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Power United Kingdom

Nuclear Fusion Plant To Be Built On Site of Britain's Last Coal-Fired Power Plants (bbc.com) 149

Posted by BeauHD from the powering-the-future dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: A power station has been chosen to be the site of the UK's, and potentially the world's, first prototype commercial nuclear fusion reactor. Fusion is a potential source of almost limitless clean energy but is currently only carried out in experiments. The government had shortlisted five sites but has picked the West Burton A plant in Nottinghamshire. The plant should be operational by the early 2040s, a UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) spokesman has said. The government had pledged more than 220 million pounds for the STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production) program, led by the UKAEA.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service said the project would replace the coal-fired power station site -- owned by French energy giant EDF -- which is set to be closed this year. Matt Sykes, managing director of EDF's Generation business, said: "We are absolutely delighted that the UKAEA has selected the West Burton site in Nottinghamshire to host the UK's first fusion reactor. "The area has been associated with energy generation for over 60 years. Developing such an exciting new project continues this tradition and has the potential to transform both the region and the UK's long-term energy supply." Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg announced the government's choice in a speech at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham. "Over the decades we have established ourselves as pioneers in fusion science and as a country our capabilities to surmount these obstacles is unparalleled, and I am delighted to make an announcement of a vital step in that mission," he said. "The plant will be the first of its kind, built by 2040 and capable of putting energy on the grid, and in doing so will prove the commercial viability of fusion energy to the world."
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Nuclear Fusion Plant To Be Built On Site of Britain's Last Coal-Fired Power Plants More

Nuclear Fusion Plant To Be Built On Site of Britain's Last Coal-Fired Power Plants

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  • Are we even going to make it to the 2040s? It seems increasingly likely, if not inevitable,
    that we will have a nuclear war by then.

    • Re:2040s (Score:5, Funny)

      by Errol backfiring ( 1280012 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @08:18AM (#62936665) Journal
      So they can just open the windows and let the energy in.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jonathantn ( 6373084 )
      While they freeze to death this winter due to lack of natural gas over the conflict. How about turning on that coal fired plant for a few years until you get the whole reliable energy thing figured out.

      • While they freeze to death this winter due to lack of natural gas over the conflict. How about turning on that coal fired plant for a few years until you get the whole reliable energy thing figured out.

        If the problem is a lack of natural gas for heating, I do not see how a coal fired electric power plant would help the situation. Sure keeping the plant on would generate more electricity but the problem does not seem to be a lack of electricity. From my understanding, the UK gets 3.4% of their electricity from coal and the UK is replacing that with other sources.

    • Interesting proposition for a wager: the world will achieve 1000 GWh of fusion power generation before the next above-ground nuclear detonation.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RobinH ( 124750 )
      Nuclear weapons are useful as a deterrent. But if you use one, it brings enormous costs. Even Russian strategic nuclear doctrine only allows use of strategic nuclear weapons in the event that the country's existence is threatened, or the nuclear arsenal itself is threatened. As such, it's believable and effective in that nobody will attack Russia proper. But Ukraine re-taking the "annexed" regions doesn't actually threaten Russia as a country, so the threat of using strategic nukes against Ukraine or th

      • That's the interesting question: Will Putin treat attacks on Russian forces in the four oblasts he claims are now part of Russia (or 6, if you count Crimea and Sevastopol, which he claimed as part of Russia back in 2014) the same as he would treat attacks on internationally-recognized Russia?

        The rest of the world doesn't see Ukraine forcing Russian forces out of Ukrainian territory as an attack on Russia itself, but the rest of the world isn't threatening nuclear war, so their opinions and decisions aren't

        • Will Putin treat attacks on Russian forces in the four oblasts he claims are now part of Russia (or 6, if you count Crimea and Sevastopol, which he claimed as part of Russia back in 2014) the same as he would treat attacks on internationally-recognized Russia?

          The have explicitly stated they would [reuters.com], and it's hard to think of any other rationale for formalizing the annexation at the time they did than to build a pretext for escalation.

          Of course the real question is, will they actually treat it the same? T

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by RobinH ( 124750 )
          Clearly declaring those areas of Ukraine as part of Russia is part of the threat, but you have to look at how it would play out. Assuming Putin uses a tactical nuke in Ukraine and the US leads a "coalition of the willing" with the express intent of sinking Russia's Black Sea fleet and liberating Ukraine including Crimea but declares they won't touch "Russia proper", then the ball is back in Russia's court. Putin is then left with the same choice he's always had: continue to exist, or end the world out of

        • Article 5 is not triggered automatically.
          The country under attack has to call for it.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jwhyche ( 6192 )

        They'd be a big version of North Korea.

        Only with real nukes and vodka....

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jwhyche ( 6192 )

        If Russia uses a tactical nuke against Ukraine, they'll very likely have to face a US-lead coalition of conventional forces in both Ukraine and the Black Sea, and it would be over quickly. That leaves a tactical nuclear strike against a NATO country, which triggers article 5.

