no bias against, I just see an impractical 'solution'.
As for your comments about waste storage and disposal not being an issue, that is completely false. The UK does not have a long term solution. It never has had. It has ideas for geological storage but that has been in the pipeline for decades with no definitive answers on locations and means of implementation. As much as the anti side spread misinformation and fear, the pro-side are just as liable to harm their cause by underplaying the challenges, and that bolsters the antis.
For clarity - I used to be fervently anti, but have switched position to agreeing that the current operating power stations must be retained (in light of the climate crisis) and kept going for as long as possible. I'm now also open to new power stations coming on line but am constantly frustrated by the simplistic takes that we hear about how easy it will be - like OP's - and fear that the push for new nuclear is actually little more than a desire for a 'big solution' that has no immediate prospect of coming on line in a timescale likely to help with climate change and all the while it distracts from smaller scale, less 'glamorous' answers like micro-generation projects that can be done in a fraction of the time.
Also, the price of energy in the UK is a domestic policy and market failure by pegging all prices and an over-reliance on the gas market. If renewables were decoupled from that market, the price of energy would drop, and the viability and pace of roll out would increase.
evthrowawayverysad@reddit
The UK, in my experience, is second in the world to the USA in regards to having opinions steered by misinformation. Big oil owns our opinions on nuclear, wind farms and solar, big ag owns our opinions on the countryside, land use and ecocide, and the new right owns our opinions on immigrants, climate change, and gender/sexuality.
If you have a discussion with the average Brit, it's amazing how much hard science they not only don't know, but actively reject in favour of what they've been told to believe.
ClearWhiteLightPt2@reddit
Chernobyl. Three Mile Island.
Striking_Smile6594@reddit
Which just goes to show how hysteria and fearmongering are triumphing over rationality.
Chernobyl happened because of outdated designed built on the cheap. Couldn't happen in modern day western power plants. Three Mile island didn't even kill anyone.
Nuclear powers overall safety record is outstanding.
ClearWhiteLightPt2@reddit
Chernobyl contaminated livestock as far away as Cumbria UK.
As for fear, blame and hold account to politicians instead of saying how safe it is so shareholders can make a fortune.
Cloudsareinmyhead@reddit
Chernobyl was a reactor design that was inherently unsafe, running without a proper emergency shutdown procedure in an empire (the USSR was essentially the Russian Empire in a trenchcoat) run by incompetent bureaucrats that no longer exists.
I'll repeat for you. Nuclear, when it's done properly and not micromanaged into literal oblivion by idiots, is absolutely safe.
Naive-Archer-9223@reddit
There was a nuclear accident in Cumbria that nobody even talks about, or Fukishima which barely gets mentioned, both of those were obviously not great but they were both nowhere near as bad as Chernobyl which is basically a guide on "How not to handle a nuclear accident after doing everything to make sure it happens"
I don't think it's possible for it to be any worse while still being an accident.
janusz0@reddit
Oh yes, there will never be disasters in the future! We always learn from the past, don’t we?
Temporary-Guidance20@reddit
Russian shills.
MetalWorking3915@reddit
Because it most likely would cost us 5000 times more than any other country.
Basically we allow everyone to milk our big projects and we are terrible at project management.
Forsaken-Original-28@reddit
It's stupidly expensive. Wind/solar/battery are much cheaper and quicker. More hydro electric would be sensible as well
shishr2@reddit
Nuclear power is very expensive.
GaldrickHammerson@reddit
It's because our education system is out of date. As a physics teacher, I have to teach that nuclear waste is a serious cause of environmental damage because it can't be contained properly. That hasn't been the case in the last two decades.
I also have to teach stupid arguements like "wind turbines kill birds" as if cats and cars don't do that much more frequently and that they are very noisy. Which as a person who is very sensitive to sound and lived within a two minute walk of a modern wind farm a couple of years and my wife suppressing a fart from the other end of the cottage was louder.
The cause of all this is the funding that oil companies put into environmental groups to spread fear and misinformation about alternatives to oil and natural gas. Hence why there is a big pushback against wind turbines, nuclear power, and fracking.
CrabAppleBapple@reddit
Answered your own question.
