Nuclear Power
The necessary ‘evil’ of nuclear energy
The scramble for power is on. Nuclear is coming – can it be delivered in time to fill the impending energy gap? David Hunter reports.
Einer der weltweit größten Offshore-Schwerlastkräne ist kürzlich in Betrieb genommen worden und kurbelt damit Entwicklungsbestrebungen in der Krantechnik auf breiterer Ebene an. Ein Bericht von Sean Ottewell.
La reciente puesta en funcionamiento de una de las mayores grúas giratorias de alta mar del mundo ha promovido nuevos avances en la tecnología de las grúas en general. Informa Sean Ottewell.
Fig. 1. For around 30 years the UK has been insulated from the global concerns of energy security. because of North Sea oil and gas supplies. This ‘utopia’ is coming to an end.
T
he recession may have bought us a year or two by restraining worldwide demand for power, but the UK must be prepared now to fight for its share of finite energy
resources in the future – and the battle will be intense. Te developing world’s thirst for fuel will dominate the global agenda, with wide-ranging implications for Britain. It is no wonder that set against this backdrop,
the ‘nuclear option’ has moved strongly back into vogue. In their hearts, nobody wants atomic power stations in an ideal world. In reality however the lack of reliable low carbon alternatives is pushing nuclear energy, for a long time the awkward, guilty secret of the power industry, firmly into centre stage. For the past 30 years, the UK has been
relatively insulated from the global market and concerns over energy security. We turned on the North Sea ‘taps’ and transformed our economic
fortunes; from the 1970s the UK Continental Shelf provided plentiful supplies of oil and gas for both domestic consumption and export. Taken together with our long history as a coal producer, this meant the country was awash with fossil fuel energy, not only to heat our homes, but to burn cheaply in power stations to light them too. Unfortunately, this energy utopia could not last. A number of factors have conspired to place UK energy policy in crisis – some unforeseen, others entirely avoidable. Te authorities were complacent – North Sea production peaked in 2001, and by the middle of the decade we became a net gas importer as supplies dwindled. Te energy infrastructure, most notably gas storage, has not been planned to cope with this new reality. Added to this, we ‘sweated the assets’ by letting our power stations age and degrade, all the while providing us with cheap electricity that could not last.
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