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United Kingdom Power

Potential Sites For UK's First Prototype Fusion Power Plant Identified (bbc.co.uk) 82

Posted by BeauHD from the location-is-key dept.
A total of 15 potential sites are in the running to host the UK's first prototype fusion power plant. The BBC reports: Fusion is seen as a potential source of almost limitless clean energy but is currently only used in experiments. An open call for sites was made last year and nominations closed at the end of March this year. Following checks for compliance with key entry criteria the UK Atomic Energy Agency (UKAEA) has published a long list of possible locations. The sites, from north to south, with nominating body, are: Dounreay, East Airdrie, Poneil, Ardeer, Chapelcross, Moorside, Bay Fusion, Goole, West Burton, Ratcliffe on Soar, Pembroke, Severn Edge, Aberthaw, Bridgwater Bay, and Bradwell (Essex).

The UKAEA said that acceptance of the sites did not indicate that they were "preferred or desired" or that it believed they were "in all cases, possible." It stressed it was simply that the procedural entry criteria had been met and assessment had now begun. It said a shortlisting process would take place in the autumn with a final site decision likely by the end of next year. UKAEA is hoping to have such a plant operating in the early 2040s, with an initial concept design ready by 2024."
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Potential Sites For UK's First Prototype Fusion Power Plant Identified More

Potential Sites For UK's First Prototype Fusion Power Plant Identified

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  • Independence (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Epeeist ( 2682 ) on Saturday June 12, 2021 @03:28AM (#61479370) Homepage

    A few of those sites are in countries which could vote for independence in the next few years.

    • Re:Independence (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Saturday June 12, 2021 @04:54AM (#61479432) Homepage Journal

      The UK government is trying to bribe Scotland with big projects so that they vote to stay in the union. Of course the risk is that they get the stuff and then vote to leave anyway, taking it with them.

      • they get the stuff and then vote to leave anyway, taking it with them.

        That would be an extremely satisfying outcome.

    • It's OK, they may as well declare it to be in Diego Garcia because by the time fusion power is practical it won't matter any more.

      • Yeah, practicality is probably 40 or 50 years off or if we're really lucky and someone designs a better fuel this decade then it's merely 20 years off. JET has achieved a Q of 0.67 while ITER is slated to hit a Q of 10. DEMO (ITER’s successor) would need to minimum Q of 25 to be minimally economical while a Q of 100 would make it our definitive power source. Really looking forward to the 2070s.

        • In the 2070s everything will be plastered with solar panels and every where else you have wind power.

          Fusion might be a nice engine for a space craft, but thats it.

          • Fusion might be a nice engine for a space craft, but thats it.

            Are you fucking kidding me?! Do you know how many feats of engineering are being held back because they are energy intensive?! We could undo climate change entirely if we had fusion power. We could recycle 100% of trash. We could start terraforming Mars and Venus! You are an absolute fool if you think "nice engine for a space craft" is the limit of it's application.

            • We could undo climate change entirely if we had fusion power.
              Sure ... and it would take about 1000 years.

              Sorry, are you really such an idiot?

              Point one: from where do you get the fuel?

              No no no, don't come with me and tell me, look all the stuff is in the ocean.

              You have to get it out of it.

              To produce the energy the planet uses now with fusion, we need 4 to 5 times more power to produce the fuel.

              It is not even viable for terraforming Mars, and Venus can not be terraformed (a geek should know that).

              • We could undo climate change entirely if we had fusion power.
                Sure ... and it would take about 1000 years.

                It really depends on the scale of the operation. If we had 1M CO2 collection/processing plants then it's doable inside a few decades, even using existing technology. With obscene amounts of electricity, we could do much more at each plant.

                Point one: from where do you get the fuel?

                You mean hydrogen isotopes? You make them out of regular hydrogen.

                No no no, don't come with me and tell me, look all the stuff is in the ocean.

                You have to get it out of it.

                To produce the energy the planet uses now with fusion, we need 4 to 5 times more power to produce the fuel.

                Yes, a Q factor of 25 is needed to make the a case for economical fusion. Commercial reactors are likely to have a Q of 100. You are acting like nobody has considered this.

                It is not even viable for terraforming Mars, and Venus can not be terraformed (a geek should know that).

                Condensing CO2 from the Venusi

      • It doesn't matter when they get Fusion working, it's already dead. Fission is a dead industry because it's not cost effective to run, and Fusion looks even more expensive. A standard Fission plant is a steal boiler feeding a steam engine, all common technology and well understood. A Fusion plant uses cryogenically cooled superconducting magnets, high precision construction using expensive materials, and consumes most of the energy produced just to keep running. And since that's not expensive enough they

        • Fission is a dead industry because it's not cost effective to run

          The only reason fission is not cost-effective is that the lawsuits raise the cost and time of building one from a few years to a few decades (if they're lucky).

