Memorandum submitted by Innovative Energy
Solutions
1. We are most grateful for this opportunity
to contribute our views on these critical issues to the EAC.
2. ResponsiveLoad Limited is a small private
knowledge-based UK company pursuing innovative technologies to
facilitate and enable lower carbon behaviours within the Electricity
Supply Industry (ESI). We hold a UK patent. Several UK and European
patent applications, with successful PCT searches, are in progress.
3. I, David Hirst, am the principal and
inventor, and I am actively supported by the ResponsiveLoad Limited
board. David Slater, ex Chief Regulator of Pollution for UK and
Royal Academy of Engineering Professor of Sustainable Engineering
at University of Manchester is non-exec Chairman. Robert Spears,
chairman of the Utility Consumers Consortium is a non exec board
member.
4. We are pleased to provide this evidence
to the Environmental Audit Committee, as we believe our technologies,
although not yet fully mature, enable a vision of a fully sustainable
ESI, able to meet the challenges of Climate Change without compromising
or risking current or future well-being.
5. This document represents the views of
the company derived from internal debate. We have restricted our
comments to the areas where ResponsiveLoad Limited has particular
expertise.
6. We have no fundamental objections to
nuclear power, but do not believe the envisaged "new nuclear
build" programme will successfully address the critical issue
facing us, but rather detract from more sustainable solutions
that could.
7. The following paragraphs explain some
of the issues that a nuclear power programme will need to address.
NUCLEAR POWER
IS INFLEXIBLE
8. Nuclear plant is very limited in its
ability to adjust its output—it is essentially baseload
with emergency cut off. This is a fundamental constraint, as the
cost of designing and implementing controls to adjust the reactor
output is very high, and would compromise many current safety
arrangements and certifications. This is because, with current
control systems, modulation of the reactor output causes changes
the balance of radio nucleotides in the reactor, and these poison
the chain reaction. The poisoning decays quite rapidly (days),
but impacts the capacity of the reactor to increase its output.
In France, they are able to make limited reductions of power output
for weekends, but this is only possible when the reactor has been
recently refuelled.
9. If the power station is subject to an
emergency shut down, then it is usually days before it can be
restarted—due to the poisoning of the reactor by the shutdown
process. So should there be a major or significant blackout in
which one or more nuclear plants have to shut, then those plants
become unable to contribute to the immediate recovery, and restoration
will depend on other sources and nuclear power stations that have
not shut down. As a consequence dependence on nuclear baseload
will increase the impact of blackouts, or requires other investment
to deal with this (rare, but feasible) contingency. After the
US NE blackout of 2003, shortage of nuclear generation was an
issue for some days. [172]
10. In the UK, the inflexibility of nuclear
plant has largely driven the need to ensure adequate "off
peak" load, with the extensive and expensive infrastructure
of "white" meters and electricity storage heaters. The
cost and losses associated with this inflexible infrastructure
is rarely factored in to the costs of nuclear electricity generation.
11. In Europe, the inflexibility of French
nuclear plant drives large overnight exports of electricity to
countries where the generation portfolio includes more flexible
generation that can be switched off. Often, the low cost enables
pumped storage to be replenished and so contribute power during
the day. The large overnight export from France to Italy may well
have been a contributor to the major blackout of Italy in 2003.
[173]
NUCLEAR PLANT
IS LARGE
SCALE
12. The suggested nuclear plants are individually
large scale—around 1GW. [174]This
is at variance with the trend towards smaller plant, more amenable
to series or mass manufacture. This smaller scale is evident in
the high efficiency evolution of other power station technologies.
[175]
13. The large scale also means that the
transmission and distribution system will continue to need frequency
response capable of coping with the unplanned loss of such plant.
At present, the largest credible single loss of generation is
considered to be the Sizewell plant (1.3GW), followed by the loss
of half the link to France (1GW) (a link largely dedicated to
exporting French nuclear generation to the UK). This need for
frequency response is currently largely met by holding a "spinning
reserve" of part loaded but flexible plant. This plant must
be in a position to replace lost generation within a few seconds.
