Engineering news
Speaking in London County Hall at the Nuclear Industry Association's Nuclear New Build 2017 conference, Agneta Rising said progress had been good in recent years - particularly in countries such as China and India - but more was needed.
“The level of new build remains high, with 61 reactors under construction at the end of 2016,” she said. “But the pace of new construction starts must accelerate to provide the reliable electricity needed to support global economic growth.”
According to the World Nuclear Association’s annual performance report, 2016 was a bumper year, with more than 9 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity added worldwide. This represents the largest annual increase for more than 25 years.
Rising said her organisation wanted nuclear to provide 25 % of the world’s energy needs by 2050, which would mean bringing the total production up to 1000 gigawatts a year. “We need to be fast and we need to be efficient,” she said. “We need the other energy sources as well, but nuclear is extremely important.”
She also presented figures comparing nuclear energy to other sources of carbon-free electricity. The industry needed a “level playing field,” Rising said, adding that it was not treated in the same way as other industries, despite creating jobs and investment on a grander scale.
This is, however, a challenging time for the nuclear industry, said Tom Samson, the chief executive of NuGen, a company planning to build a new nuclear power station at Moorside, near the site of the decommissioned Sellafield facility. “The only certainty is uncertainty,” he added.
Westinghouse is also involved in the Moorside project and is working on two new nuclear power stations in the United States. However, the US arm of the business filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year - another signal of the turbulent state of the industry.
While some countries, such as Germany, are pulling away from nuclear completely, others are embracing it. The UAE have brought in experts from South Korea to construct nuclear power stations, while India have two new build sites on the go.
The UK is somewhere in the middle, with Hinkley Point C currently in progress. According to Dame Sue Ion, former chair of the Nuclear Innovation Research Advisory Board, more funding is needed to ensure the country stays on top.
The government’s 2015 Autumn Statement pledged £250m for nuclear research and development, but so far only £20m has been released. “If we’re to be able to become a top table nation, we need to do a lot better,” she said. “We have the best facilities. We need the funds to continue to do the research.”
“Energy security is national security,” she continued, in response to a question about the uncertainty over the UK’s membership of nuclear regulator Euratom after Brexit. She pointed to the move away from using gas for heating, and a push towards electric vehicles. “We could go from a 60 gigawatt peak to an 120 gigawatt peak,” she said. “Where is that electricity going to come from?”