FAQs
Why does Britain need nuclear power?
Energy usage in Britain continues to rise and clean energy must be made readily available in order to keep hospitals running and homes warm without costing the Earth. Fossil fuels cause high numbers of illnesses and deaths and they need to be phased out in favour of a clean energy option.
By investing in our own domestic supplies of energy generation the UK will be more resilient, as we will not be dependent on imports from Europe, which often come from fossil fuel-based means of generation.
Sizewell C (SZC) will provide a welcome economic stimulus post Covid-19. Its construction will deliver up to 25,000 job opportunities across the country. Without the Sizewell C project, the zero carbon power that will be lost is the equivalent to offsetting the emissions of around 7 million cars. Sizewell C will be essential to the UK’s low carbon future - it will provide 3.2GW of reliable low carbon power for 60 years, fulfilling 7% of the UK’s electricity needs. SZC will provide low carbon power to 6 million British homes through its two reactors, and will save 9 million tonnes of carbon emissions for every year of its operation.
Many environmentalists now like to rally behind the cry that we are ‘led by the science’. When it comes to energy generation, this means investing in an energy mix that includes both renewables and nuclear, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working group three.
Where will nuclear power stations be built in Britain?
The Sizewell C nuclear site in Suffolk is already home to Sizewell B (due to close in 2035) and two decommissioned reactors (Sizewell A).
How much will it cost?
The total cost will be £20 billion.
What’s the evidence that future builds will be cheaper?
Moorside would be built the same size as Sizewell C, which would make it cost-effective. Standardisation improves efficiency, which means that building the same design again and again, using the same experienced engineers, reduces costs in the long-term.
Will building Sizewell C benefit us?
The approval of support for the Sizewell C project, an exact copy of Somerset’s Hinkley Point C, could with a single stroke provide us with just over half the energy each year as Germany’s approximately €100 billion solar panel fleet. Of course with Sizewell C lasting up to a century and solar farms lasting a quarter of that, and Sizewell C operating day and night all year long, it’s only a rough comparison.
What about Sellafield?
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the teams designed and built a new reprocessing building that would be able to separate uranium and plutonium from fuel that was being used in the new Magnox stations, like Calder Hall.
The Windscale fire was a wake-up call for the nuclear industry. It led to the closure of both nuclear reactors at the site and vast operational and technical improvements in nuclear reactor design, technology, licensing and regulation.
Will building nuclear plants lead to weapons?
Nuclear power plants will not necessarily lead to nuclear weapons, although any country with the financial means to secure nuclear technology can build weapons. The UK already has the atomic bomb. Nuclear engineers are around to stay and as long as the knowledge of nuclear physics remains, so too does the risk of nuclear weapons. It would be more responsible to invest in the ethical application of nuclear technology, which is for energy generation in order to make the air more breathable and to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
No. And in fact, the opposite is the case. Nuclear energy has been essential to dismantling nuclear weapons, and until a few years ago, a full half of the nuclear energy in the US was produced using plutonium from decommissioned warheads. There is no case where a nation acquired a nuclear weapon through nuclear energy. The reason for this is easy to understand. Nations seeking nuclear power plants must agree to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and regular inspections by the United Nations, which thus makes acquiring nuclear energy an obstacle to proliferation. Nations do not need nuclear power plants to pursue a nuclear weapon and indeed, as in the case of Iran, choose to build a medical research reactor rather than a full-blown nuclear power plant.
Do we need nuclear power to provide a baseline of energy?
Nuclear power is the only energy source that provides clean zero carbon base load generation. To power a modern society 24/7 you need base load generation. When the wind is not blowing or the sun is no not shining, fossil fuel plants, dispatchable sources of energy, are deployed.
What is the nature and environment like around nuclear plants?
Nuclear plants around the world provide critical habitat protection. Because offshore activities are limited near nuclear plants on coastlines, nuclear plants become biodiversity hotspots. For example, along the coastline of California’s last nuclear plant, Diablo Canyon, the cove where the warmer discharge water is released is full of fish, sharks, and rays.
Will it block the beach?
Almost uniquely in the world, Britain has a long proud history of not blocking a single metre of beach even with some of the most powerful nuclear plants in the world dotting the coastline.
What comes out of a nuclear plant?
Nothing! Well, hot water, a miniscule quantity of tightly back stable spent fuel. The hot water doesn't harm anyone. But it has actually been found to have some benefits, like in the case of Crystal River nuclear plant in Florida, where the hot tub of water benefited manatees that made the warm water their crucial winter refuge.
What about nuclear fuel?
Unlike coal, oil and gas, nuclear fuel can be reused. It was a process called ‘reprocessing’ that the teams at Sellafield used to extract plutonium for atomic weapons in the site’s earliest operations.
What about nuclear waste?
Nuclear waste is the best kind of waste from any form of electricity production. First, there is very little of it, and is certainly the easiest to manage. What people are referring to when they talk about nuclear waste is the former uranium fuel rods. All of those rods stored in the same place would fit on a single football field stacked 50 to 60 feet high. Currently, nuclear waste is stored on-site in large concrete and steel canisters, largely because opponents of nuclear power have opposed the construction of a central waste storage facility. These can be stored on site during the 80 -100 year life of modern nuclear plants.
Isn’t nuclear dangerous? What about the accidents?
Nuclear is the safest way of producing reliable electricity, according to every major scientific review, including the British medical journal Lancet. What all of these studies show is that over 95 percent of the deaths from energy production are from pollution. A tiny number are from accidents, whether coal mine collapses, natural gas explosions, or nuclear meltdowns. As such, zero-carbon energy sources in general, from hydro to solar to wind to nuclear, result in very few deaths.
All of the nuclear accidents demonstrate nuclear's relative safety. At Three Mile Island, there was a meltdown and yet the public around the plant was exposed to radiation less than one-sixth of an x-ray. The World Health Organization estimates that up to 9,000 people will die prematurely from radiation from Chernobyl. And the authoritative study of the Fukushima accident by the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation concluded that “no discernible increased incidence of radiation –related health effects are expected among exposed members of the public or their descendants.”
By contrast, the World Health Organization estimates 7 million premature deaths each year from air pollution caused by burning fossil fuels and biomass for energy. Replacing these sources with non-polluting nuclear-powered electricity would save millions of lives every year.
What about radiation?
In normal operation, residents within 75 kilometers of a nuclear power plant receive about 0.01 MSv of radiation every year, roughly the amount one would consume in two helpings of Brazil nuts. The radiation doses in the aftermath of nuclear accidents rarely prove lethal. Media-fueled scares of radiation often do. News reports about Fukushima suggested that the evacuated area was dangerously toxic, when in fact radiation was less than the naturally occurring levels in many parts of the world. Not one person has died of radiation exposure from the Fukushima accident — the frenzied evacuation killed thousands.
