Engineering the Nuclear Future

What is Britain’s nuclear power strategy? Barrie Cran, head of technical assurance at Great British Nuclear and keynote speaker at the IET’s Engineering the Nuclear Future conference tells us...

Britain’s energy demand is forecast to increase substantially over the next few decades. This increase is partly triggered by our soaring reliance on energy-hungry data centres, AI and other digital innovations of Industry 4.0. But it is also due to the need for gap-filling energy following the decarbonisation of applications currently powered by fossil fuels, such as gas central heating, diesel trains and internal combustion engines.

Discussing some of the themes covered at the IET’s Engineering the Nuclear Future conference, Barrie explains that to meet this demand, there is now a requirement for nuclear energy to provide a robust baseload generating capacity along with renewable energy sources. “Today there is an aspiration for another largescale generating plant after Sizewell C, and also an aspiration for small modular reactors [SMRs], potentially moving on to alternative modular reactors [AMRs].”

During the conference that took place at the start of October last year, industry experts gathered to analyse the engineering and technological skills and security aspects of an industry that will play a critical role in Britain’s energy mix leading up to 2050. Having spent 35 years in the industry, Barrie is well placed to introduce the pathways to new nuclear generation in terms of both carbon reduction and energy stability. He started his career in the defence nuclear propulsion programme, followed by a stint in civil nuclear generation, before spending eight years at Horizon Nuclear Power. He spent a further five years at Dounreay, from which he is on secondment to Great British Nuclear.

The nuclear industry is awaiting the Labour government’s strategic spending review, taking place in the wake of the Energy Security Strategy published under the Johnson Conservative administration, which was followed by the Civil nuclear: roadmap to 2050 policy paper under former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Barrie says the roadmap contains a clear directive for new nuclear generation to form part of the energy mix within the UK. “The aspiration of the previous government was that there should be up to 24GW of nuclear generation by 2050. Given that the existing nuclear fleet will largely cease generating in the next ten years or so, if you take off Sizewell B, Sizewell C and Hinkley C, that leaves about 16-18GW to fill. But until the National Energy System Operator’s refreshed strategy is published, we can’t say if the previous government’s 24GW target by 2050 is accurate.”

Reflecting on his keynote talk at the Engineering the Nuclear Future conference, Barrie says that the central challenge of the industry is simple to articulate. “As we take fossil fuels out of the energy mix, electricity demand will go up, creating demand for increased nuclear generating capacity to support the grid. This means that the opportunity is there to demonstrate that we can deliver safe, reliable nuclear electricity power stations at good cost and on schedule.”

The majority of these power stations will be SMRs that will play a central role in delivering nuclear energy to the grid. Barrie says that their “beauty”, as their name suggests, lies in the fact that they are modular in construction and physically smaller, and can be deployed with a reducing cost and increasing predictability. “They are small but aren’t tiny and are about the size of a Magnox power station,” he explains. “But because you’re doing this again and again, you can build up the constant delivery that brings down the unit cost, allowing the delivery of electricity in a relatively short time compared to a GW-scale power station. Britain is going to need quite a lot of SMRs depending on the technology we go for and their size, which is going to be around 0.9 to 1.5GW – we could be talking dozens.”

Initially these SMRs will be sited in areas designated in the 2011 National Policy Statement (NPS – EN-6) as suitable for large-scale nuclear development. Further down the line they will be located with reference to the in-preparation NPS for new nuclear power generation (EN-7), which would then be based on criteria rather than specific locations. Barrie says: “EN-7 will open up opportunities for nuclear power stations in clusters or in areas of high energy demand, such as co-locating reactors with data centres or any other energy-hungry industry looking for an alternative fossil fuel.”

Barrie accepts there are public misconceptions about nuclear resulting from the media coverage of the 1986 event at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine. He stresses: “Chernobyl employed a very particular type of technology that we’re not going anywhere near. With SMRs, we have technology that is proven around the world to operate safely and reliably over many years. The industry has also made considerable progress in passive safety features, meaning that SMRs will require less intervention than legacy technology. The follow-on generation from SMRs – advanced modular reactors – will have a substantially improved ability to demonstrate safety.”

Another misconception centres around nuclear waste. Barrie doesn’t blame the public for being worried about it, repeating the anagrammatic saying that ‘nuclear is unclear’. He accepts work needs to be done to demystify nuclear energy if it is to gain widespread approval and concludes: “While addressing the issue of waste is important, it’s helpful to see nuclear technology as replacing megatons of noxious waste that goes into the atmosphere or poured down drains with small amounts of carefully contained and controlled waste. We have the techniques and tools to manage that, and they are getting better and better.”