          Given that several navies have been operating hundreds of fission plants for decades (first one was better than 2/3 of a century ago), it's unlikely that anything other than the lawsuits have stopped them on land (you can't sue the Navy).

          Hell, build fission plants on land and put Navy

          • The only reason fission is not cost-effective is that the lawsuits raise the cost and time of building one from a few years to a few decades (if they're lucky).
            That is utter nonsense. An american or /. myth.

            A nuclear plant takes a decade to build, because - ta tam ta ta: it is an awfull lot of work to build one

            Sure, a law suit might add another 5 or 10 years. But the matter of fact simply is: it takes a decade to build because it takes a damn decade to build it. It is as simple as that. Do you for funk sake

            • A nuclear plant takes a decade to build, because - ta tam ta ta: it is an awfull lot of work to build one

              The first nuclear power plant took about four years to build. Including the design phase. So, why does a copy of a nuclear power plant take decades when the original took four years?

              • Because the original ones where 100MW plants and now we are building, attempting to build, 1600 MW plants.

                Including the design phase
                That is bullshit. the design phase was 30 years ... ooops.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

                  Because the original ones where 100MW plants and now we are building, attempting to build, 1600 MW plants.

                  You're not building or attempting to build anything [cleanenergywire.org]. Wrong again, Angelo.

    • Thats why they are getting the prototypes - to be stuck with the eol clean up costs.

  • I would have thought the concept design for the next grand thing would wait until the ITER at least achieves fusion. Isn't the point to learn stuff?

    • ITER is just one way to achieve fusion. Just like there is more than one way to create an internal combustion engine there is more than one way to get fusion.

      We know we can reach energy positive fusion if we build a reactor big enough. The goal is to discover some limits and optimize the solution within those limits.

      A design like the Polywell Fusor could prove practical, though perhaps not economical on any scale we could build today. Nuclear fission is just too easy. We don't need fusion for energy whe

      • Nuclear fission is just too easy.

        Yes, far too easy. Any asshole can do it, whether they're smart enough to handle the waste they create or not.

      • Indeed other ways of achieving fusion could be looked into, but they aren't looking at other ways, they are looking at building a Tokamak reactor, even if the design differs slightly from ITER's Tokamak reactor one would still imagine the project would benefit from experience from ITER. These are long timescales involved here. Believe me it sucks having your project's viability brought into question during construction.

      • We know we can reach energy positive fusion if we build a reactor big enough.
        True.
        One approach is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
        Ofc that only works if you have the right fissionable^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H fusion able amount of mass around.

      • ITER is just one way to achieve fusion. Just like there is more than one way to create an internal combustion engine there is more than one way to get fusion.

        People are waiting on ITER to provide data on plasma dynamics once lit. This is generally applicable science.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      When it takes ten years just to figure out where you're going to put it, it pays to start early.

  • ... yep, 20 years away.

  • Makes sense on a practical level, but it might bring kneejerk reactions from the NIMBY crowd.

  • Still only three choices. (Score:5, Informative)

    by MacMann ( 7518492 ) on Saturday June 12, 2021 @06:27AM (#61479526)

    We need energy now, not just in 20 years. Given the options available to us now we have three choices. Nuclear fission. Fossil fuels. Energy poverty.

    Fusion energy is not a plan for meeting growing demand for energy in the UK. They need to start building new capacity now, something that is sustainable for the next 20 years. Perhaps beyond that if this experiment fails. Fossil fuels is not sustainable because that's fuel that is increasingly difficult to find, and comes with other issues. Wind, solar, hydro, and so on will not work either because there is not enough land in the UK for something so dilute and intermittent. There's an issue also in finding enough copper, silver, lithium, cobalt, or even enough steel. Certainly not enough materials if other nations take the same path on replacing old nuclear power with new solar panels and batteries.

    I'll have people claim that there's not enough uranium and plutonium mining to sustain a transition to nuclear power. Okay, tell me how much uranium and thorium we would need to mine to meet our needs, as well as for raw materials to build the nuclear fission power plants. Then tell me how much mining we'd have to do to build the solar panels, windmills, hydroelectric dams, batteries, geothermal plants, or whatever else you can think of the UK, or any nation needs.

    People did this math already. Dr. David J.C. MacKay had advised the UK government on this before he died. He called an energy plan in the UK without nuclear power a "delusion"
    His numbers are still available online: https://www.withouthotair.com/... [withouthotair.com]
    The entire site is a good read, that page made one argument on how nuclear power is a viable solution.

