Is Britain Secretly Funding Its Nuclear Submarine Program? (nytimes.com)

Why is the U.K. funding a risky $22 billion joint project with China to produce electricity at twice the cost? mdsolar quotes a nuclear specialist from the University of Oxford: ...it only makes sense if one considers its connection to Britain's military projects -- especially Trident, a roving fleet of armed nuclear submarines, which is outdated and needs upgrading. Hawks and conservatives, in particular, see the Trident program as vital to preserving Britain's international clout...the government and some of its partners in the defense industry, like Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, think a robust civilian nuclear industry is essential to revamping Britain's nuclear submarine program...

Merging programs like research and development or skills training across civilian and military sectors helps cut back on military spending. It also helps maintain the talent pool for nuclear specialists. And given the long lead times and life spans of most nuclear projects, connections between civilian and military programs give companies more incentives to make the major investments required. One might say that with the Hinkley Point project, the British government is using billions of Chinese money to build stealth submarines designed to deter China.
The Op-Ed -- published in The New York Times -- calls for more openness about military spending, arguing "If Britain's energy policy were solely about energy, rather than also about defense, the nuclear sector would be forced to stand on its own two feet."

Comments

mdsolar

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, ad hominem and all that, but nuclear is the only direct, carbon free, base load power source.

Either carbon dioxide emissions matter, in which case the price of generation is irrelevant, or they don't, and everyone can continue to use natural gas and coal for cheap base load.

Re:mdsolar

[bobbied]

Nuclear waste is only a problem because we make it one by refusing to reprocess spent fuel and have some mind numbingly strict storage requirements that really don't make all that much sense.

If we could re-process the spent fuel, two things would happen. 1st the physical amount of high level waste would go DOWN because we would be taking the inert and low level stuff out of the fuel assemblies. Much of the really nasty stuff would decay more quickly on it's own and could be separated out into a much lower volume. Some of this high level stuff could be "burned off" faster by putting it to high levels of neutron flux, making the problem even smaller. 2nd, we'd have a lot of very useful fissionable material that we could then use to generate power with a lot fewer high level waste products.

So, nuclear power is indeed a long term environmental issue, but the technology to deal with this issue is well known and understood. Which leaves the "problems" really limited to cleaning up the "accidents" at these plants, which here to fore has been relatively easy with two notable exceptions. Chernobyl, which was just plain stupidity in both operations and risky design, and The plants in Japan which suffered though TWO natural disasters, both of which were well beyond designed limits and where 2 decades older than the state of the art today.

Re:mdsolar

[ShanghaiBill]

Call back when we have viable fusion power.

Fusion produces high levels of neutron flux, creating radioactive isotopes in the reactor structure. It is somewhat cleaner than fission, but the waste problem doesn't just magically go away.

Peter Wynn Kirby

[Major Blud]

I started to read through the NYTimes article, and about half-way through realized that it's an opinion piece. I had to check the summary just to make sure I didn't get baited.

I looked up the author, Peter Wynn Kirby.
http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/staff...
"Peter Wynn Kirby is an environmental specialist, ethnographer, and Research Fellow in the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford"

So you'd think this guy would have a PhD in geology, chemistry, or one of the other physical sciences. Nope, his PhD is in Social Anthropology from Cambridge. I'm sure he's a smart guy, but that's hardly what I'd call a "nuclear specialist from the University of Oxford" as the summary states.

Not to mention that this falls under Betteridge's Law....

Re:Bullshit

[AHuxley]

re 'There's about 0 overlap between civilian nuclear reactors and submarine power plants."
The UK has has 3 historic nuclear issues to think about.
In the very early days it trusted the USA to share atomic work as an equal. The UK never got anything back and had to start its own expensive work.
Tube Alloys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... "The United States terminated cooperation after the war ended."
That was a huge issue that shaped the UK's thinking on ever trusting the US again for generations.
"The cost for a new nuclear submarine power plant" would be in buying US turnkey stock or a shared US platform again.
The second issue is Scotland and the one site the UK really needs to work on its subs. With the EU, calls for Scotland to alter its role in the UK again, having a new site in England is now more vital.
"Britain will lose nuclear capability for 20 years if Scotland votes for independence" (24 Oct 2012)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
A new site for fuel, modern sub repair and work within England would be a new cost.
As for the overlap, recall the origins of the materials, Capenhurst Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Sellafield, Chapelcross https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., the use of the Magnox reactors. Recall how long Calder Hall was kept running for military plutonium? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Tritium from Chapelcross. Dual-purpose sites, with electric power production.
The history of the UK's thinking on power production and its military needs is very easy to find.
So now the new reactors are been considered. What new weapon designs would be needed to replace Trident?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
" One othe the public options considered was: ...the UK would need to develop effective warheads for cruise missiles, which would necessitate the construction of two additional submarines to "fill the gap" between the expiration of the current fleet and the launch of an alternative cruise missile-based system in approximately 2040."