8 ms·

UK energy bills 'used to subsidise nuclear submarines'

33 points by zeristor 7y ago

mbruce 7y ago
Nicelear dispatchable energy can be argued is cross subsidising the intermittent wind...
- jeremyjh 7y ago
  I'm not sure why this is being downvoted, I think it is a fair point. The cost per hour of wind do not, I think, reflect all the infrastructure required for the other power plants that are required when the wind is not blowing. Yet, this is a very real cost of using wind power.
arethuza 7y ago
I hardly think this is surprising - countries that use the same reactors for power generation and production of materials for weapons are going to have some cross subsidies of some kind. What I find surprising is that nobody ever comments on the fact that the UK literally operates US nuclear missiles with warhead designs heavily influenced by US designs. Not to mention the lack of permissive action locks on the UK weapons... Edit: I should have been clearer that I meant was discussion outside of the UK about these issues.
- ovi256 7y ago
  >same reactors for power generation and production of materials for weapons This is mostly about the engineering capability for building submarine propulsion reactors, not weapons. Note the article never mentioned weapons. Sustaining that engineering capability through the lean years between submarine projects through power generation projects is seen by the pacifict environmentalist groups as a cross subsidy that they don't want to provide. > warhead designs heavily influenced by US designs Supposedly the UKs are domestic designs with more stealth and penetration aids.
  - arethuza 7y ago
    Ah - my mistake - should have read the article more carefully! We could always do what we did the last time we forgot how to build submarines and simply ask the US how to do it?
- jibbit 7y ago
  Not sure what you mean by "no one ever talks about it". Which CND meetings have you been to?
- lmm 7y ago
  > What I find surprising is that nobody ever comments on the fact that the UK literally operates US nuclear missiles with warhead designs heavily influenced by US designs. Huh? That's absolutely a common talking point whenever a conversation about "renewing Trident" or similar comes up.
- ggm 7y ago
  UK literally operates US nuclear missiles with warhead designs heavily influenced by US designs. The thing being this was a negotiated outcome to prevent the destabilization of a system by the introduction of an independent nuclear source. France was bad enough: the Americans and Russians didn't want Britain making ICBM. (Obviously I doubt the Russians were consulted) This is why black arrow was cancelled: the US promised Polaris if the UK ceased rocket tests in Australia.
  - NotPaidToPost 7y ago
    As a "junior partner" it's good to see that the US allow us a few toys.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > What I find surprising is that nobody ever comments on the fact that the UK literally operates US nuclear missiles with warhead designs heavily influenced by US designs. The fact that they’re US designs was one of the major discussion points of the recent renewal debate - people from across the political spectrum commented on it extensively for months. There are no PALs in order to support a credible threat of retaliation. The UK is small enough that it’s possible that the whole country would have been destroyed by a first strike. This is how nuclear weapons ‘work’ - by credible threat.
ovi256 7y ago
It will be interesting to see the UK, a nuclear power, hindered in maintaining their last nuclear delivery capability by consumer environmentalist groups refusing to cross-subsidize in this manner. Interesting, in the sense used in the Chinese saying "may you live in interesting times".
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  It's not "refusing", it's "not being given the option not to." There's an official defence budget, and in a democracy voters express their opinion about the state of defence spending through the ballot box. Real democracies don't scam their citizens with a secret defence stealth tax.
  - _djo_ 7y ago
    That's not really what this is, though. This is about industrial policy and maintaining local industrial and technological capabilities that are, in turn, useful or necessary for defence. There are plenty of examples of this being done all over the world, because many defence industry capabilities are pretty fungible into areas like aerospace, chip design & manufacturing, optical engineering, and so on. So an industrial policy that results in development in those areas has dual benefit. Half the reason Silicon Valley exists is because of this sort of cross investment. It's likely Airbus wouldn't exist in its current form either without it. If it's all humming along nicely, you get good cross-feed in between too, with a lot more stable and long-term low-TRL investment on the defence side feeding into the civilian sector, and high-TRL investment producing better completed systems for the defence side. What will be important to prove in this case is whether the UK investment in civilian nuclear power is done solely to benefit the military nuclear energy industry, or whether there is a valid and viable argument for that investment on its own. I'd be interested in seeing the research.
    - ovi256 7y ago
      >solely to benefit the military nuclear energy industry For the state's POV, maintaining a nuclear capability is a very sufficient argument on its own! The voters may disagree, but no state really lets voters pick national security mechanisms they'd like.
gnode 7y ago
> bill-payers will give price support to the Hinkley Point C nuclear station at a cost of £92.50 per megawatt hour, compared with £55 for offshore wind. Something ignored here, is that electricity generation is not fungible. Wind power is not reliable, but nuclear is. Nuclear power is really the only practical solution for the UK to eliminate fossil fuel use from electricity generation, around the clock; we don't have the geography for adequate hydro.
- pjc50 7y ago
  People keep arguing this, but it is now really too late. Nuclear power is too slow to build, has trouble with suitable sites (need to be away from populated areas but near water). If we started planning a new power station now it wouldn't be online until about 2030. The intermediate strategy of "overprovision wind and fill the remaining need with CCGT" is actually working pretty well. Hopefully people can start talking about battery storage, or some other modular deployable solution. (Cost is another issue, but it seems the parties are happy enough to spend $100bn on a nuclear weapons system that we hope never to use)
  - dabeeeenster 7y ago
    Tend to agree. The window for nuclear is closing now. We should be doing a fuckton of R+D into energy storage solutions, and overprovisioning offshore wind.
    - lstodd 7y ago
      To substitute a single 4GWe nuclear plant, one would need ~96 GWh storage, which there is no technology for, plus ~48GW wind farm, while UK has ~22GW installed total now.. And you talk of overprovisioning. Crazy. If anything, we must invest into making nuclear cheaper.
      - Retric 7y ago
        Wind is variable but it never has zero output days. Further in many cases you can select peak output periods based on specific sites local conditions. On top of this you can massively over provision and still be cheaper than nuclear.
GaurVimen 7y ago
"Ministers expect that, before long, wind energy will operate without support." Not when there is a anti-cyclonic high pressure system anchored over the UK and the wind isn't blowing. No wind, no turbine rotation and no electricity.
- ChrisSD 7y ago
  If the wind falls below 2.5 m/s across the entirety of Britain's coast... that would be an unusual event to say the least. But in the incredibly unlikely event that happens, the UK can buy electricity from the continent (and vice versa). This already happens today with non-renewables. If the wind stops blowing across a significant area of Northern Europe then something has gone seriously wrong with the Earth.
detritus 7y ago
Good. One of the biggest tragedies of modern British history is the apparent implosion of her homegrown nuclear industry. The recent 'new' nuclear power station debacles using French and Japanese technology paid for by the French and Chinese governments are beyond embarassing. Rolls Royce has been banging the ‘small modular fission reactor’ drum for a while now [1] — i'd love to see a discussion about the concept's merits or otherwise. We need smart, adventurous thinking on power generation to fill the gap before fusion comes on line (fingers crossed) — the UK has one of the healthiest renewable markets in the world, I see no reason we shoudn't be pushing nuclear alongside. Just smart nuclear, not dumb monolthic last generation nuclear with little benefit for local industry. - ed [1] https://www.rolls-royce.com/products-and-services/nuclear/small-modular-reactors.aspx#/ https://www.rolls-royce.com/products-and-services/nuclear/sm...

