Little Presents: NuScale, Germany, Meateasies

Sustainable Business Oregon presents a interview with Pete Lyons, DOE’s assistant secretary for nuclear energy. It’s fine and worth a read – he talks mostly about the NuScale deal – see posts below for more on this.

Lyons does a good job explaining what NuScale offers specifically and what the interest in small reactors may mean generally:

Small modular reactors offer an opportunity for a new paradigm in how we think about nuclear plant construction. In the past we’ve gone to bigger and bigger plants built at a job site. We have realized there are some economies going to these bigger and bigger plants (built) on site. We’re trying to explore a different type of economy by moving down in size to where they can be built in a factory under factory quality assurance standards and moved intact to a site.

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The European Union is investigating the deal between the British government and Electricite de France to build a new reactor at Hinkley Point C. That story will require more attention from us when it ripens a bit more. For our current purpose, another EU inquiry is interesting:

The Commission also announced yesterday that it was launching a full investigation into German subsidies for renewables under its renewable energy act (EEG) to determine whether these subsidies constitute illegal state aid. The investigation is looking at the law's exemptions scheme, which makes consumers pay a green surcharge which funds renewable projects, but exempts heavy industry.

“We received various complaints from consumers and competitors on this and the commission must therefore investigate this particular matter in depth,” said Joaquin Almunia, European commissioner for competition.

I’m not sure how many teeth this commission has or how much of the complaining is pure crankery. It does seem as though Germany has really led its people into a financial sinkhole as it tries to move very rapidly from nuclear energy to renewable energy sources.  It also leads to some very un-holiday-like schadenfreude – but we’ll endure it.

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Some climate change goodness for the vegetarian set:

The analysis also estimates that the greenhouse gas emissions of raising livestock are 19 to 48 times higher than from growing high-protein plant food, such as beans and soy. Last month, a study found that methane emissions in the U.S. were about 1.5 times greater in 2007 and 2008 than previously estimated, and that livestock produced about twice as much methane during that time period than the EPA previously estimated.

The bad news for the vegetarian set is that if the government cannot find a way to grapple with climate change, expecting large swaths of even committed people to abandon meat seems dim indeed. I know from talking with an old 4-H friend that methane mitigation can be done, though still rather theoretically, through feed (see this story from Chemical and Engineering News for more).

The ThinkProgress story suggests that a tax on meat might do the trick, but that’s just silly. Governments like sin taxes because people will pay the tax to maintain their bad habits. But taxing meat as a sin so it becomes prohibitively expensive might well test the elasticity of people’s tolerance for such taxes (meat speakeasies – password “prime rib” – would rise up to feed the protein hungry.) (De)incentivizing behavior through taxation is a tough sell. As we discovered in New York, bans on 32 oz. soda pops to fight obesity doesn’t go over too well, either.

I’d go with the feed idea for now.

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Happy holidays to our NEI Nuclear Notes friends. We’ve had a great year looking at the interesting, inspiring and sometimes odd happenings in the nuclear energy world during 2013 and reading your views in turn. We look forward to a equally illuminant 2014. Next time out, we’ll start a look at the big stories of the past year. Until then, travel safe and stay reasonably fissionable while hanging around the relatives.

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Blighting the Landscape with Turbines

From Twitterer Emily Gosden of the British newspaper The Telegraph:

Decc [Department of Energy and Climate Change] deleted this graphic comparing nukes/wind/solar "because of sensitivities". Says "not inaccurate". Hmm.

This is a post about it by Telegraph news blogger Will Heaven:

It turns out that the Renewable Energy Association called it "unhelpful" in a press release, pleading that "as Ed Davey stressed… it is not an either/or choice".

And here’s the infographic:

It basically shows the land mass taken to generate a similar amount of energy. Well, it really isn’t helpful to the renewable folks, is it?. Wind farms and solar arrays can eat up a lot of space.