Confuseduseroo@reddit
Lack of education basically. It's a hang-over from the 1960's when people thought it was the end of the world. It's not widely understood that there are clean and safe ways to generate nuclear power, if only the funding were put in the right place. Nor is it widely understood that wind, solar and wave power will never produce enough energy. It's way better to put the money into developing nuclear power now, which will supply all our needs forever, and stop littering the planet with solar panels and wind turbines.
NMMBPodcast@reddit
Chernobyl probably doesn't help.
DazzlingClassic185@reddit
It’s expensive to put in, and is very difficult to get through planning, especially in areas of scientific interest vis a vis habitat conservation. Meanwhile, solar and wind are relatively cheap to install
Serious-Molasses-982@reddit
Im not
TheUndeadBake@reddit
Because we had a powerplant that almost went boom because people cheaped out on the turbine system so it had literally ZERO filter fit for keeping nuclear crap from getting out, and the only reason more DIDN'T.... is because it was the ventilation going to shit that almost caused the boom in the first place. It's the inspiration of a recent game.
IWishIDidntHave2@reddit
I'm at a loss as to which incident you are referring to?
JagoHazzard@reddit
Windscale.
TheUndeadBake@reddit
Windscale happened because the turbines were doing a piss poor job, things hot, fire started, and on top of the ordinary smoke, a bit of nuclear radiation escaped. Not a lot, but that’s only because the ventilation was so piss poor it melted and fused partially
detailsubset@reddit
That's not even close to what happened.
IWishIDidntHave2@reddit
It can’t be, as that comment bears literally no similarity to Windscale at all.
actualinsomnia531@reddit
-It takes massive up front investment, so governments don't like committing to it as they won't see any progress in their election cycle -It is a divisive issue so makes as many bad headlines as good -It's difficult to wangle your stock portfolio to significantly benefit from it as it's so specialised -The UK doesn't recycle their waste to reuse it. No idea why not. -We've had several small accidents and near-misses with our old and decrepit nuclear sites so there's historic concerns to overcome
None of these are good reasons. Apparently we'd rather burn ancient Canadian forests as our favoured "green" option (Drax).
AddictionisHell@reddit
Chernobyl , Three Mile Island and Fukushima !
wosmo@reddit
The biggest reason I'm against it, is because we're shit at it.
They announced intent to build Hinkley Point C in 1982. Construction began in 2017, 35 years later. It's expected to be commissioned in 2031, 14 years after construction began, and 49 years after the intent was announced.
And that's to say nothing of budget overruns - it's currently costing 50% more than budgetted, with 5 years left on the clock.
I'm fundamentally pro-nuclear - but we're getting much more for our money elsewhere. Seagreen offshore produces half as much power, for 1/8th of the cost, and took 2 years to build. This is what we're good at. 50 years to build Hinkley C, isn't.
Nooms88@reddit
Nobody wants a new power plant of any distinction in their vicinty.
elbapo@reddit
I don't think we are. I think we may have been in the 1990s. And that's about how long it takes to build a nuclear power station.
the_Athereon@reddit
Misinformation, cover ups and fear
Jassida@reddit
There was a supposed expert (I don’t know) on the radio claiming that nuclear energy is not as green as it’s made out to be.
Surely if you get more power from less material it’s a good thing
pab6407@reddit
The question is how many tonnes of ore need to be extracted and processed to get enough for fuel rod? Also how much energy is expended in that extraction and processing, is that energy from fossil fuels?
Jassida@reddit
Suppose it’s the electric car argument in a different form
Strict-Soup@reddit
Would you trust this government to really project plan nuclear projects. There are two under way that are far in the way over budget with unproven plans.
At least other countries have corruption to blame, here it's shear incompetence.
seven-cents@reddit
Also nimbyism. Nobody wants a nuclear reactor next door.
There are also questions about how to deal with the waste.. here's some information:
https://ukinventory.nda.gov.uk/information-hub/about-radioactive-waste/how-do-we-manage-radioactive-waste/
Personally I'm all for it, if it helps keep my energy bills down. We're all creaking under the strain of the cost of living
originalusername8704@reddit
Grew up not TOO far from Salafield. Not close, but we’d swim near there and visit the education centre sometimes. Anyway. Had no fear of an accident or anything, and it’s really not that much of an eyesore imo.