33 points by zeristor 7y ago

mbruce 7y ago

Nicelear dispatchable energy can be argued is cross subsidising the intermittent wind...

jeremyjh 7y ago
I'm not sure why this is being downvoted, I think it is a fair point. The cost per hour of wind do not, I think, reflect all the infrastructure required for the other power plants that are required when the wind is not blowing. Yet, this is a very real cost of using wind power.

arethuza 7y ago

I hardly think this is surprising - countries that use the same reactors for power generation and production of materials for weapons are going to have some cross subsidies of some kind. What I find surprising is that nobody ever comments on the fact that the UK literally operates US nuclear missiles with warhead designs heavily influenced by US designs. Not to mention the lack of permissive action locks on the UK weapons... Edit: I should have been clearer that I meant was discussion outside of the UK about these issues.

ovi256 7y ago
>same reactors for power generation and production of materials for weapons This is mostly about the engineering capability for building submarine propulsion reactors, not weapons. Note the article never mentioned weapons. Sustaining that engineering capability through the lean years between submarine projects through power generation projects is seen by the pacifict environmentalist groups as a cross subsidy that they don't want to provide. > warhead designs heavily influenced by US designs Supposedly the UKs are domestic designs with more stealth and penetration aids.
- arethuza 7y ago
  Ah - my mistake - should have read the article more carefully! We could always do what we did the last time we forgot how to build submarines and simply ask the US how to do it?
jibbit 7y ago
Not sure what you mean by "no one ever talks about it". Which CND meetings have you been to?
lmm 7y ago
> What I find surprising is that nobody ever comments on the fact that the UK literally operates US nuclear missiles with warhead designs heavily influenced by US designs. Huh? That's absolutely a common talking point whenever a conversation about "renewing Trident" or similar comes up.
ggm 7y ago
UK literally operates US nuclear missiles with warhead designs heavily influenced by US designs. The thing being this was a negotiated outcome to prevent the destabilization of a system by the introduction of an independent nuclear source. France was bad enough: the Americans and Russians didn't want Britain making ICBM. (Obviously I doubt the Russians were consulted) This is why black arrow was cancelled: the US promised Polaris if the UK ceased rocket tests in Australia.
- NotPaidToPost 7y ago
  As a "junior partner" it's good to see that the US allow us a few toys.
chrisseaton 7y ago
> What I find surprising is that nobody ever comments on the fact that the UK literally operates US nuclear missiles with warhead designs heavily influenced by US designs. The fact that they’re US designs was one of the major discussion points of the recent renewal debate - people from across the political spectrum commented on it extensively for months. There are no PALs in order to support a credible threat of retaliation. The UK is small enough that it’s possible that the whole country would have been destroyed by a first strike. This is how nuclear weapons ‘work’ - by credible threat.

ovi256 7y ago

It will be interesting to see the UK, a nuclear power, hindered in maintaining their last nuclear delivery capability by consumer environmentalist groups refusing to cross-subsidize in this manner. Interesting, in the sense used in the Chinese saying "may you live in interesting times".