    More math on the fantasy of a non-nuclear solution: http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co... [roadmaptonowhere.com]
    Again the entire site is full of more information to prove the point.

    More math: https://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/... [blogspot.com]
    More from that site: https://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/... [blogspot.com]
    There's more from Dr. Malhotra on the site, that's just two showing we can't abandon nuclear power.

    The argument on these sources being "just some blog" is not actually an argument. They show their work and if the numbers don't add up then show numbers that do add up. This is a rather simple arithmetic problem. Which path takes the least materials, the lest land area, the least labor, and therefore the least cost. Which path lowers pollution, lowers CO2, has the highest reliability, and causes the least deaths to humans and animals.

    Until we develop some new technology we have three choices. Well, really only one choice, because the other two are things we will not tolerate for long.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Crass Spektakel ( 4597 )

      Funny fact, dig a hole ANYWHERE on earth with 100m x 100m x 100m.

      You just mined 500 tons of nuclear material. Including 150 tons of uranium and 100 tons thorium which also is a powerful fission fuel.

      If you take a brick of coal then the natural radioactive materials inside this brick have ten times more nuclear energy than the chemical energy of the brick.

      • Funny fact, it will cost you so much to refine the ores out of your random soil sample that it won't be profitable.

      • If you take a brick of coal then the natural radioactive materials inside this brick have ten times more nuclear energy than the chemical energy of the brick.
        Only half assed true for cherry picked sites of coal digging.
        Typical coal has no "nuclear energy" in it at all.

        • Why should anyone believe you if you can't comprehend something as simple as "capacity factor"? Provide some sources and maybe you can get some credibility back.

      • Re:Still only three choices. (Score:4, Informative)

        by careysub ( 976506 ) on Saturday June 12, 2021 @11:55AM (#61480036)

        Funny fact, dig a hole ANYWHERE on earth with 100m x 100m x 100m.

        You just mined 500 tons of nuclear material. Including 150 tons of uranium and 100 tons thorium which also is a powerful fission fuel.

        Even funnier, this is not a fact at all. You are claiming that average soil uranium content is 60 ppm (100*100*100*2.5 (max density) = 2,500,000; 150/2500000 = 60 ppm) when it is really about 3 ppm (continental crust average is even lower, 1.4 ppm). So 7.5 tons of uranium. The thorium content though averages 6 ppm, it is more abundant than uranium, not less.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      You're right, we need energy now, not in 20 years. Nuclear fission is automatically off the table, what with the worlds largest and most capable companies demonstrating that due to nuclear's social and regulatory problems nuclear projects which used to take 5 years now take 3-4x as long, and nuclear projects which used to cost $3.5bn now cost 4-5x as much.

      We need to solve the problem now. Nuclear is a fantasy solution. It's a good long term inclusion in the energy mix, but it won't solve the green energy pr

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tomhath ( 637240 )

        due to nuclear's social and regulatory problems

        Those "problems" are trivially easy to overcome. We know how to build safe and efficient nuclear power plants.

        • Those problems are anything but trivial as demonstrated by all of the major nuclear construction companies going bankrupt in the past 10 years and all attempts to build a nuclear reactor failing miserably leading precisely to the cost and time overruns that I stated. They weren't just pulled out of my arse, they were reflectively of the most recent project by the world's biggest and most nuclear power friendly country with a nuclear plant built by the world's most experienced *former* nuclear contractor (wh

          • Those problems are anything but trivial as demonstrated by all of the major nuclear construction companies going bankrupt in the past 10 years and all attempts to build a nuclear reactor failing miserably leading precisely to the cost and time overruns that I stated.

            To be fair, not all attempts to build a nuclear reactor have failed. Watts Barr Unit 2 in the United States went online in 2016 and has been happily generating power ever since.

        • Perhaps you want to look at unit three of this reactor:
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          And no: there were no law suits slowing the construction down, as it is a 3rd unit at an existing site.

          No ideas why you idiots are not waking up and stop this nonsense propaganda. Constructing this pile took over 15 years. Performed by french companies proficient in nuclear power plant construction.

          So: go figure with your idiotic attitude.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Fusion is unique among proposed energy solutions in that the challenge is simply to make the thing work. Every other thing on the table works, but is limited by practical, engineering, economic and environmental problems.

      This makes it easy for people to come up with scenarios where X is the answer to everything. All you have to do is ignore the practical problems with making X happen. Take renewables. People have done calculations showing that there's enough renewable energy to run the world economy. Tha

      • People who advocate for renewables simply assume solving these problems won't be too hard.
        Last months Germany produced a bit more than 60% of its electricity with renewables.

