#todayinsight: Nuclear Power in Britain’s Green Future: Challenges and Strategies in Balancing Cost, Safety, and clean Energy!

Twenty five years ago, over a quarter of Britain electricity was generated by nuclear power plants. Nowadays, this ratio is almost halved. In the last three decades, Britain was not interested in Building nuclear reactors. But the nation’s goal to go green by 2050, has highlighted the need for nuclear energy. Cheap wind and solar energies will increasingly dominate in the coming years but a hard and firm source of energy is needed to meet the demands in the still and cloudy days.

Earlier this month, the energy minister of the British Government announced that the government aims to start the biggest expansion of nuclear capacity in 70 years. However, It is not the first time when the government officials talk about the central plans to boost nuclear capacity. Back in 2008, prime minister Gordon Brown planned to have 8 new nuclear power plants by 2023. But so far even one new reactor has not been added to the country’s old fleet.

In 2016 a French and a Chinese company started to work on Britain’s largest nuclear power plant, its budget was announced at £ 24 billion in current prices. It was set to be operational by 2025, recently the manufacturers announced that the plant would not be ready until 2031 and the costs would be as much as £ 46 billion, almost twice as much as it was predicted in the first place. 

For nuclear power plants, the safety concerns are much more important than the diminishing costs. In recent years, the cost of wind turbines and especially solar panels has declined significantly. But nuclear plants are still costly, and some new design aspects that enhance the safety adds up the expenditures. Nuclear plants are extremely capital intensive and the cost of financing the projects are very high. Private sector most often would not dare to invest in it. One useful strategy to bring the costs down is to take advantage of economies of scale. That is what France did in the 1970s, when the country built several nuclear plants in a short period of time. South Korea is also practicing the strategy in recent years.

One thing about nuclear energy is clear however, nuclear energy  is needed in the future of electricity greed, but it comes as a backup complementary to safe and renewable energy sources, when that cannot be produced efficiently. 

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Source: Economist