Hunterston B nuclear power station closes after 46 years

[NNadir]

Hunterston B nuclear power station closes after 46 years

Electricity generation has ended at Scotland’s Hunterston B power station with the shutting down of Reactor 4, an advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR). Operator EDF says the power station produced enough electricity during its lifetime to power every home in Scotland for nearly 31 years.

The plant, which came online for the first time in February 1976, was initially expected to run for 25 years but had its generating lifespan increased to more than 45 years. The station’s other unit, Reactor 3, was taken offline in November.

“The contribution Hunterston B power station has made to this country cannot be underestimated. As well as providing stable, well paid employment for thousands of people in the North Ayrshire area, it has produced almost 300TWh of zero-carbon electricity,” said station director, Paul Forrest.

“Everyone here is proud of what the station has accomplished. We will pause to reflect the end of generation but we are looking forward to the future. We don’t just switch off the power station, close the gates and walk away. It will take time to defuel and decommission the site and we will continue to need skilled people to do this.”

Both reactors were taken offline in 2018 after cracks in their graphite cores were discovered during routine inspections. The UK’s Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) gave approval to restart Reactor 4 in August 2020 and Reactor 3 the following month. However they were taken offline again in 2021 for further inspections of their graphite cores, with the ONR then giving permission for them to be switched on for about six months of operation each...

I really liked these reactors; they will all shut in this decade, probably to be replaced by dangerous natural gas, the waste of which will be dumped directly into the planetary atmosphere with no commercially available way yet developed to remove it.

This dangerous fossil waste, the dangerous natural gas waste generated to replace Hunterston B, of course, drives climate change, which if we follow the extend the logic of the anti-nuke community is not too dangerous because in their mind nuclear energy is "too dangerous." Despite catcalls from the ignorance gallery, primiitve nuclear technology has been, by far, the most effective tool for preventing the use of dangerous fossil fuels for use in generating electricity.

The British were far more successful than the Americans with gas cooled reactors. The very first commercial reactor in the Western World, Calderhall, built in the early 1950s and shut in the early 2000's were gas cooled reactors.

The unique thing about British gas cooled reactors was that their working fluid was CO2. This I think, is experience well worth reviewing by future generations of nuclear engineers.

These reactors all operated on the thermal neutron spectrum, which is why they utilized graphite cores. I don't like graphite moderators, but hey, these reactors still saved lives that otherwise would have been lost to air pollution, climate change or both.

I am personally working to convince my son that gas cooled reactors are the way to go for thermodynamic reasons, although to my mind the heat network involved should use the fast neutron spectrum.

Well done Hunterston B!

[IbogaProject]

1. Not zero carbon

The construction of the facilities, mining and processing of the 'fuel' and the post use waste handling all use fossil fuel energy.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/nuclear-power-and-the-environment.php

I'll post another clearer source once I relocate it.

[hunter]

2. Pancreatic cancer vs. a stubbed toe.

Last edited Sun Jan 9, 2022, 01:27 PM - Edit history (1)

The carbon dioxide and toxic emissions of gas power vs. nuclear power are not really comparable.

There's enough gas in the ground to destroy whatever is left of the natural world as we know it, and likely our civilization as well.

[NNadir]

3. It is well known that no source of energy is zero carbon. This complaint is typical however...

...inasmuch the claim amounts to "nuclear energy is not perfect therefore we will embrace everything else which is much worse."

LCA, life cycle analysis, is an increasingly prevalent tool, for which many major software programs involving vast scientific teams have put together.

All have limitations and strengths.

I have collected tens of thousands of references on nuclear energy over three decades, and I very much doubt that anyone here could produce a source that would "clarify" things for me.

Many people, most of them poorly informed, think that nuclear energy can only be utilized for the generation of electricity, which is what it was largely utilized in the first generation of nuclear systems. However, I have argued, and am discussing actively with my son that in the next generation of nuclear reactors, beyond "Gen IV," nuclear systems should be chemical plants first and generate electricity as a side product. One chemical product would be carbon electrodes for metal refining using FFC type processes, as well as motor fuels for those self propelled devices that a wise culture would decide to retain. (A wise society would not include a car CULTure.)

By the intelligent use of used nuclear fuels we can eliminate both the need for mining and enrichment completely further reducing the carbon compact well below the generally accepted figure of 10-50g CO2/kwh, vastly lower than all other forms of reliable energy.

[Pobeka]

5. I'll consider myself poorly informed.

Is there a good layperson source you might recommend for the use of nuclear reactors to produce chemical(s)?

TIA!