Context really matters: if land mass is the key issue, nuclear energy wins. Nuclear energy wins on capacity, too, the potential generated output. Nuclear energy the realizes most of its capacity, wind and solar do not. This infographic doesn’t reflect that.

Imagine that this infographic were about water use instead of land use. Hinkley Point C and the wind farm would change places (let’s leave solar aside) and Hinkley could look far less attractive, a virtual river leech compared to those dry-as-bone turbines.  NEI has a good paper about water use, but that’s really beside the point.

This is not an issue with infographics, which can be really handy for communicating a lot of data in a friendly way. NEI has some nice infographics that make do without tacit editorializing. So let’s allow the Renewable Association its concern.

And that concern is not without cause:

Michael Fallon, the Conservative energy minister, said that nuclear power stations will ultimately prove a cheaper and less controversial alternative.

He told The Daily Telegraph: "This is the first in a wave of new nuclear plants to replace the ageing fleet that Labour did nothing to tackle.

"Without new nuclear local people would face many thousands more wind farms blighting our landscape. By contrast, nuclear power is popular in areas that have existing stations and will deliver significant jobs and investment."

We can be thrilled about Hinkley Point C without calling wind farms a blight. Land mass usage is important, but there are a lot of issues to consider – many of them still favor nuclear energy, but the government view does seem a bit lop sided. I agree with Ed Davey: it’s not either/or.

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The British Return to Nuclear to Keep the Lights On

Here’s the news:

The 16-billion pound ($25.9 billion) project, which was agreed on Monday with France's EDF energy and a group of Chinese investors, aims to keep the lights on in Britain amid declining supplies of North Sea gas and rapidly escalating fuel costs.

"If people at home want to be able to keep watching the television, be able to turn the kettle on, and benefit from electricity, we have got to make these investments," Energy Secretary Ed Davey told the BBC. "It is essential to keep the lights on and to power British business."

That sounds decidedly apocalyptic, but it’s a theme picked up by other stories. Here’s The Telegraph:

During her reign [Queen Elizabeth’s], our atomic expertise, which promised a future of clean, green and affordable electricity, has been handed to foreign competitors on a plate, and Britain’s grid is now under such strain that 57 years later, we find ourselves relying on China and France to keep the lights on.

And in the same language, too, borrowed from Davey. The Telegraph story, by Michael Hanlon, is very withering about Britain’s loss of dominance in the nuclear sphere and ponders gloomily that a “communist superpower” should be doing this rather than the Brits themselves. (In another era, he would be griping about the French end of the deal.)

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Here’s the outline of the deal, from The Guardian:

Britain is to embark on building its first nuclear power station for two decades on Monday as the coalition hands a multibillion subsidy to France's EDF with help from a state-owned Chinese firm.

The two planned pressurized water reactors at Hinkley Point C, Somerset, are the first to start construction in Europe since Japan's Fukushima disaster and the first in the UK since the Sizewell B power station came online in 1995.

The Guardian being The Guardian, the nuclear energy industry is a nest of asps hissing and spitting. It all could be so much easier:

The alternative to nuclear, made to appear unthinkable by the industry's lobbying, is in fact far from inconceivable. A huge effort to improve the UK's woeful energy efficiency is the first step. The UK government currently expects electricity demand to rise by 33-66% by 2050.

…

The second step is a genuine commitment to renewable energy, youthful technologies ripe for further cost reductions in stark contrast to nuclear. Even today, once you account for the much longer time for which nuclear is promised subsidies, offshore wind costs the same and it will fall.

I can’t really speak to the British industry’s lobbying efforts, but I do know that here, the industry considers itself part of a continuum that includes energy efficiency and renewable energy. if you want to be cynical about it, and why not?, you could say that there’s money in all of it. But if you want to be a little more idealistic, you could admit that it does not hurt to pursue a full range of options to answer to climate change issues and customer awareness of them. Environmentalists get a lot of mileage out of posing an adversarial relationship between energy generators, but that’s really to charge up the troops not a viable way of doing business.

