NUCLEAR CARS & CATHEDRALS

In 1260 Edward 1st was in such trouble he promised God that if he was saved he would build a church in Delamere Forest, close to my house. He was saved, but the Barons war meant work on his church was not started until 1272. Sounds a bit like H2S?

Probably, because the King’s budget pressures delayed building and inflated aspirations until a cathedral was proposed. Building progressed for 50 years and the 13 villages in Delamere Forest built an enormous structure. But in medieval times they knew how to manage infrastructure and if in 1336 a mob had not killed the Abbott the huge building would have become the largest Cistercian Monastery in the UK in the wrong place.

This history gives us an insight into our problem with modern nuclear and our path to carbon neutrality. Our fantastic success with wind (light blue) and solar (yellow) gets us part of the way. But cold winters kill wind and solar. So energy continuity is like crossing a busy road. Getting most of the way across most of the time is not good enough. Holding your breath for 5 minutes can be done. But doing it for a week is harder.

Yes we need energy storage, but the commodity cost of battery materials (e.g: lithium) have gone up 5 fold this last decade. Batteries will save part of our planet but because they are expensive, wear out and at best 70% efficient we need to save them for high value use like vehicles, tools and residential storage. There are lots of new ideas being developed and hydrogen will play a part. But to avoid black starts, power network operators must keep all parts of the grid in balance all the time. So in reality we need more reliable base load. Which takes us back to the problem with nuclear.

Nuclear once promised energy so cheap no one would bother to meter it, but it didn’t quite work out that way. Huge innovations quickly built an industry but in the 1970’s and 1980’s the desire for scale resulted in a host of enormous 1.5GW plants being built.

Now after 70 years of investment there are only 438 nuclear cathedrals operating in the world. In recent years the nuclear dream has gone; part of the reason is branding. Accidents and a military heritage have tarnished the nuclear dream. And us engineers can be dull and defensive.

In Germany the current nuclear campaign aims to “not close down the 6 German nuclear plants.” Hardly inspiring. This is such a dull concept many in Germany would rather support the huge expansion of lignite coal mining and coal generation. As a consequence RWE plans to wipe away villages and continue expanding the Garzweiler II lignite mine until 2038. But there is a deeper problem with nuclear than image. If in the future we want warm homes, economic growth and a habitable planet we need cheaper nuclear. And this is where the big problem lies. There are two big things which make nuclear power unique. Firstly nuclear energy densities are astronomically high. Which is great.

The second things is awful. Nuclear power plants are one of the few products (like cathedrals) where innovation and improvement keeps making them more expensive. Innovators have developed a concept to measure the benefits of innovation called ‘product learning rate’. This is the cost decrease over time of an item. This is not just economies of scale. It includes better designs, supply chain improvements, growth of skilled work forces and operating innovation.

If we take the development of the motor car we see a more typical pattern.

The first motor car was built in 1886. In the following 10 years gear boxes, brakes, fuel, lighting and a host of other people sized innovations were developed. In 1903 Mr Ford made his Model A Ford.

In 1908 when the famous Model T was first produced it only took 12.5hours to assemble. By 1914 car assembly production had further dropped to 93 minutes and sales price was down 70%

In contrast final costs for nuclear plant have been rising. In 2017 an excelent review by Matt Rooney of Policy Exchange identified the following issues: the idea of high temperature reactors for hydrogen/chemical power plants but at what point do we stop innovating because we can? Has a constant innovative hiatus and desire for enormous scale resulted in the failure of nuclear power plant to deliver any learning rates in half a century? k Learning rates for nuclear technology are uniquely poor. k Safety and regulatory measures are invariably imposed during construction. k In expectation of economies of scale massive construction project have in the past been proposed. k Modular nuclear construction needs to be considered.

Do we really want to give up on the post powerful zero carbon power source? Critics may say nuclear is just too dangerous, it will never be affordable at a safe price. That could be so. But I doubt it. After all conservative luddites said that about atheism, scientific investigation, the train and the car. Isn’t the low carbon nuclear dream so much more exciting than the gas and lignite coal?

For many years we have been using ‘Type 3’ reactors and at least 6 novel/revolutionary configurations are being investigated. I like

So where next? Modular nuclear seems to me to be the obvious next step. We know 1970’s nuclear cathedrals don’t work. At what point is ‘good is good enough’ and we focus on factory built components and power plants with 300-400GW capacity. Small Modular Nuclear. Probably not as exciting as exploring more of the impossible but if Edward 1st was running the UK’s energy strategy might he set out to save his life with a slightly smaller cathedral? An ‘on time’ and ‘on budget’ model Tesla nuclear car would be really exciting.

Bernard Gospel ‘s continuing series of articles based on the topic of the history of engineering, loosely based on the BBC radio programmes and podcasts ‘a history of he world in 100 objects’ and ’50 things that made the modern economy’.

Bernard Gospel Technical Committee Secretary TechSec@AMPS.org.uk