[NNadir]

11. Regrettably the best sources for details is the scientific literature but...

...although I don't get my information elsewhere, here is one recent news item about plans to do exactly this in Poland:

Chemical giant looks to nuclear heat to decarbonise

If you search on Google using the terms "thermochemical cycle" and nuclear, you will see a number of links; some link to scientific papers and others have varying degrees of technical language.

I have been extremely fortunate to have excellent access to the scientific literature, and thus don't often use the popular literature, and thus cannot reliably relate good sources.

The most famous thermochemical cycle is the "sulfur iodine" cycle for producing hydrogen. The link is to the Wikipedia page. With hydrogen and carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide one can make basically any chemical now obtained from petroleum using "Fischer-Tropsch" chemistry. If however, we don't want to replace the petrochemicals we use with better alternatives we can make other superior chemicals. For example, it would be wise to replace all applications of gasoline, diesel fuel, liquified petroleum gas, propane and dangerous natural gas with DME.

The sulfur iodine cycle has the advantage of being amenable to continuous flow processes, which are always environmentally superior to batch processes, but it does require high temperatures and the ability to withstand corrosive reagents. Modern advances in materials science now suggest to me that this is a very viable cycle. I understand that the Chinese are piloting it or plan to pilot on one of their new high temperature nuclear reactors. There are many other thermochemical cycles. I believe I've written here in the past a number of times on cerium based carbon dioxide splitting cycles. If you have time to waste you can scroll through my journal here.

There are many other thermochemical cycles, as well as Brayton type cycles that can be accomplished with heat. A favorite of mine is what I call "the reverse Allam cycle." You won't find that discussed anywhere, I believe, but you never know...

Metal refining is available from the FFC process, which should make titanium a cheap metal, but can also be adopted for many other metals, up to and including iron and steel. Metal carbides can also be made with heat.

The largest and most important chemical reaction that can be accomplished with nuclear heat, and is now conducted using the heat of dangerous natural gas or dangerous coal is the Haber-Bosch synthesis of ammonia, which now consumes about 1-3% of the world energy supply. This reaction is essential if we want to have any chance of feeding 8 billion people.

I certainly have many hundreds, if not thousands of technical scientific papers which I've downloaded over the years on chemical processes that may be adapted to nuclear heat; ironically many of these same reactions have been proposed for the useless and unsustainable thermal solar industry, about which there has been tons of prattling over half a century for no result. For the record, I am a chemist.

I often read solar thermal papers because all of the chemistry in them is better adapted to nuclear energy. I often muse that the authors of these paper put "solar thermal" in the text in order to get grants. There is no evidence that these "solar thermal" plants would be viable on a grand scale because of their extreme land requirements. The few solar thermal plants that have been built have all proved to be economic disasters, and end up depending on the use of dangerous natural gas.

You can either take my word for it or not, but I have convinced myself that nuclear driven chemistry is the best and most efficient way to use nuclear energy. The heat rejection involved in many of these reactions can capture additional exergy as electricity when needed and when economically justified. (We are going to see a lot of rolling blackouts in the next ten or twenty years because we've codified stupidity, popular thinking, and greed in an awful mess.) If I were asked to design a nuclear plant, I'd divert the energy to electrical generation only at the times its price is at a premium, which it will be often, as we saw in Texas last winter, at least until we can rebuild a sensibly managed electric grid.

Nuclear power plants can supplant coal and gas as baseload plants, and historically all nuclear plants have been designed for precisely that purpose, but in light of the way that half a century of wishful thinking, fear and ignorance have prevailed to make life precarious, it may not be wise to build nuclear plants just to generate electricity. We may wish to utilize their capability to generate high temperatures in a thermodynamically wise way using heat networks for process heat, extracting exergy in the form of electricity as a side product.

[Pobeka]

12. Thank you for this thoughtful reply.

You obviously put a lot of time into thinking about it, writing it up and I will follow the leads and hopefully raise my awareness of these issues.

[IbogaProject]

17. Cool

Wow lots of information there. I stand corrected. The back end waste issue is a serious risk.

[hunter]

6. If our civilization survives concrete will be made using nuclear power.

The "cement" in concrete is a chemical.

It probably won't be Portland cement which is made by heating certain rocks to 1,450 °C, usually in a coal fired kiln.

The resulting coal ash is itself a significant constituent of that cement.

Solar and wind power are not sustainable if they have to make their own concrete and metal.

[NNadir]

14. I have advised my son that an ideal target temperature...

...for first entry into a heat network would be 1400C. This is roughly the temperature at which ceric oxide decomposes to form cerous oxide and oxygen.