But the amount of waste they have there in dodgy pools and failing concrete is a potential disaster waiting to happen. The cost of dealing with all of this is going to enormous in the short/medium term and when you’re talking about nuclear waste the long term is millennia. So whilst once up and running it’s relatively safe and inexpensive per site. The bigger picture can be quite different.
Educational_Pin_1455@reddit
we're not. We're literally building nuclear plant. Hinkley Point C
daniluvsuall@reddit
I don’t think we do, the issues with it here at simply the same as any large infrastructure projects they’re slow and unbelievably expensive. Which makes the end result almost unfathomably expensive. Nuclear power at the promised price, as-is will be more expensive than gas. So makes little sense
Brendawgy_420@reddit
Don't we currently have the world's largest building project? A nuclear plant that has multiple sites in it?
Necessary-Age9878@reddit
We will eventually move towards SMRs which is the way forward. This also reduces the risk of losing power when under attack.
NinjafoxVCB@reddit
People don't understand how it works. People's only knowledge of nuclear power comes from a 1960's soviet design that was operated by people who weren't trained to operate it.
Or even worse will reference Windscale/Sellafield which were designed in the 1940s and similarly designed and operated by people who didn't have the understanding of nuclear physics as required today and production was heavily leaned on by the government for the nuclear weapons progamme so safety corners were cut.
pooey_canoe@reddit
We can't even build a railway line, you think we could trust British contractors to build a nuclear power plant without it costing a billion pounds and taking fifty years to build?
pnlrogue1@reddit
One of the nuclear disasters took place here (indeed, I think Winscale might have been the first nuclear disaster?). People have long memories.
000000564@reddit
My mum was very anti nuclear. Grew up in the 60s-70s and honestly was traumatised with the shit they were doing back then. Like from Sellafield (aka Windscale).
JosKarith@reddit
Chernobyl. My generation grew up watching that disaster in realtime. With horror stories of the prevailing winds carrying the radiation this way. And then fear mongering stories about how everyone in the UK has increased levels of Caesium -137 from that and has a greater cancer risk. Anti-nuclear pressure groups capitalised on that and basically turned a significant proportion of an entire generation against nuclear power.
BrillsonHawk@reddit
Most people are poorly educated and not just in the UK. Most of them think Nuclear power is the devils work when it is in fact the best option for power generation both short term and long term. Only nuclear fusion is going to allow our civilisation to step up to the next level
BetApprehensive7147@reddit
The government aren't opposed. Look at the Sizewell project. Plenty of small modular ones popping up and the amount of money being spent at sellafield means you're not looking beyond the published shite out there
OneCheesecake1516@reddit
It’s not just our politicians and woke youngsters.
Holiday-Poet-406@reddit
Doesn't help that British Nuclear Fuels was sold off to the private market back in the 90s with no contingency to make new.
INTuitP1@reddit
I’ve spent 4 x more getting my solar panels and other smart home stuff fixed than I’ve actually spent on traditional energy in the entire 6 years I’ve lived in my house.
It’s not sustainable for my finances.
New-Link-6787@reddit
I just want you to think about this. Say we go to war. What happens when they bomb the nuclear power plant?
Why create a giant target weak spot in your own country?
Mobile_Falcon8639@reddit
Well you obviously don't know the first thing about the UK. Firstly the UK does not have a cold damp climate, unless you live in the North of Scotland. Some would argue that the UK is an increasingly hot country, in the south temperatures lately have been in the late 20s early 30s °, and there's been very little rain since March. Hardly a cold damp climate. Secondly whilst there Re quite rightly concerns about nuclear power most people in the UK are generally accepting of nuclear energy and seeing as necessary.
agarr1@reddit
Where I live, people are up in arms over the health risks of a phone mast which the complaine about of facebook.. on their phones. There is a terrifying level of stupidity in this country, and it's getting worse.
