By Paul Homewood

While the Government continues to blindly pursue its obsession with offshore wind power, blissfully unaware that the wind does not blow all the time, the Royal Society warn us that there we have dangerously underestimate the need for energy storage, and Hinkley Point faces yet further delays, what on earth is happening with Small Nuclear Reactors (SMRs)?

While we dither, it seems that Poland has made up its mind:

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https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Six-SMR-power-plants-approved-in-Poland

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The Polish Ministry of Climate and Environment has already issued decisions-in-principle for the construction of two large nuclear power plants: one for a 3750 MWe plant in Pomerania using Westinghouse’s AP1000 technology, the other for a plant comprising two South Korean-supplied APR1400 reactors in the Patnów-Konin region. So the country could soon have 14 GW of nuclear power.

Rolls Royce still don’t have design approval, but CAPEX has been estimated at £1.8 billion for a 470 MW plant, or £3.8m/MW. By comparison, the cost of Hinkley C is now reckoned to have gone up to £35 billion, about £11m/MW.

Rolls Royce reckon they can generate power at £40 to 60/MWh. If this is so, we should immediately abandon all further subsidies for wind and solar power. .

And it seems that Rolls Royce are expensive in comparison. Thorcon who are still developing their prototype molten salt fission reactor. claim CAPEX of $1m/MW.

I am reliably informed that Hitachi, who already have Canadian design approval, would be somewhere between Thorcon and RR.

So why are we so intent of accelerating down the dead end of expensive, obsolete and unreliable wind power?

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

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January 30, 2024 at 03:00PM