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
It's not "refusing", it's "not being given the option not to." There's an official defence budget, and in a democracy voters express their opinion about the state of defence spending through the ballot box. Real democracies don't scam their citizens with a secret defence stealth tax.
- _djo_ 7y ago
  That's not really what this is, though. This is about industrial policy and maintaining local industrial and technological capabilities that are, in turn, useful or necessary for defence. There are plenty of examples of this being done all over the world, because many defence industry capabilities are pretty fungible into areas like aerospace, chip design & manufacturing, optical engineering, and so on. So an industrial policy that results in development in those areas has dual benefit. Half the reason Silicon Valley exists is because of this sort of cross investment. It's likely Airbus wouldn't exist in its current form either without it. If it's all humming along nicely, you get good cross-feed in between too, with a lot more stable and long-term low-TRL investment on the defence side feeding into the civilian sector, and high-TRL investment producing better completed systems for the defence side. What will be important to prove in this case is whether the UK investment in civilian nuclear power is done solely to benefit the military nuclear energy industry, or whether there is a valid and viable argument for that investment on its own. I'd be interested in seeing the research.
  - ovi256 7y ago
    >solely to benefit the military nuclear energy industry For the state's POV, maintaining a nuclear capability is a very sufficient argument on its own! The voters may disagree, but no state really lets voters pick national security mechanisms they'd like.

gnode 7y ago

> bill-payers will give price support to the Hinkley Point C nuclear station at a cost of £92.50 per megawatt hour, compared with £55 for offshore wind. Something ignored here, is that electricity generation is not fungible. Wind power is not reliable, but nuclear is. Nuclear power is really the only practical solution for the UK to eliminate fossil fuel use from electricity generation, around the clock; we don't have the geography for adequate hydro.

pjc50 7y ago
People keep arguing this, but it is now really too late. Nuclear power is too slow to build, has trouble with suitable sites (need to be away from populated areas but near water). If we started planning a new power station now it wouldn't be online until about 2030. The intermediate strategy of "overprovision wind and fill the remaining need with CCGT" is actually working pretty well. Hopefully people can start talking about battery storage, or some other modular deployable solution. (Cost is another issue, but it seems the parties are happy enough to spend $100bn on a nuclear weapons system that we hope never to use)
- dabeeeenster 7y ago
  Tend to agree. The window for nuclear is closing now. We should be doing a fuckton of R+D into energy storage solutions, and overprovisioning offshore wind.
  - lstodd 7y ago
    To substitute a single 4GWe nuclear plant, one would need ~96 GWh storage, which there is no technology for, plus ~48GW wind farm, while UK has ~22GW installed total now.. And you talk of overprovisioning. Crazy. If anything, we must invest into making nuclear cheaper.
    - Retric 7y ago
      Wind is variable but it never has zero output days. Further in many cases you can select peak output periods based on specific sites local conditions. On top of this you can massively over provision and still be cheaper than nuclear.

GaurVimen 7y ago

"Ministers expect that, before long, wind energy will operate without support." Not when there is a anti-cyclonic high pressure system anchored over the UK and the wind isn't blowing. No wind, no turbine rotation and no electricity.

ChrisSD 7y ago
If the wind falls below 2.5 m/s across the entirety of Britain's coast... that would be an unusual event to say the least. But in the incredibly unlikely event that happens, the UK can buy electricity from the continent (and vice versa). This already happens today with non-renewables. If the wind stops blowing across a significant area of Northern Europe then something has gone seriously wrong with the Earth.

detritus 7y ago

Good. One of the biggest tragedies of modern British history is the apparent implosion of her homegrown nuclear industry. The recent 'new' nuclear power station debacles using French and Japanese technology paid for by the French and Chinese governments are beyond embarassing. Rolls Royce has been banging the ‘small modular fission reactor’ drum for a while now [1] — i'd love to see a discussion about the concept's merits or otherwise. We need smart, adventurous thinking on power generation to fill the gap before fusion comes on line (fingers crossed) — the UK has one of the healthiest renewable markets in the world, I see no reason we shoudn't be pushing nuclear alongside. Just smart nuclear, not dumb monolthic last generation nuclear with little benefit for local industry. - ed [1] https://www.rolls-royce.com/products-and-services/nuclear/small-modular-reactors.aspx#/ https://www.rolls-royce.com/products-and-services/nuclear/sm...