QuailTechnical5143@reddit
I wouldn’t say the UK is anti nuclear but successive governments back to the 90’s are anti-pulling-their-finger-out and doing things.
nfurnoh@reddit
I disagree with your premise, I don’t agree that the UK is generally anti nuclear energy. Yes there are objections to the massive cost and the location of plants and waste sites but I’ve never seen a general bias against it.
fatguy19@reddit
Short term thinking (don't want to make the investment) and some fossil fuel company influence in politics.
Finbarr82@reddit
because we can't even build 100 miles of high speed rail in less than a decade
C4rb5@reddit
Don’t think anyone really cares that much, it’s just quite expensive to build.
Psychological-Bee760@reddit
Cold fusion is the future just need enough money to fund the research but unfortunately debt based economics doesn't allow for that
Useless_or_inept@reddit
"A different energy source would be much better, as long as nobody has to pay for it" is impressively bad take, even by r/AskUK standards
Inkblot7001@reddit
Hey, we can't even get our water companies to do things right.
Once the nuclear companies decide to do the same and just dump all their shit in our rivers, seas and food sources, it is going to produce giant blue frogs and snails that will eat us.
Thevanillafalcon@reddit
The British public is generally against anything that will make our lives better for reasons unknown, it’s a pathological addiction to suffering I think.
Case in point, anytime somone brings up train tickets being too high on social media you will without fail see some people arguing to the death that this isn’t the case,
Bear in mind these people don’t use the trains, and cheaper train tickets would not effect them at all in the least but it’s out of some weird vague notion of how things are supposed to be.
That’s the problem with a lot of stuff, nimbyism included, people are clinging on to some phantom version of England
Alasdair91@reddit
It carries a catastrophic risk (albeit small) and the clean up is problematic. Also, the upfront cost is astronomical.
Sorry-Programmer9826@reddit
Saying nuclear is dangerous is silly. It's actually very safe.
However; a fair criticism of it is that it's expensive. Even with our not ideal climate solar and wind are still way cheaper
dpoodle@reddit
Can I point out that only if we think it's super dangerous will we take caution to build to the highest standards so no accidents happen.
abfgern_@reddit
Nuclear has had bad PR from the start because it has the same name as an apocalypse bomb, but functions completely differently
DotEddie@reddit
If they go that way, I just hope they are better protected than our RAF bases 🤪
dean__learner@reddit
Radiation fear mongering.
Chernobyl has a lot to do with it, both the event and the recentish TV series.
When it happened there was media hysteria and then the show came out (which was great but not scientifically or historically accurate) also spreading a metric fuckton of alarmist bullshit
IamlostlikeZoroIs@reddit
I not 100% against it but do have concerns and issues with it.
Big one is the fact they can go wrong and when they do it is devastating like Scotland, Fukushima and Chernobyl. Plus that and all the talk of war and them being a target such as what Russia has done 3 times so far in their war.
Second is how long it takes to build one, decades, and who is in charge of building one, a Chinese company has been proposed a lot of the time. And Chinese building companies/ manufacturers are very well known for cutting corners. So I just wouldn’t trust them to build something so important when it comes to safety.
just_some_guy65@reddit
I am not anti-nuclear but I suggest reading up seriously or watching a documentary on what really happened with the Windscale fire. If not for the insistence of one man against considerable ridicule, The Lake District would be to this day a no go area.
Nuclear is on balance our best approach to relatively clean and reliable energy but when it goes wrong, the risk of terrible consequences is high.
By the way, saying It could never happen again today" is precisely how it does happen again today.
perark05@reddit
With the exception of the French the west is generally anti nuclear due to international major incidents (chernobyl) and minor local incidents (three mile islands, sellafield) amplified by a major disinformation campaign funded by fossil fuel lobbying
Used-Ad9589@reddit
Tidal is the way forwards frankly. There are some pretty amazing projects underway, we lack the cabling infrastructure to make it work currently, the grid needs a big upgrade (does anyway re electric cars and home solar anyway)
pm_me_boobs_pictures@reddit
Fear mongering, nuclear waste, also cost as there's a large up front investment
Money_Afternoon6533@reddit
Idiots
SyboksBlowjobMLM@reddit
The economics are atrocious for new nuclear in the UK. That is the only real reason we don’t do more of it.
Cautious_Boot_2804@reddit
We like pain and making things super hard and more expensive, and then moaning about how it got like that.