The 60-year history of the nuclear industry is one unblemished by promises kept. From "too cheap to meter" to safe as houses, every pledge has been broken.

Vicious and pestilent promise breakers – the solution is so clear to some, the government must be blind.

Or perhaps it’s just trying to keep the lights on.

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Nazis, Soviets and Chatham House

Generally, you know you’ve lost an argument, especially one with a political dimension,  when you bring in Nazism to bolster your point. What Nazism means is up to the ears of the listener as long as it boils down to “really bad.”

It’s an effective argument killer, but unfortunately, if you bring up Hitler, you lose, because your arguments have gone bankrupt and you’re spewing nonsense.

The use of Nazism in debates is largely an American thing. We didn’t suffer under Nazi rule, so it can be trotted out to mean any abstract thing we want, as long as it’s, well, really bad and we don’t mind losing debates.

But Europeans did experience it directly, so they have had an experience of it and don’t treat it lightly. The difference between two opposing views doesn’t portend murderous racist dictatorship.

Now, “Soviet,” on the other hand:

A prominent clean energy campaigner has been banned from the European Energy Forum after tweeting remarks made by the EU's energy commissioner describing the UK's plan to hand out long-term contracts to nuclear companies as "Soviet".

Why not “French,” I wonder? Not the same evil frisson, one gathers.  “Soviet” is something not even the former Soviets want to be called.

Now, you may be wondering why this fellow got banned for tweeting – accurately – a term someone else used.

'Chatham House rules' are assumed at such meetings, although they are neither advertised nor announced.

The Chatham House rule, which is often used in press briefings, protects the anonymity of speakers, while allowing the information they impart to be reported.

And Chatham House, an international think tank, is around to define the Chatham House rule quite precisely.

When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.

So I guess environmentalist Mark Johnston could say someone called the contracts Soviet, just not who said it – which he did. It was EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger. Oettinger’s comments distressed others just as Nazi comments do and he later tweeted that he was joking.

It was a jokey reference, made in the context of the UK wanting to introduce capacity mechanisms.

I’ve spent some time in Germany and find this believable – what the Germans consider a joke is completely up to them, because you’ll never get it. Germans have impenetrable senses of humor.

Okay, so the deal is, Oettinger may not like what the British are doing, but he realized that “Soviet,” like “Nazi,” loses the argument, so he walked it back. Mark Johnston has to pay 7000 Euro for a membership to the European Energy Forum or he isn’t getting back into their meetings. And the British are doing what the British are doing.

And what is that? Well, it really is kind of arcane.

The French company EDF is currently bidding to run two nuclear plants in Hinkley, Somerset, under a 'Contract for Difference' (CfD) which guarantees a long-term fixed price for low-carbon electricity generators.

At just under £100 per megawatt hour, the minimum price reportedly being discussed with the French energy giant would be nearly double the current market rate, and 19% higher than onshore wind turbines.

But the deal has been held up by an ongoing review of European Commission state aid rules, which limit the amount of public subsidies offered by governments to energy utilities.

See? This’ll get sorted out one way or another and if it hampers British nuclear energy, we’ll talk about that then. (Short sneak preview: the British are after energy diversity/security and are willing to pay for it.) Until then, it’s a British-EU haggle and who wants to get too deeply into that?

For now the lessons are: using “Soviet” to trump an argument is the European equivalent of using “Nazi” here. You use it, you lose. And don’t mess with the Chatham House rule. It will only cause tears and cost money.

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Relying on Nuclear Energy to Keep the Lights Working

The nuclear energy situation in Great Britain has been full of drama, with Spanish and German interests dropping in and out of the mix and the government’s will to even build a new reactor brought into question.

But, really, the most notable thing about the virtually daily drumbeat of news was that there was a drumbeat of news – to me, that meant the issue wasn’t going to expire until a solution was reached one way or another.

