Why British Nuclear Energy Failed

The story of nuclear power in the United Kingdom is one of bad economics and missed opportunities.

The British were a nuclear pioneer and their government saw civilian nuclear power as a way to diversify the country's energy mix.

But a series of bad technical decisions took the industry down the wrong path. Things got nasty. In this video we are going to look at why nuclear power melted down - economically - in the United Kingdom.

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[myriri]

"A story of missed opportunities"
Yes thats basically post WW2 Britain in a general context.

[PositionLight]

At about 6:00 you said the US Manhattan project used light water reactors. They actually used graphite moderated, water cooled reactors. The Magnox reactors were constructed with a low power density to be able to be air cooled even if all the CO2 leaked out.

[damonkowarsky]

There’s great footage of a scientist from the early days of Calder Hall talking about how often it sucked energy out of the grid rather than contributing to it. Which he noted wasn’t such a problem, as the plant was principally designed to produce plutonium with electricity as a secondary outcome. I can’t help but think the civilian nuclear power industry was a deft piece of accounting steganography designed to spread the enormous cost of producing nuclear weapons among the entire population.

[Titot]

This video totally resonates with me, since I've been in the industry for a good 15 years and is imaprtial and accurate. Currently doing office moves. I've still managed to locate my British Energy branded overalls from when I started, and old folders which still have CEGB and Nuclear Electric.

The biggest problem with the AGRs is that no matter which way you put it, you don't have a common fleet wide approach across similar stations within the fleet due to how the contracts were awarded by CEGB when they were designed and constructed. Different consortia were involved for each AGR design. Furthermore, implementation of operational experience explains why you don't have cookie cutter systems like French PWRs for example. Remember that there was a good 15 year span between the construction and operation of Hinkley/Hunterston and Torness/Heysham 2... And the less you talk about Dungeness B, the better. It's like our version of Bruno... We don't talk about Bruno.

Whilst your primary circuit might by and large follow the same principle of concrete pre-stressed pressure vessels, annular boilers (unless you account for the wonderful replaceable ballistic missiles that are pod boilers) and gas circulators, there are a lot of quirks in your conventional side and control and instrumentation system and emergency backups. Hinkley B and Hunterston had the same basic reactor design, but had different turbines and different backup generators, with HPB running RR Olympus and HNB with diesels. The differences don't stop there.

It was rather mind blowing when doing all of my AGR systems courses back in the day, how political decisions and commercial factors influenced the course of reactor designs. Let's also not forget that our nuclear regulatory climate is rightly conservative and follows international best practice. It does make me wonder that if you tried to licence an AGR now, will it actually be economically viable?

Nevertheless, as a metallurgist, we've learnt a lot about structural integrity due to the quirkiness of our different reactors and you can see the landscape very much shaping its way into more efficient, easier to produce PWRs, or even SMRs. But that being said, if any prospective licensee/vendor can push their design through a Generic Design Assessment, good luck to them!

[bobwatson]

Great vlog. I spent a bit of time at Sellafield, putting in control software. This was in the late 90's when the industry was just privatised, but the place was really dingy and run down and getting new investment in. All of the offices were made of metal, it was really weird, metal walls. I don't know if that was to protect you against radiation but as stuff was old it continual hassle. You needed a security clearence to get into it, but I managed to get a tour from one of the older guys. I was a great place to wander about if you liked industrial heritage. Some bits were off-limit, too dangerous. It was absolutly truly massive, with tons of strange machinery everywhere. Its was great. Apparently there is 200 tons of plutonium stored there. Enjoyed the vlog.

[epicmits]

As a student of nuclear engineering, and a viewer who started watching your channel knowing nothing about the semiconductor field, I've loved seeing you discuss more and more interesting nuclear topics and bringing your fantastic informative and high quality style to my industry. Awesome work.

[NuclearSavety]

Hmmm then newer history is very missleading.

26:10 British Energy was not renamed into EDF, EDF is the french national power supplyer, buying up British Energy.

27:00 The EPR reactor is not of Chinese origin, it is the French-German common reactor design. It was built in Taishan, but also in Finland and is built in France.