Used-Ad9589@reddit
Stupidity mostly.
They aren't honestly though. There is a few being built, the issue is they take a long time to do safely, quite expensive & they let 3rd parties own EVERYTHING.
The government should fund it though and put the money from the energy sales into further energy production.
SloppyGutslut@reddit
Because we're a stupid and completely unserious country that has given up on anything but managed decline.
fizzysmoke@reddit
This is the biggest question of modern times. Perfectly put.
If we'd have built more of these we'd have the energy to throw at new technologies, baffled me for 25 years.
Gildor12@reddit
I didn’t know we were, certainly less nervie than Germany
johnny5247@reddit
People hear "nuclear" and think "bomb" or "accident". UK nuclear power stations used to make plutonium for the military. Modern nuclear just makes heat to make steam to spin turbines. Even more modern nuclear has a different process that shuts itself off harmlessly if there's a fault.
throwawayinfinitygem@reddit
One reason is environmentalists got an anti nuclear bandwagon such a long time ago and even though Chernobyl or Fukushima can't happen in the UK, people don't know that. Global warming was something that was known about but has crept up gradually and solving that could be pushed into the future unlike stopping nuclear. Letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Another is the UK had a poor record of nuclear going over budget, BNFL falsifying safety records etc.
Another was a culture of restrictive planning and people wanting to block nuclear the same as they want to block wind.
I think it's safe to build nuclear but I don't think it will be economical by the time we've finally built some more. Solar and wind plus cheap batteries will have caught up. Tidal power too.
nostalgebra@reddit
It's not a quick fix. Unfortunately it's very expensive to set up and takes 10 years or more for it to come online.
Negative_Chemical697@reddit
There's no good way to deal with the waste.
LuDdErS68@reddit
Because of general belief in the fear mongering, misinformation...
The average Brit just doesn't understand nuclear energy. Or science.
If they just educated themselves a tiny bit, they'd realise that there are several reactors nearly as close as the nearest small boat launch base.
I guess radiation can't swim, right?
thatblondeyouhate@reddit
We can't even trust water companies in this country. How are we supposed to trust any company to handle nuclear power?
RobertGHH@reddit
Because the left are in charge and cheap abundant energy is not good for their cause.
IWishIDidntHave2@reddit
The left who have just greenlight both a new nuclear plant and the development of micro nuclear plants.
RobertGHH@reddit
After campaigning against it for decades. Many other left groups are still campaigning against it including the commie greens bizarrely who seem to be anti any kind of progress or improvement.
Spiritual_Smell4744@reddit
Plus, blatantly, the left aren't in charge.
T_raltixx@reddit
It's the right that want to scrap net zero and drill baby drill.
RobertGHH@reddit
That's because oil is still essential for all sort of processes.
SlickAstley_@reddit
Because they wouldn't be able to blame extorting us on things that are happening 1000 miles away.
luckeratron@reddit
I like nuclear and support it but I do think it's massively massively bad value compared to wind. Especially when we have to pay huge amounts to France or china to build it for us.
DeadBallDescendant@reddit
You can install solar (and to a slightly lesser extent wind) MILES more quickly than you can built a nuclear power station. so we are going nuclear, just not for a while.
mebutnew@reddit
Because regardless of what the pro nuclear folks say it is still potentially very dangerous - sure, if everything is done correctly and nobody ever attacks the site then it should be fine, but it still represents a potential danger orders of magnitude higher, than, say, solar panels or wind turbines.
Also it generates waste that needs to be disposed of - and that waste lasts basically forever.
presterjohn7171@reddit
I think over the last 20 years most people have changed their minds over nuclear. The big issue now is cost overrun. We can't seem to make anything at a realistic price. When your quoted build prices treble it tends to put you off the entire endeavour.
FilmFanatic1066@reddit
People seem to think that we haven’t solved the waste problem, even though we very much have
Fickle-Public1972@reddit
The problem is the UK has not answered where the long term storage will be of the nuclear fuel, etc. Also must people see Nuclear and think of bombs not the power station.
HatOfFlavour@reddit
We're also at the perfect climate for wind.
