Mr. Hutton spoke recently saying the government had concluded nuclear power as a “tried and tested”, and safe technology which had a role to play “in this country's future energy mix along side low-carbon sources”.(1)
The new nuclear Build program has recently been given the go ahead, as of the 10th of January it was announced to the news and so to the general public at large, it needs to be known that the government will not be creating any on their own but will be streamlining the process to give an incentive to companies (EDF plans to build 4, most likely to be of PWR design as they have the most experience in building PWR [for more details on PWR see my first piece of coursework])(1). along with this news it was also said that the United Kingdom will start the processes of deep geological disposal (see my second piece of course work for details).
Many people will be against the new nuclear program saying that it wont work, or the risk is to great or that we should use just wind, solar and tidal instead, But what most people forget is that if we have a power shortage we will get supplied the extra energy we need from France. With France being the worlds second largest producer of nuclear power with 59 reactors what form of energy generation do they think we receive from them?.
I shall be writing about why I believe that Mr. Hutton is correct when he made the previous statement by showing the reader the faults with solar and wind energy that until they can be improved upon cannot be the main back bone of the United Kingdoms energy supply.

The main technological objective and issues.

To provide enough energy and power to keep the Country economically powerful and to reduce the reliance upon foreign country's to supply us with the energy needed for that which we cant produce on our own. All this without causing harm to the environment whilst staying to the guidelines and target of the Kyoto Protocol (2), however there is still more to do with the issue and that is to make sure that there is always a base amount of electricity at all times that can easily cope with, for instance, every home in the country turning their central heating on at the same time.

Possible technical solutions:-

Some of the possible technical solutions to this problem may well be the build and construction of other wind farms or solar plants but as was mentioned earlier we need to be able to create a base amount of energy by using a large mix for the electricity generation.
Of course there are problems with wind, solar and other such technology's as for instance the amount of energy produced via solar plants which can vary depending upon cloud cover, time of day and possibly most important of all the time of year. An example of what I mean by time of year is that a lot of energy could be produced very happily during the summer which of course is good for that means that their should be enough during and throughout the day for all the fans and air-conditioning units that will be turned on, but the big problem is what happens in winter when there is little sun and large amounts of cloud cover how do you get the energy through for the central heating and lighting?.

But what about wind farms?

Well much the same as the solar farms for offshore wind farms as the table below shows, this is the amount of turbines that were in motion for each month, as you can see in the winter months there is another low for generation of energy due to the turbines becoming damaged.

When it comes to offshore wind farms, maintenance work cannot be undergone unless the waves are below 3 meters in height, and as you can see their was 145 days in the year that this data was collected where no repair work could be undergone.

However this all shows promise for energy production during the summer months, but with improvements in this technology they may one day be able to generate enough power for the winter months but until then the writer believes that it is a good job that nuclear power has been put forward as a good and reliable means of generating the base load of electricity that the country needs, but also being able to time the one month close down for maintenance during summer months when there is only a very small chance that their wont be enough energy produced even without the nuclear power stations.

The similarity of these:-

Now of course there are some similarity between each of the previous ideas and methods of creating sustainable or renewal electricity generation, one of the main being the need for construction and maintenance. Investment is another similarity but the writer must mention the different types of investment such as building, planning, maintenance, improvements to the infrastructure. Not one of these together would be in my opinion be acceptable to be used on their own as that will be too much like throwing all you eggs in one basket.
However there are still differences between the mentioned alternatives such as the different means of generating the energy, this needs to be noted as if you have wind farms but during a very nice mild summers day the blades wont be turning very much and thus the generation is then reduced, but the upswing of that is that solar panels will be generating a large amount of energy on a day like that, nuclear power on the other hand wont have any problems like that for it has no reliance on the weather however it does have a reliance on the importation of fuel where as the others do not.

Political effects:-

There are of course political effects to be considered when it comes to talking about a nuclear plant of any generation and in any country. However the writer believes that political can be split up into smaller sections those being 'For the good of the Country' and 'social effects', as I believe you will be able to understand what is meant by 'For the good of the country' I have no need to explain this subsection any further. However I will explain what I mean when I say 'social effects' for is it not true that during election campaigns all the political party's make promisers that are agreeable to the majority of the society as to increases their chance to come to power and thus increase their popularity.

For the good of the Country:-

One of the main ideas I could think of for the good of the country was is the cost of the fuel generation taking into account the cost for the construction, as you can see from the bar graph below he capital costs of building a nuclear plant is far below that of wind energy as well as the O&M costs, but the one thing that wind beats nuclear at is the cost of fuel.

One of the other good points about having nuclear energy in the mix is that England has one of the few nuclear reprocessing sites in the world the only others being in France, Russia, Japan and India.(6)

Socially:-

Now the social effects are numerous but many of which applies to all forms of energy generation such as the classic, 'Not in my back yard' as empathized by this flyer that was going around for weeks in my village as they didn't want the wind farm to ruin their view, however I must point out that their was no way that you would be able to see the turbines from where most of the complaints were coming from.

With all things their will always be a good point as the public has begun to see that just wind or just solar energy need to be created but their needs to be a good mix, of energy sources and a reliable one their to make sure there is always that base amount of electricity all year around.

Financial effects:-

As with all large scale projects their will be some financial effects that will need to be considered some of these being Employment, Management and construction but not all will be bad.
If we take the employment issues a new nuclear plant will give jobs for a large amount of people for the construction a job for several years and possible a life long job if they become apart of the maintenance team, however this constriction could very easily become expensive and as such will need to be watched over and managed correctly. Another point to mention is about the decommissioning as this will allow a new set of workers to get a good job.
I have already mentioned above the cost of nuclear power and as so compared to other sources it is a very profitable solution to be used in the energy mix of the future and so if the plant is managed correctly by an experienced team enough money can be set aside through the years of operation that the cost of decommissioning will not be a cost at the end.

Globally:-

On a global scale the fact that the United Kingdom is willing to show its support for a good and wide mix of sustainable technologies is an impressive one and hopefully show other country's that they do not need to rely on those which the public is more inclined to such as wind, solar and tidal due to the fact that they still hold faults and can still be refined to a much larger extent, but can use nuclear as a very good and reliable source for such generation. Knowing that the United Kingdom is willing to take such large steps in the battle against global warming and the looming energy criss will make other countries with whom we may have fallen out of favour with in recent years to sit up and take notice that we have changed away from the 'Tony Blair' legacy.

Conclusion:-

In conclusion the writer hopes that he has shown you his view for creating more nuclear plants due to their reliability, high yield of energy output and the cost for the production of the energy for the base load needed for this country to stay economically powerfully and and competitive whilst conforming to that which was set out in the Kyoto protocol. I have given you information about wind and solar as well because I believe that we need to combine these with the use of nuclear, the reason for showing their faults is because in optimum conditions there is little to worry about with using them and if the world always worked with their optimum their would be no need for the use of anything else, but unfortunately the world doesn't work quite like that and so giving me the reason for nuclear to be a good part of the nuclear energy mix possible to start with adding another ½ of what coal oil and gas is now, with the rest being from solar, wind tidal and so forth whilst always increasing the amount from the completely sustainable and renewal forms of energy.