As you can see from the question above, I have not said that nuclear power plants are the answer but instead I have called them a stepping stone to help secure a better, more sustainable and brighter tomorrow. Why, because I believe that clean renewable and sustainable technology is a many stepped process, and that building new nuclear generators, will take the strain off of fossil fuels, whilst we look at the technology of truly renewable energy and tweak it so that it is more cost effective and doesn’t act as a strain to the economy of this country, and hinder its future sustainability and electrical needs with the backup and security of electrical production that doesn’t rely upon the weather, even with the one month closure for general maintenance which can easily be done during any particular month when the need for electricity is not at its highest.

The primary sustainable technology issue is to find, create and provide a clean way of producing enough energy for our own needs and the needs of future generations.

However when we talk about sustainable development let us not forget that the needs of the here and now to keep our homes warm. This will predominantly be from the use of fossil fuels (at least for the next few years), therefore we need to ask ourselves is it better to make a change now with implementing renewable energy whilst there is still much development in each of the different types available, especially wind power. Would it not be better to go to a clean form of energy to help wean the country off of fossil fuels and onto a highly developed and efficient clean form of energy such as nuclear power?

Sizewell B is situated at Sizewell near Leiston, Suffolk on the east Anglian coast, and it is the most modern (began operation on the 14th of February 1995) of all the Nuclear power plant that are situated in England. The basis of all nuclear power plants is fission below is a graph showing the basic idea of Fusion and fission.

Fission is where a heavy element such as Uranium which has an atomic mass of about 238.029 (http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Elements/092/data.s7.html) the next stage is for the Uranium to under go induced Fission, this is caused when a spare neutron hits the Uranium atom which does of course make the Uranium unstable and thus causes it top split into lighter elements which gives a release of energy. Sizewell B Nuclear power plant has been built in the same village as a recently decommissioned power plant of Sizewell A which produced 420MW of energy using an old Magnox reactor, where as Sizewell B users a much more modern and improved Pressurised water Reactor (PWR) and producers an outstanding 1188MW

Now most people would ask how can nuclear technology be sustainable when it relies on Uranium which is an element and as such will run out eventually. In reply I would have to mention two things, firstly that Uranium is predominantly used in nuclear power plants and as such doesn’t get consumed by any other source, and now the second point is the amount of Uranium left on the world could last up to 1 millennia according to http://www.nea.fr/html/pub/newsletter/2002/20-2-Nuclear_fuel_resources.pdf at current consumption, I personally believe the consumption of uranium will decreases with the implementation of more and more new generations of nuclear power plants which are more productive than the older generation that have been used in the source above.

Why is Sizewell B relevant to me personally?

Well, this is, actually simple for me to answer. This is because, in the world I have grown up in, I believe that my generation has been hit by the “sustainable energy bug” more than any other generation before us. As such, we have a better understanding of what we have been told about the different types of sustainable energy projects but we never quite hear the whole proof of any particular type of source.

I find Sizewell B the most relevant for me as I don’t believe that nuclear power is the only way to go but that it should be used like a catalyst to help fuel a change and allow the change to “true” renewable energy to be a quick and painless one. Also the building of nuclear plants will allow us to stop using as much fossil fuels as we are doing at this very moment in time which will greatly help the British government to reach its carbon footprint targets that were set in place by the Kyoto protocol. The impact that nuclear power has had on carbon emissions can be read in this quote “Nuclear power plays an important role in helping the UK to meet its climate change targets. In the absence of nuclear generation, emissions of carbon dioxide in 1999 would have been 12-24 million tonnes higher.” (Please note ‘tonnes’ is not the same as tons, 1 tonnes in equivalent to 0.984 (UK) tons and 1 (UK) ton is thus equal to 1.016 tonnes (The Whitaker’s Almanack Pocket Reference, page.200)

My plan of inquiry for Sizewell B
My first port of call will be to increase my own knowledge of nuclear power plants by reading
• Introduction to Nuclear Power, 2nd edition by Geoffrey F. Hewitt and John G. Collier.
• Nuclear energy technology : theory and practice of commercial nuclear power by Ronald Allen Knief
and I shall also look through the following websites to increases my own knowledge
• http://www.theiet.org/
• http://www.world-nuclear.org/
• http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/
• http://www.euronuclear.org/
• http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/
• http://www.berr.gov.uk/energy/index.html

The next step that I will need to be taking will be with contacting British Energy the owner and operator of Sizewell B, where I shall ask if I would be able to have a bit of their time where I could ask then some questions about the cost of production and to find out if the PWR is working at its optimum or if there is still more that can be harnessed be even more advancers in design.
After this I will make a survey to find what peoples main worry of nuclear power plants are, and to see how many of the people I survey actually have an opinion on nuclear power either way.
The final stage for me will be to find out how nuclear waste is dealt with and stored by looking through the waste and recycling section at http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/wasteRecycling/index.shtml