I'm probably nuclear but there are some disadvantages. Like is there a fully bulletproof not gonna melt down utterly failsafe reactor design? Otherwise we need people to be fully on their game while designing, building and running the damn things.
Chernobyl had a safety design that was covered up because of soviet pride, like not even told to the operators and was pushed to a stupid dangerous point due to everyone who could say stop this now relying on the safety test to succeed for a promotion and no big enclosure to trap radioactive gas because it was built on the cheap.
3 mile island happened during a safety test that went over a shift change.
Fukushima they were warned to move the emergency generators out of a basement. The earthquake happened the generators kick in then the generators got flooded by the tsunami.
Sellafield has had officials admit a bunch of nuclear waste was buried somewhere on site with all records destroyed or lost.
So look at all these problems and look at Britain with our toothless regulators at crap like Grenfell and consider if nuclear is a good idea if there's any chance of mismanagement or pennypinching fucking it up.
imsickoftryingthis@reddit
Hinckley point c is currently on track to cost £46 billion. Once operational, this site will need to be guarded, at cost, by the police who secure nuclear sites. There will be spent fuel / waste that will need to go somewhere and also be protected, and result on that area being filled with highly radioactive material for hundreds / thousands of years.
Sizewell c is projected to also cost £40 billion but that will inevitably cost more with inflation.
The costs of these projects are astromical.
Bluecougar14@reddit
It's so crucial to our security as well with our nuclear deterrent and nuclear powered subs.
WhiteDiamondK@reddit
I don’t think the UK is, over all.
They probably wouldn’t want a nuclear power station next door, but I’m sure the vast majority of people don’t give an awful lot of thought to the supply chain for their energy.
The comments section of the Daily Mail is not representative of the UK as a whole.
TurnLooseTheKitties@reddit
Windscale
OldEcho@reddit
You can't privatise nuclear power. There's no money in it for the ruling elite. There was and is lots of money for the ruling elite in oil and coal.
So they sold a lie on every network that nuclear power is dangerous and anti-environmental while they sent choking clouds of smoke into the air and the water.
Then they said renewables were too expensive. Too inefficient. So they had 70 years to destroy the world.
AubergineParm@reddit
It’s not.
Stop starting threads with “why” to try and twist a baseless assumption into an accepted fact
el_duderino_316@reddit
Because big tragedies stick in people's minds. After Hillsborough, it took 30 years to allow football fans to stand at games again. They still aren't trusted to have a beer while watching, despite many of the same people doing so whole watching cricket.
People remember Chernobyl. They remember Fukushima.
Iucidium@reddit
There's always "what if we have a Chernobyl" and the costs of indefinite storage of the waste products and said waste entering the environment. Look at the current situation at sellafield.
matmah@reddit
In my opinion it's not great, not terrible!
RooMan93@reddit
From what I understand, it's a bit of a lottery when deciding what type to build. And we have a lot of off-shore space for wind and tidal.
pikantnasuka@reddit
Among older people, terror of something like Chornobyl happening here
No idea why younger people oppose it, if they even do
SingerFirm1090@reddit
i don't think is is particularly anti-nuclear, rather it's "anti building things where I live". The same people are anti-windmills, anti-new roads, anti-new houses, etc. etc.
Beanonmytoast@reddit
Oil companies funded anti nuclear sentiment and eco warriors ate it right up.
LANdShark31@reddit
Uninformed fear.
Honestly no one is ever happy. People don’t want renewables as it’s not pretty. They don’t want nuclear as it’s not pretty and they think it’s unsafe. Don’t want battery farms so we can store power from renewable to use when conditions aren’t good for generation.
The only thing they seem content with strangely is the status quo which leaves us highly susceptible to unscrupulous nations for something as fundamental tall as our energy, and that just to meet our current energy needs, let alone our future needs.
I genuinely think that AI use is going to be the thing that really drives the development of the micro nuclear reactors, as it’s the only way will be able to meet our energy needs.
Exact_Setting9562@reddit
Lack of sunshine?
Ok it's not the South of France but even in the North solar works well.
People would probably be happier with nuclear if Britain was a bit bigger and the power stations were a long way away from them.