Meet the solution:

Energy giant EDF was today given permission to construct a new nuclear facility at Hinkley Point C in Somerset.
The announcement was seen as a huge boost to the industry which ministers are relying on to keep the lights working.
EDF said the plant’s two nuclear reactors would be capable of producing seven per cent of the UK’s electricity, enough to power five million homes.

“Relying on to keep the lights working.” To quote Orson Welles from a notorious Paul Masson ad, Ahhhh the French. EDF just got knocked back by the NRC on building a new reactor at Maryland’s Calvert Cliffs because of foreign ownership rules, so this might seem just, if only partial, compensation.

And:

The project will create as many as 25,000 jobs during construction and 900 permanent positions once in operation.

Mostly British, I assume. Might wish the jobs were in Maryland, but why be churlish? It’s all good.

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Another bit of good international news, though I admit it’s a bit puzzling:

A new study suggests there is overwhelming public support for the UAE’s peaceful nuclear energy program.

Global research consultancy TNS has announced the results of its study regarding support for nuclear energy in the UAE — with 82 per cent of respondents in favor. That figure is up from 66 per cent a year ago.

There’s nothing suspicious about this poll – TNS is very reputable – but I wonder about the views of UAE people – or rather, who counted as UAE people in this poll. Here is the CIA’s reckoning of the population:

Emirati 19%, other Arab and Iranian 23%, South Asian 50%, other expatriates (includes Westerners and East Asians) 8% (1982)

note: less than 20% are UAE citizens (1982)

So less than 20 percent are citizens and 19 percent are Emirati – that’s a pretty firm correlation. The reason for this:

It is incredibly difficult to obtain UAE citizenship; it is usually only granted if you are married to a citizen for at least 10 years or if your father had citizenship.

So UAE is not primarily a country of citizens, it is a land of visitors. The four reactors at Barakah will benefit all of them, of course, and I think we can assume that those not invested one way or another into the UAE’s energy choices will be diffident in their views. Eighty percent is 80 percent, whoever TNS talked to, but it must be a curious place to poll.

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All Aboard for the Neutron Express!

Nuclear energy would be perfect for electric/hybrid cars, a potentially gigantic market for electricity that is well-suited to an energy source with a 24/7-profile. We’ve got the nuclear facilities, all we need now are more cars. I haven’t given up on the possibility, and there has been some traction in the kilowatt mobile business, but it’s been a bit of a slog.

Still, a good idea is a good idea, so it’s interesting to see Great Britain explicitly tie their electric trains to nuclear energy.

The majority of Britain's trains will be indirectly running on nuclear power for the next 10 years following Network Rail's agreement to a £3bn deal with EDF to supply electricity to the railways.

“Indirectly running.” That sounds like a nice way of saying, “We cannot know where the electricity is coming from,” which is true, “but a lot of it is nuclear energy,” which is also true. What it really means is that only 50 percent of the train service is electric, though that is expected to increase to 75 percent in 2020.

Still, there is a bit more to it – it isn’t just a symbolic gesture.

EDF Energy operates 14 Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor and one pressurized water reactor, totaling 9548 MWe in generating capacity. It has advanced plans for a new EPR unit at Hinkley Point, which it wants to be the first of four.

EDF owns two coal plants, two natural gas plants and a couple of wind farms – though EDF is not one of the big boosters of renewable energy on the isles – but the focus is definitely and explicitly on nuclear energy, with eight facilities generating about 9000 megawatts, and Network Rail insisting that the electricity it will use must come directly from nuclear energy.

The deal has positive implications for both British Rail and EDF. For Network Rail:

Network Rail will purchase power "up to ten years in advance" under the deal, a privilege which the companies said "helps to deliver greater certainty over costs and significantly reduce exposure to short term, volatile energy prices." This kind of long-term arrangement is made possible by the economics of nuclear power, which feature high costs for construction and capital but low and predictable fuel and operating costs.