This means it cannot be nuclear plant, and it tends to be older
(and so less efficient) coal fired plant.
14. A continuing fleet of nuclear plant
(or even just one large scale installation) will thus require
the grid to maintain the same scale of spinning reserve that has
become traditional. This will create an obstacle to more distributed,
participatory forms of electricity market, such as that advocated
by the Government (via, for example, the Distributed Generation
Co-ordination Group[176]),
by Greenpeace, in a recent report1[177],
and by ResponsiveLoad Limited in a recent submission to the DTI.
[178]
15. This ResponsiveLoad Limited submission
to the DTI is attached to this letter [not printed], as it articulates
a vision of how the ESI can evolve to participatory disturbed
electricity markets, incorporating smart price sensitive appliances,
large and small scale renewable generation, as well as low carbon
domestic generation, such as Domestic Combined Heat and Power,
wind and solar technologies. The opportunities to pursue these
sustainable and low impact technologies would be damaged by pursuit
of the "new nuclear build" programme.
16. Nuclear reactors create steam that is
converted to electricity by steam turbines. Steam turbine generation
(which is at best 40% thermally efficient) is inherently wasteful.
If the power station is large and sited in a remote area, they
will be unable to use more than a small proportion of the unused
heat, which becomes wasted. This waste heat will have significant
local thermal impacts. For example, during the drought summer
of 2003 depleted French rivers were unable to meet the cooling
needs, and, despite raising the permitted river temperatures,
power stations had to be shut.
17. The skills needed to operate and keep
safe a large scale infrastructure will be increasingly scarce.
In an engineering world concentrating on large volume production
of highly efficient small scale generating equipment, the skills
and engineering infrastructure associated with large scale custom
built equipment will inevitably decline.
CHALLENGES TO
NUCLEAR
18. The problems raised here are soluble,
but at a cost that will have to be carried by the rest of the
ESI. They are not easily quantified, but are substantial.
19. Nuclear power could, at least in principle,
address the issues by appropriate technology. Long series production
of small scale and flexible generation units, capable of being
safely and securely used in, for example, a district Combined
Heat and Power plant, would fit well within the vision proposed.
We would expect the costs of such systems to be reliably predictable
and individual deployment to be quite rapid. Such systems could
become "ordinary" and so fulfil criteria for public
acceptability. [179]We
hope that this is a challenge the nuclear industry will pursue.
20. Our resources in insufficient to provide
meaningful analysis to address the specific questions raised in
your enquiry brief, but we hope the evidence is sufficient to
demonstrate that realistic alternatives to a new nuclear build
are desirable and possible. We would be happy to address questions
you wish to raise or provide further oral evidence.
21. We look forward to the results of your
inquiry.
21 September 2005
172 DOE, 2004 Final Report on the August 14, 2003
Blackout in the United States and Canada: Causes and Recommendations
U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force. https://reports.energy.gov/ Back
173
UCTE, 2004 Final Report of the Investigation Committee on 28
September 2003 Blackout in Italy, Union for the Coordination of
the Transmission of Electricity www.ucte.org Back
174
1GW = 1,000MW. The peak demand for the whole UK is around 56GW. Back
175
Lovins, A B, et al, Small Is Profitable: The Hidden Economic
Benefits of Making Electrical Resources the Right Size. 2003 Earthscan
Publications Ltd, 1881071073: Back
176
Distributed Generation Co-ordinating Group. DTI & Ofgem.
http://www.distributed-generation.gov.uk/index.php. Back
177
Greenpeace, 2005 Decentralising Power. An Energy Revolution
for the 21st Century, Greenpeace. Back
178
Hirst, D R, Microgeneration Strategy and Low Carbon Buildings
Programme. ResponsiveLoad Consultation Response. 2005. Back
179
MacKerron, G, Nuclear Power and the Characteristics of "ordinariness"-the
Case of UK Energy Policy. Energy Policy, 2004. 32: p 1957-1965. Back
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