Competitive_Pen7192@reddit
I'd wager a good portion of the UK get all their ideas of nuclear power from the Simpsons...
FactCheckYou@reddit
people have an outdated understanding of nuclear technology
vengarlof@reddit
A huge factor is NIMBYS
Where would we build new power plants? Oh no they’re going to be an eyesore, oh no they cannot be grey they have to match the surroundings, and you don’t want to build it there as then they’ll be jobs and oh no, what about a road that was there and has never been used
LANdShark31@reddit
Don’t forget some bats. Bats always cost money even when there aren’t any as you have to pay someone to tell you there any.
Mountain_Strategy342@reddit
Because public education is dreadful.
nolinearbanana@reddit
No public education is extremely good.
But it can't overcome:
1) A public disinterest in science and a general lack of respect for education
2) Social Media
Mountain_Strategy342@reddit
At school age science should be engaging and fun. We have had generations of people that should understand by now.
Social media is a cess out but again, a decent education system should teach critical reading and thinking. Instead it teaches to pass the test.
nolinearbanana@reddit
Go back to reading the Telegraph and chuntering into your beer.
beeshorse@reddit
Like most ways of producing energy ...campaigns against it have been hijacked, and amplified, by anti-capitalists.
And the UKs media feel obliged to promote that sort of thing these days.
So there's not much room for sensible debate about what is the best way to get away from fossil fuels.
driven_user@reddit
The public do have a high level fear of radiation and rightly so to a point.But clearly we need more nuclear. Im near sizewell and btheyve been talking about a new plany for years. Maybe a hangover from the cold war basically. The threat of nuclear war weighed heavy in the 80s. CND were popular!
Nuclear is crazily expensive though and requires alot of expertise I dont think the country has anymore (or its decreasing)
I didn't think all nuclear waste can be reused but I dunno
lxgrf@reddit
I don't think we're particularly anti-nuclear. It might seem that we are, but I think that's just our being anti any bloody thing.
Artistic_Let9937@reddit
We have a NIMBYism problem, though that's just part of the story. People here tend to be very short-termist. Nuclear power is a massive project with a high upfront cost and it takes a long time for plants to come online. People get nervous whenever they think of such a big operation.
Pargula_@reddit
Uninformed idiots with too much time on their hands that think they are saving the world and politicians without a spine that bend to their demands.
They are still alive and well now and doing the same shit, although they have shifted from environmental crusades to other causes, they seem to switch every couple of years to a new one.
Timely_Egg_6827@reddit
Windscale, so bad they renamed it Sellafield and that's had a leak since 2019. Issues with Dounreay too. Also fallout from Chernobyl was affecting farmers until 2010.
People prefer the French get irradiated.
Rolls-Royce's mini reactors may square the circle
quoole@reddit
Because of fear primarily.
People think it's really dangerous, primarily because when stuff has gone wrong, it has really gone wrong (Fukishima, Chernobyl etc.) Without the context that all of them were due, at least in part, to human error.
It's also not very 'sexy' for politicians, as it costs millions to build them and takes years, so whoever orders the construction of it probably won't still be in their job by the time the thing is actually operational.
Familiar_Benefit_776@reddit
People are so reluctant because of the small chance of immediate catastrophe, and would rather stay with fossil fuels which have a 100% chance of eventual catastrophe. Climate change will eventually kill us all unless we do something. Using Chernobyl to claim nuclear energy is unsafe is like using the Titanic to prove that ships are unsafe.
djashjones@reddit
Not as many MP's on the payroll.
Interstellar-Metroid@reddit
Corruption and lies from the government and media over the decades have made people anti nuclear power.
KeyJunket1175@reddit
The UK prefers to use the most expensive source of energy: gas. Even if you are using alternative sources, you are still paying for gas. If entropy was a nation, it would be the UK.
LickClitsSuckNips@reddit
Nuclear makes you think of Hiroshima, and the UK has PTSD over being seen as a worldwide bully, like we once were.
AutoModerator@reddit
Please help keep AskUK welcoming!
When repling to submission/post please make genuine efforts to answer the question given. Please no jokes, judgements, etc.
Don't be a dick to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on.
This is a strictly no-politics subreddit!
Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.