A recent publication in one of the journals I regularly read has suggested that the CO2 released in concrete manufacturing be reduced to methanol. Under the conditions cement manufacture using nuclear heat could, depending on what one does with the methanol, be carbon neutral and even carbon negative. The curing of concrete is de facto air capture.

[hunter]

15. Turn that methanol into plastic pipe...

... so everyone in the world can enjoy modern indoor plumbing connected to clean water sources and modern sewage treatment plants.

With abundant nuclear energy polyethylene pipe could be recycled indefinitely, the carbon it contains sequestered from the atmosphere.

[NNadir]

16. Exactly. Methanol is a useful starting material for alkene monomers.

The task however it to make polymers a generally closed system, which they are nowhere near being now. The best option for closing the cycle is heat.

[StevieM]

13. I have thought a lot about the other aspects to our energy economy that are often overlooked.

Whenever we talk about the subject we always seem to wind up discussing electricity and transportation. Industry and manufacturing and space and water heating are often ignored. I like the idea of using nuclear to do more than just produce electricity.

[Finishline42]

4. Maybe it isn't used enough?

The Scottish Government has achieved its target of generating 50% of Scotland's electricity from renewable energy by 2015, and is hoping to achieve 100% by 2020, which was raised from 50% in September 2010.[2] The majority of this is likely to come from wind power.[3] Renewables produced the equivalent of 97.4% of Scotland's electricity consumption in 2020, mostly from wind.[4]

[link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Scotland|

[NNadir]

7. Producing energy unreliably is something someone who gets information from Wikipedia...

...can consider a good thing, but all the "percent talk" prattled by the morons responsible for the disaster of climate change, specifically, the "renewables will save us" set has done zero to protect humanity from climate change.

They didn't save us..

Forests all over the planet are burning; the permafrost is breaking up, a major glacier in Antarctica is set to break up and release ice flows into the warming ocean.

Every damned Sunday I check the Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide data. Every Sunday! I've been doing so for nearly a decade.

As of this past week, we're at 417.43 ppm of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere. Ten years ago the reading was 24.25 ppm lower, 393.18 ppm.

For 19 years here I've been listening to this idiotic "percent talk." It's bullshit. The planetary atmosphere is collapsing, and doing so at an increasing rate.

As of this moment, 2:51 pm EST US, 7:51 PM Ediburgh time, the carbon output of Great Britain is 308g CO2/kwh, more than 300% (if we must do "percent talk" ) greater than the CO2 output of France: https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/GB

All the bullshit in the world won't change this fact. Facts matter.

It's a little late for insipid happy talk from Wikipedia.

Producing electricity when no one needs it, and failing to do so when they do need it is a very, very, very, very, very, very bad idea.

[hunter]

8. I frequently link to Wikipedia here on DU, mostly to avoid paywalls.

If I see something broken on Wikipedia I'll make some small effort to fix it.

Some topics are of course completely FUBAR, like everything else in life.

[Finishline42]

9. And where would we be

If 20% of the electricity in Texas wasn't produced by wind? How many coal fired plants were shuttered?

If 50% of the electricity in Iowa wasn't produced by wind?

Wouldn't the CO2 concentrations be even higher?

Shouldn't there have been a noticeable drop in CO2 after the significant drop in economic activity after the March 2020 shutdown due to Covid?

[Finishline42]

10. From the Scottish govt

1.2.1. The Scottish Government has had a long-standing target to generate the equivalent of 100% of gross Scottish electricity consumption from renewable sources by 2020, with provisional figures showing that Scotland reached 95.9% in 2020. This target, together with our record of strong support for renewables using the powers of legislation available to us over the past two decades, exemplifies our support for onshore wind and belief in its effectiveness.

https://www.gov.scot/publications/onshore-wind-policy-statement-refresh-2021-consultative-draft/pages/2/

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. It's used; Scotland exports electricity to England

2020 was another record year for renewable electricity generation in Scotland with 31.8 TWh generated, 4.2% up on 2019.
...
Scotland’s net exports of electricity (exports minus imports) in 2020 was its highest to date at 19.3 TWh, a 21% increase compared to 2019.

https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/statistics/2018/10/quarterly-energy-statistics-bulletins/documents/energy-statistics-summary---march-2021/energy-statistics-summary---march-2021/govscot:document/Scotland+Energy+Statistics+Q4+2020.pdf

https://scotland.shinyapps.io/Energy/?Section=RenLowCarbon&Subsection=RenElec&Chart=ElecConsumptionFuel shows the use of nuclear power for electricity consumed in Scotland as 30.4%. The 97.4% is saying the total generated from renewables over the year was 97.4% of the total used in Scotland, but that include periods where wind generation was well above what Scotland can use by itself; at other times, it would have used more nuclear.