        I think it's clear to most people that Putin is batshit insane, even to some of his own people. While Putin might be more than willing to use tactual nukes in Ukraine, I'm still betting some of his military leaders might not be so keen on the idea. Hopefully, if he decides to go down that path others will see this as an escalation they cannot win and remove him in accordance with Russian tradition.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by RobinH ( 124750 )
          It doesn't appear like he's vulnerable to being overthrown, but you could be right that tactical nukes are unlikely. First of all, they're mounted on mobile launchers that are likely in poor repair similar to the rest of the Russian military, and they are typically under command of individual commanders on the battlefield. Secondly, they reportedly only have a 500 km range, and NATO will be watching all the launchers like a hawk. NATO may opt to use a cruise missile to take out a mobile launcher as soon

    • So I guess we should just stop solving problems then, because one danger to society that we lived with for 50 years, then went away for a couple decades, is back?

      You really are a massive idiot.

    • I was born in the 1940s. I grew up with the Cold War. In grade school we learned about backyard fallout shelters and Strontium 90. (There's an old Twilight Zone episode where a guy builds a basement fallout shelter that I recognize from our school books.) There were commercials on Saturday morning TV for kids to volunteer for a sort of air patrol to look out for enemy bombers flying in. (As an adult looking back, I suspect that that was mostly a propaganda thing.) When I got my first social security c

  • Radioactive waste from fusion is dangerous for 100 years. A newer fission reactor that recycles spent fuel produces waste that is dangerous for about 500 years. Both of those are better than the tens of thousands of years for current radioactive waste, and we can build newer types of reactors now.
    • Recycling spent fuel reduces the volume of lower grade radioactive waste but does not eliminate it. The problem with your statement, though, is that so far fast breeders have not been commercialised so it is not known if they will be viable in the market place. They might be more viable if the full cost of storage was imposed on existing reactor designs, but that might simply price existing designs out of the market and destroy the market sooner than it could respond with fast breeder designs if it was a co

  • Limitless power? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @09:03AM (#62936821)
    Anyone who says that nuclear fusion provided power is limitless or nearly limitless is either parroting a narrative or dissembling.

    It isn't limitless, it isn't nearly limitless. And it surely isn't even close to prototype stage.

    The amount of power it takes to achieve the roughly 75% power out of what is put in is a parlor trick that completely ignores the parasitic power requirements. So far the Qtot is embarrassingly small, while they preen and strut about Qp

    note: Qtot is the total power out compared to the total power used to achieve that amount of power. Expressed as a decimal number. Qtot includes cooling and cost of generating the power to ignite the fusion process. Just achieving a Qtot of 1 is the very beginning. Next comes increasing that Qtot to a level that is much greater than the total amount of power needed to sustain that reaction, cover the total generating costs, and having a hella lot of power left over to distribute.

    The idea that it will be radiation free - or nearly so - is an outright lie, unless the results of neutron bombardment is majickly eliminated.

    Oh yeah, there is the tritium problem as well - we won't have nearly limitless energy until we have a similar almost limitless amount of tritium. Right now ITER has laid claim to a large percentage of the world's available supply of tritium.

    Or special molten lithium spheres of the right isotope surrounding the fusion capsule. Lithium isn't really scarce, but don't ever declare anything surrounded by molten alkali metals as safe.

  • How can anyone - especially a clueless government like Liz Truss' Tories - possibly commit to building a production plant when the experimental plant ( ITER ) is not even close to being finished, let along producing power ?

    Pretty sure they're just trying to distract us from their gross financial incompetence.

    • ITER (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @10:02AM (#62937097) Homepage Journal

      Well, consider that this 'dedication' is a lot like EV mandates that will only happen a decade or so after all the people who voted for it have retired from office. Or at least, have 2-5 election cycles in between. It's performative. Schedules can slip easily.

      Then consider what has actually been committed: A toxic industrial site* has been selected to be the grounds of the plant, which is easy. They've pledged some money. Which they don't have to find, because again, future politicians** get to do that.

      So yeah, standard distraction feel-good moves.

      *It's a coal power plant site, of course it's toxic!
      **And in politician land, anybody after the next election is a future politician, even if the politicians in question get re-elected. Yes, if somebody voted for this now they don't have to vote to fund it in the future, and it is unlikely to hurt them if they do so.

      • Whilst electoral cycles can happen, sometimes people do actually believe in things enough to make commitments. In the case of the UK, a number are actually legally binding on future governments and so are not trivial to undo.

  • Excellent idea (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @10:23AM (#62937177)

    Whatcouldpossiblygowrong [pics.me.me]?

  • Finally! (Score:3)

    by uncqual ( 836337 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2022 @10:36AM (#62937213)

    Finally, commercial nuclear fusion power generation is only 18 years away instead of 30!!

    So we've nibbled about 10 years off the 30 year estimate over the past 50 or so years. Extrapolating, at the rate of 10 years every 50, we are only a century away!

    (Seriously, I wish them the best of luck -- but this can not be used to distract from the predictable and effective solution of dramatic expansion of fission nuclear power plants.)

  • Haha. Floating cities in the sky.

  • In the 1950s, it was.
    In the 1960s, it was.

    And in the 2020s, it was.

  • Put all of you money into a pipedream, and ignore what works. What they want: a utility to control and reap profits from.

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