Very true. And for EDF:

For EDF Energy, CEO Vincent de Rivaz called the deal "a massive vote of confidence in our nuclear-backed energy." He said, "The deal places nuclear energy at the heart of the UK's infrastructure for the next ten years and serves to underline that nuclear power is part of everyday life in Britain."

I wonder if British Rail will incorporate this into selling the service – something like Atomic Trains to Bramford or Neutron Expresses to Oxford or perhaps it will  just reference its green profile in the literature. I vote for the atomic train.

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Indifferent to Nuclear Energy, Against Wind Power

Former Vice President Al Gore has never been the biggest advocate of nuclear energy:

In 2009, he said he saw it playing "a somewhat larger role" in the energy mix because of climate change and efforts to cut carbon emissions. "I'm not a reflexive opponent of nuclear. I used to be enthusiastic about it, but I'm now skeptical about it," he told the Guardian at the time.

But at least three years ago, not it biggest detractor, either. I think it’s fair to say that he is currently indifferent to it.

"It will play a role, but probably a limited role. I think the waste issue can probably be solved, and Fukushima notwithstanding, the safety of operation issue can probably be solved. But the cost is absurdly high and still rising," he wrote during a question and answer session on Reddit to promote his 24-hour Climate Reality webcast on the links between fossil fuels and extreme weather.

That happened Wednesday into Thursday. If the webcast fit your interest, you probably knew that. For everyone else, you can view some highlights here.

And Gore? Well, a bunch of countries, including the U.S., are throwing up a fair number of nuclear facilities – the World Nuclear Association pins it at 60. So Gore’s intuition simply sounds to me an expression of indifference. His interests are really elsewhere.

And that’s fine. I genuinely admire public figures like Gore who leverage their celebrity into good works. There are plenty who don’t. So Gore is indifferent to nuclear energy – so Bill Gates is all in. Let them do what makes them content. It’s all good.

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The Guardian seems to be on a roll with antipathetic energy figures. First Gore and now Conservative energy minister, John Hayes. In Hayes’ case, he really dislikes wind power.

In a letter to the chief executive of South Holland district council, seen by the Guardian, the energy minister said: "Wind turbines … create barely a trickle of non-storable electricity and none at all when wind speed is unsuitable. They will always have to be backed up by conventional power stations because of their unreliability. Because the wind by nature is intermittent and cannot generate a steady output of energy to supply constant demand, even thousands of wind turbines won't replace gas or nuclear power generation."

Unlike Gore, who can influence policy only indirectly, Hayes is the power in this realm, so he can move markets as well as policy.

His views will do nothing to reassure investors who are nervous about the battle within the government over energy policy. Several large multinational companies are holding off their final decisions on investments totaling tens of billions of pounds into wind turbine manufacturing plants in the UK because of the perceived political turmoil over the renewables issue.

To be fair, there is pushback:

His complaints were rebuffed by Maf Smith, deputy chief executive of RenewableUK who said it was a myth that wind farms were "unreliable". "Modern wind turbines are highly efficient – they generate electricity for 85% of the time. Just last week, National Grid announced that another record amount was being generated by wind – 13.5% of the UK's entire electricity needs. As we install more turbines onshore and offshore this is set to increase to 30% by the end of the decade."

Let’s take Smith at his word – though his numbers seem awfully high – and add that if I were him, the letter from Hayes would make me very nervous.

I’ll stop here since wind really isn’t our brief, but it’s interesting to see anything resembling an anti-wind crusade – there’s another story at The Guardian about a prospective parliamentary candidate who conspired with a newspaper columnist to run as an anti-wind candidate. This caused a kerfluffle, but I don’t understand British politics well enough to untangle it. See what you think.