26:50 The Chinese support the HPC project financially as junior partner, but the show is run by EDF. It is more a French project than a Chinese one.

[Ben-gmlo]

Thanks for a great video. One small correction if I may. Timestamp 13:35 states the UK government was reeling from the UK military cancelling TSR2. The UK military did not 'cancel TSR2'. This was done by Prime Minister Harold Wilson's Labour government. They can reel all they want, they cancelled the project and destroyed all the prototypes to prevent it being resurrected.

[pauleohl]

Really surprised to learn that Thatcher was concerned about CO2 in 1980.

[matthewmnorman]

Thanks for this! I think you’d find the history of the CANDU reactors interesting too.

[chilebike]

What a delight to see informed and knowledgable comments - people with experience, not opinions. This and the presentation has to be the best of the internet.

[Jim_]

Humanity’s rejection of Nuclear power was a massive mistake, and the environment has payed dearly for it as we continue to rely on fossil fuels for our electricity

[john]

The Manhattan project did use graphite moderated, water cooled reactors at Hanford. This combination requires careful control, as the Soviets learned at Chernobyl. The Americans developed the light water reactor for submarine propulsion, then chose to develop that concept for civil power production. The British stayed with gas graphite into a second generation beyond Magnox, because of an indigenous industry. There were 26 Magnox reactors, not stations. The British military did not cancel TSR-2, the politicians did; and the F-111 did not come through. AGRs do indeed operate at higher thermal efficiency than Magnox or PWR, because of a significantly higher operating temperature. Their design is not fundamentally flawed, nor are they failures; they were simply not as cheap to build as PWRs in the USA at that time. The AGRs have lasted their intended 45 years. The French are unique in the world, making about 70% electricity by nuclear, so they benefit from economy of scale. More importantly, EdF is state subsidised. Now that the world knows the full price of burning fossil fuel, nuclear power might be seen as worth its price.

[PositionLight]

Another advantage of the AGR was that the steam could be plugged into existing British thermal plant steam generation and turbine equipment because unlike water reactors, the CO2 could reach higher temperatures and could generate dry, super-heated steam. The AGR is likely the only reactor design to achieve superheated steam, which is far preferable to saturated or wet steam.

[sfodjknfwoa]

despite your channel name i love seeing your videos on the UK!

[wiicow]

Was interesting watching this.

My grandfather actually worked for the English electric nuclear power group and you can read many of his white papers where he analyses the inefficiency of the Calder hall concept

[pinnipes]

i love this video, it really is fantastic, but WOW, "[margaret thatcher] liked that it didn't emit greenhouse gases..." hit me like a truck. WOW. anyways consider me subscribed, love your stuff, you've got a fantastic talent for laying information out clearly

[michaelkaliski]

British nuclear power succeeded very well at what it was designed to do, which was to provide materials to produce nuclear weapons. The production of energy and isotopes for civilian applications was always a secondary function to partially offset the costs of producing materials for military applications. The ready availability of cheap high quality coal, North Sea oil and gas meant that nuclear power generation was not an essential part of maintaining the national electricity grid. Times have changed and the construction of nuclear power stations dedicated primarily to power production is now seen as essential moving forward. The prior military applications of nuclear power have resulted in challenges from environmentalists who just see all power stations as being a bad thing, let alone nuclear power stations. The UK is now moving towards the development of smaller, modular, standardised reactors and these will eventually be used to cover the base grid load which will be topped up as necessary by wind, solar and hydro power.

[derekp]

Thanks for including the aerial view of UKAEA Culham Laboratory at 2:04. I can see the windows of two of the offices that I used while working there. Culham was established as the UK centre for research into nuclear fusion power and so had almost nothing to do with UK work on fission power reactors.

[thelakeman]

Privatisation of nuclear infrastructure just sounds like a bad idea like no private company's gonna bear the capital costs to upgrade the infrastructure, take on the responsibility to deal with the waste, and do the required maintenance, no wonder they had to bail them out, it's one of those industries that is a good idea to keep with the government.