Green Services Direct

Nuclear energy is one of the great dividers of our society. In a world where we are desperately trying to cut down our emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we tend to look to wind energy and solar power as being the great saviours of the power generation industry.

Globally almost 40% of electricity generation came from low carbon sources in 2020, about 10% being nuclear power, almost 10% wind and solar combined, and around 20% hydro-electric and other renewables. That means we are looking to replace more than half of our current electricity generation capacity to achieve nominally clean electricity.

Of that 40% low carbon, around half of that comes from hydro-electric, much of it from large scale dam and reservoir schemes. These have a high impact on the local environment and landscapes so need very specific river and valley sites to build the schemes. Such sites are few and far between and the construction costs are extremely high. On that basis it is difficult to foresee many such schemes being built in the future.

Wind power generation and solar electricity are perhaps the main focus in the UK to increase our clean electricity generation quickly and both wind farms and solar sites are springing up across the continent. Both, although not cheap, are relatively inexpensive and are normally funded by the electricity generation companies themselves. Once planning permission has been granted, the erection of both wind turbines and solar panels can be completed fairly rapidly and the return on investment to install them can be achieved in a short time. This is important to the power generators as to achieve any appreciable increase in electricity reaching the national grid, will require a large number of both wind turbines and solar panels to be erected.

There are at present in excess of 11,000 wind turbines both on land and offshore, which at present produce nearly a quarter of the UK's electricity. To come anywhere near the government’s 2035 target, that number would need to at least treble, with the number of solar panels also increasing accordingly. This assumes that other forms of clean energy would also be increased to meet the demands and it seems unlikely that, due to the topography required for a large scale hydro scheme, we will see hydroelectric being expanded a great deal to meet the future targets.

That leaves us to consider the nuclear option, which several European and Middle Eastern countries are now developing, with plans for a series of smaller nuclear plants as well as a small number of large scale projects. Small generation plants can be fast tracked through the planning process as they are likely to attract fewer objections than their bigger brothers. They also have the advantage of being affordable to the power generation companies who can build, own and operate them themselves.

Larger schemes like Sizewell or Hinckley Point are much more difficult to navigate through the minefields of planning and licencing, partly because these schemes are so expensive that the power generation companies are liable to need some sort of partnership with government to create a joint venture. As with most large infrastructure projects, they will be met with objections from environmental groups, which will mean protracted court cases and delays which could mean that a substantial nuclear power station entering the planning stage now, would in all probability be unlikely to generate any clean energy until well beyond the 2035 target.

Nuclear is a zero carbon emissions, clean energy source which generates power through a process called fission, which splits uranium atoms to produce energy. The heat released by this process is used to create steam which causes a turbine to rotate which generates electricity. From the point of view of carbon emissions, nuclear power generation is by far the cleanest. Unfortunately the process produces highly toxic spent fuel, which needs to be packed, sealed and buried for thousands of years. It is this which makes nuclear unacceptable to many people, but we need to get the problem into context. Firstly, uranium pellets, which are the nuclear fuel are extremely dense. A one inch pellet is about equivalent in mass to one ton of coal, so the nuclear generation industry, worldwide, produces much less nuclear waste than most of us would imagine. It is also possible to recycle spent nuclear fuel and reuse it which cuts down the nett amount of waste.

Nuclear fission is the present process used in nuclear power generation plants, but that is going to change in the foreseeable future. Scientists have developed a process known as nuclear fusion which fuses together nuclear particles rather than splitting them. The scientists have developed a process which has been proven to work but have not as yet managed to commercialise the process. They are confident that they will and it is recognised that a nuclear fusion plant on a commercially viable scale could be a global game changer in power generation. The generation plant would be much smaller, use less fuel and generate less spent fuel which would be safe in a few hundred years rather than thousands.

Despite the problems of time scales and the resistance from some sectors of the public, it is unlikely that we will see a low carbon electricity generation model for the future which does not include a substantial input from nuclear. We need electricity, it has become an essential part of our lives and no matter how we generate it, someone somewhere will have an objection. It may be the threat to birds caused by offshore wind turbines, or the potential harm to the habitats certain wildlife species posed by large construction sites, maybe it’s simply “good idea, but not in my back yard.”

Whatever the reason for any objection, we need to develop a new infrastructure for power generation that does not harm our entire planet in the way we have in the past. We need to expand the use of wind turbines and make more use of solar panels but in the future, a large percentage of our “clean” energy will come from nuclear.