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The Betamax Fallacy: Putting Nuclear Energy in a Green Straitjacket

A Betamax machine

Energy is energy – and producing electricity doesn’t have an ideological bias. But how electricity gets produced is another matter. It involves interactions between government, industry and citizens, which quickly gives it an ideological cast.

In England, Green Party leader Natalie Bennett and Caroline Lucas, the first Green Party member of parliament offer what represents energy manna to them in a recent Guardian article:

If there weren't already a solution at hand, we'd have to be frantically hunting around for one. But the fact is that there is - renewables, combined with a serious drive for energy conservation, which would also have the added benefits of making our homes more comfortable and our air more breathable.

They put this at the end of the article, the capper on a loosely reasoned piece on the downsides of nuclear energy, which they call  the Betamax of the energy world. I wouldn’t even call Betamax the Betamax of the videotape world – it was a technologically superior alternative to VHS -but the image resonates for those over 30, so it works even if It isn’t quite accurate.

The article isn’t quite accurate, either.

Interestingly, the authors do not argue that nuclear energy is past its sell-by date or technologically dubious. Instead, they try several other kinds of arguments: it’s unreliable (counterintuitive), it’s managed by companies (Irrelevant), and it’s too expensive (an old favorite). Let’s take a look at these arguments.
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It is immensely and unpredictably expensive. Even a group called Supporters of Nuclear Energy is now questioning the cost of nuclear to the UK.

Building new facilities is expensive, true, but the second part puzzled me. I clicked through on the link and found – that it isn’t true.

The Supporters of Nuclear Energy have told the Chancellor that current pricing proposals would give nuclear power an unnecessary subsidy and provide EDF, the French state-controlled group, with a huge return on its £14bn investment in the first two plants.

Here’s what the group really thinks:

SONE feels the odds are being stacked against nuclear because it is being lumped together with wind power and other subsidized renewable energy sources in the price set-up to “create a level playing field.”

It was leveled for renewable energy, though,not nuclear energy.

But what about the argument that the high cost of building a facility should keep it out of the energy mix?

I took a look over at the Energy Information Agency to see how a relatively objective source tabulated the cost of different energy sources, taking into account construction and other elements.

Here’s what it says about nuclear energy (focus on the dollars per megawatt hours in this admittedly dense prose):

At a 5% discount rate, the levelised costs of nuclear electricity generation in OECD countries range between 29 USD/MWh (Korea) and 82 USD/MWh (Hungary). Investment costs represent by far the largest share of total levelised costs, around 60% on average, while O&M [operations and management] costs represent around 24% and fuel cycle costs around 16%. These figures include costs for refurbishment, waste treatment and decommissioning after a 60‑year lifetime.

And renewable energy:

At a 5% discount rate, levelised generation costs for onshore wind power plants in OECD countries considered in the study range between 48 USD/MWh (United States) and 163 USD/MWh (Switzerland), and from 101 USD/MWh (United States) to 188 USD/MWh (Belgium) for offshore wind. The share of investment costs is 77% for onshore wind turbines and 73% for offshore wind turbines.

In other words, nuclear energy stands up pretty well in head-to-head cost comparisons.
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It is by its nature monopolistic.

What they mean here is not that the facilities are built by single companies that illegally squash competition, the usual meaning under U.S. antitrust law, but that they are built by companies and not by communities. This feels like a philosophical underpinning of the Green Party, so of you agree with it, fine, join the Greens; if not, also fine, don’t join the Greens. It’s not really an argument against nuclear energy per se, but a preference for energy that can be generated very locally – solar panels on roofs, windmills in the backyard – and maybe wind farms for a town. Feels very Whole Earth Catalog, but it has a back-to-the-Earth appeal.

Remember: the Greens have one member in parliament.
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Fifth, it is unreliable. If a handful of plants are responsible for a large percentage of Britain's power, sudden shutdowns could have hugely disruptive effects - as sweating Japanese salarymen in their suddenly non-air conditioned offices found after the Fukushima disaster. A power system reliant on nuclear can never be a reliable, resilient system.