        But you are right, it is difficult to get the energy to where it is needed. We are still using power cables for that.
        And it is also difficult to get the energy to the place when it is needed in time. Our power cables simply suck.

        We continue working on it.

    • Re:Still only three choices. (Score:4, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Saturday June 12, 2021 @12:17PM (#61480094) Homepage Journal

      The UK has about 20x as much offshore wind energy available than it currently uses as electricity. It could not only supply itself all year round, but export massive amounts too. All for less than the cost of nuclear.

      Nuclear in the UK is eye-wateringly expensive, despite the government's best efforts to make it cheaper.

      By the way, what happened to your old account Blindseer? Lost the password or something?

      • The UK has about 20x as much offshore wind energy available than it currently uses as electricity. It could not only supply itself all year round, but export massive amounts too. All for less than the cost of nuclear. Nuclear in the UK is eye-wateringly expensive, despite the government's best efforts to make it cheaper.

        And when the wind is blowing, what happens then?

        The problem with wind and solar is variability. It's why we haven't scrapped all the power stations running on gas. Because when that wind

      • By the way, what happened to your old account Blindseer? Lost the password or something?

        It is worse. His keyboard is broken. The 'd' comes out as an 'c'.

    • First of all, you are right about nuclear still being a good idea.

      That said, the viable, CURRENT choices are:

      1) Nuclear
      2) Natural Gas
      3) Petroleum
      4) Solar Photovoltaic
      5) Wind
      6) Tidal
      7) Hydro electric dams

      All of those are currently profitable in large number of places without any more subsidies than petroleum gets. Note the ABSENCE of coal, it is no longer profitable using current technology (not unless you want to get burn it on site and get mercury and radiation poisoning).

      In the near future we expect Geot

      • That said, the viable, CURRENT choices are:

        Okay, you have my attention, show me your list.

        1) Nuclear

        Okay, so far, so good.

        2) Natural Gas
        3) Petroleum

        Um, that's just two kinds of fossil fuels. How does breaking them out separately help us?

        4) Solar Photovoltaic
        5) Wind
        6) Tidal
        7) Hydro electric dams

        Right, and using only those means energy poverty. A handful of nations might be able to get by on those but that's not an energy policy for everyone. Even in nations with plenty of hydro for storage they'd still want some nuclear power in case of a drought, dam failure of some sort, and as a matter of lowering energy costs. And by dam failure I don

    • I'll have people claim that there's not enough [deleted uranium and] plutonium mining to sustain a transition to nuclear power.
      Care to pont out a place in our solar system or in a suitable range of light years around it, where you can mine plutonium?

      Guessed so ... the idiot again who got modded +5 INFORMATIVE. Who is more retarded, the idiot or the mods?

    • We need energy now, not just in 20 years. Given the options available to us now we have three choices. Nuclear fission. Fossil fuels. Energy poverty.

      The fourth and fifth choices: stop breeding like fscking rats, stop pissing away energy on animal agriculture and non-cellulosic ethanol.

  • OneWeb (Score:2)

    by k2r ( 255754 )

    Did the UK already decide what local tanning shop to purchase to build the fusion plant?

    • No that's not how it works here. Tanning shops are "little people" shops owned by little people, i.e. no ties to the conservatives or their donors. If they'd awarded a no-tender contract to a recently incorporated shell company with no experience in building anything, that would be about right.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      The announcement was delayed because they had decided to hand the contract to Dominic Cumming's second cousin on his mother's side. Obviously not palatable in the current circumstances.

      But fret not, Carrie Symonds (err Johnson) met this woman at the pedicure salon, who told her that her plumber does a really good job, especially hard. So the announcement is back on.

  • Because they already have excellent connections to the Grid. Not all were/are the sites of Nuclear Reactors. Some were former coal-fired power stations.

  • Central London, bang next door to the houses of Parliament. Demolish that stupid god-squad site next door, perhaps and improve the neighbourhood.

    You can't trust politicians to plan properly for the long-term safe constructino, management and decommissioning of anything, let alone a nuclear power plant (fission, fusion or unobtanium) unless the politicians themselves are personally going to be first in the line of corpses if something goes wrong. So use the politicians to provide the second layer of shieldi

  • This reminds me of Douglas Adams writing about the passengers of Ship B farting around instead of inventing the wheel.

  • we're already seeing the Elites of certain countries screwing with Sovereign nations with huge lithium deposits.

    keep that in mind the next time you see some country being demonised.

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