This one’s just ridiculous and even a little offensive. Happily, they don’t try a comparison with “reliable, resilient” renewable energy or the wind, as they say, would be out of their sails.
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However I try to square these arguments, the authors keep warping reality to force electricity generation into the Green straitjacket they’ve knitted for it.  When ideology overrides a people’s energy needs, as in Germany, the result can be impressively severe. Call it the Betamax Fallacy – defined as “dismissing good technology for bad reasons.”
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I cherry picked three of the five points offered by the authors to keep the post contained. The other two are “It’s slow to build” and “it isn’t renewable.” Tackle those, if you’d like, for extra credit.

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For Great Britain, New Nuclear is a Gold Medal Strategy to Reduce Carbon Emissions

U.K. Nuclear Stations

Our Olympics-hosting friends in Great Britain appear poised to react to climate change in a manner far different from the Germans, who have designs on abandoning nuclear energy. Britain Gives Nuclear a 2nd Chance, the New York Times informed this week, and in it we learn that the British government "is courting the nuclear industry." Why? "It wants low-carbon power to aid its goal, enshrined in law, of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050."

Those numbers caught my attention. They sounded eerily familiar to me, and for good reason. I work a lot with communicators at California's two nuclear energy facilities, San Onofre and Diablo Canyon. In 2006, then Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act.

Under that law California must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 -- about 30 percent. And the state must redeuce GHG by 80 percent over 1990 levels by 2050. Most ambitious -- and the moreso seeing as how California can't turn to new, carbon-free nuclear to aid its cause: it's got a moratorium on building new nuclear.

Like the U.S., Great Britain today derives nearly 20 percent of its electricity generation from nuclear power. Perhaps it's coincidence that Great Britain and California have identical GHG reduction targets, but how they'll respectively achieve them over the next few decades couldn't be different. EDF Energy, a British subsidiary of Electrice de France, envisions enough new nuclear power at the Hinkley Point site to power 5 million homes, according to the Times.

"The [British] government has identified eight sites, all with existing nuclear facilities, where new ones might go . . .

"I've bet my career on it, so I think that it is pretty high," Nigel Cann, Hinkley Point's manager, said of the probability that the plants will be built."

Siting new coal apparently is as problematic for the British government as it is their American counterpart. No doubt the Brits will broaden their conservation and efficiency strategies, but when it comes to making big gains with cleaner air, this nation of mighty winds appears poised to go with new nuclear as the best option. That we'll have two vastly different air-improvement approaches with new electricity generation, with identical targets and time frames, will make for fascinating energy policy watching in the years ahead.

"Nuclear investment is a high priority for the [British] government," said Charlotte Morgan, a nuclear expert at the law firm Linklaters. "There are few alternatives to deliver the U.K.'s long-term energy needs, its low-carbon commitments and security of supply."

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Whither British Nuclear Energy?

Martin Freer is a professor of nuclear physics at the U.K.’s Birmingham University. He lets us know that he wants his country to stop dithering when it comes to nuclear energy:

There are very strong arguments for making nuclear power a crucial component of Britain's overall programme of low-carbon energy generation. Indeed, there is a compelling case for the country to be rebuilt as a nuclear nation if it is to tackle the threat of global warming and other colossal concerns. Although a number of hurdles must be overcome if this is to happen.

And perhaps some of the problems are a least somewhat systemic.

Now the R&D workforce stands at fewer than 600, while funding has fallen to less than 10 per cent of the historical level. Similarly, we are far from having an appropriate workforce in place in the event of a build programme getting under way. At this point in time there is a very real worry that the scale of training achievable will not match demand.

It’s a striking difference from the American experience. There has been much discussion of rebuilding the nuclear work force in the face of coming retirements. Both industry and government here are putting some muscle (and money) behind nuclear related degree work. If Freer is right in his 10 percent figure, that argues for industry to step up, at least to some degree.

In the United States, industry offers scholarships to students and partners with colleges to offer relevant programs. Some of these are two-year degrees for well-trained nuclear “factory” workers – nuclear facilities being essentially factories for producing electricity – and four-year degrees in the nuclear sciences. You can read more about this here.

But it sounds as though the British industry is just coming to terms with these issues.

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Freer offers no particular solution to the issues he sees holding back the U.K. nuclear industry. There have been stories circulating that interest in building new facilities has flagged somewhat – cost and the accident at Fukushima Daiichi being contributing factors – but there is a need to refresh the country’s fleet, the government is behind new build and there is a decided interest.

Enter: China?

Westinghouse and Areva have both said they will not comment on press reports that they have each teamed up with a Chinese company to bid for the British nuclear power venture Horizon Nuclear Power.

Press reports in the UK said Areva and Westinghouse, which make competing designs of reactor, are thought to have each secured the backing of a Chinese state company.

Enter: Russia?

Rosatom, the state atomic energy corporation, is holding consultations over its possible involvement in the British nuclear program, according to deputy director general Kirill Komarov.

Hmm. That sounds – provisional. People “hold consultations” about things all the time.

Jukka Laaksonen, vice-president of ZAO Rusatom Overseas (Rosatom’s subsidiary set up to promote Russian nuclear technology abroad) announced at Atomexpo-2012 that Rosatom would apply to the British and US supervisory agencies to have its VVER PWR reactor technologies certified with them.

There are other reasons to do this than to open these particular marketplaces.

According to Nuclear.Ru, he said Rosatom plans to complete standard generic design assessment procedures within five years, in order to obtain licenses for the construction of VVER reactors in the UK.

It plans to apply later to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission for certification of the VVER design. Approval by the British and American regulatory authorities will help promote VVER reactor technologies overseas, Mr Laaksonen believes.

In case you needed evidence that NRC license approval is considered an international gold standard. I don’t mean to suggest that the Russian presence would have sinister undertones, just that the effort to break into the American marketplace would take a lot of will – and money. So far, Rosatom hasn’t expended much of either.

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Currently, Horizon is owned by the German concerns E.ON and RWE, which has followed Germany away from nuclear power. When the ownership issue is settled – French, French/Japanese/Chinese - there will be a better sense of how the British industry will proceed – or at least might proceed.

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A Princely Endorsement

Who said it?

“It’s a great pleasure to be back here again and a real pleasure to open something that’s going to have serious and important consequences in the years to come.

“Something is going to have to be done to supply the huge increase in the amount of energy we need. There has to be some part of the energy sector delivering nuclear. It’s not just about the UK. Nuclear will be used globally.”

Okay, we know he’s British and he gets invited to open things – in this case the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre.

Give up?

The Duke of York said that it would make a significant difference to Britain in the future if it didn’t build up its own civil nuclear manufacturing capabilities.

“We must deliver at least some part of the supply chain. The ability to harness the knowledge, skills and innovation of the UK in a facility like this is hugely important,” he said.

Prince Andrew is currently fourth in line to the throne of England and is probably better known to Americans as the former husband of Sarah Ferguson. He has also been keenly interested in promoting British trade, which likely contributes to his interest in the workforce and supply chains.

So good for Prince Andrew. When I read something like this:

Anti-nuclear power campaigners dressed as “Radioactive Royals and nuclear guards” protested in front of Buckingham Palace on Thursday, 5 February as nuclear industry bigwigs were wined and dined by the Duke of York, Prince Andrew.

What I think is: Wine and dine away, Prince. He doesn’t have much political clout to invite corruption (plus he’s the one funding the wining and dining, not the industry) and he’s keenly interested in the nuclear industry and people will come around to eat with him. Wouldn’t work here, and to be honest, it limits the effectiveness of his pulpit, but you know, we lack princes.

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