West site in the running to host new generation power station
IT will take until at least the end of the year before Gloucestershire knows if will get the chance to make nuclear history again by harnessing “the power of the stars”.
The chances of that are now being assessed, with Oldbury on the banks of the River Severn in the mix for a new generation fusion plant on which the Government is due to decide by December this year.
It’s fusion that gives the county the possibility of that second chance. A shared legacy of more than 50 years of high temperature reactor design and operation.
Gloucestershire’s bid plan – under the banner Severn Edge – a fusion plant and its research/development facilities would go to Oldbury, near Dursley, while Berkeley, also nearby, the county’s other nuclear associated site, would get education, training and skills facilities – along with associated businesses.
Pitched as the “ultimate clean power solution”, fusion, at its simplest, is the process which occurs at the centre of stars – see it as the source of light and heat emitted by the Sun.
When the nuclei – the positively charged central core of an atom, consisting of protons and neutrons and containing nearly all its mass – of two light elements are ‘fused’, they form a heavier element and release excess energy.
Developments close to home have heightened Oldbury’s chances. In February, researchers at the Joint European Torus (JET), a fusion experiment in Oxfordshire, generated 59 megajoules of heat – equivalent to about 14kg of TNT – during a five-second burst of fusion, more than doubling the previous record of 21.7 megajoules set in 1997 by the same facility.
The JET feat follows more than two decades of tests and refinements at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy. It’s been hailed as a “major milestone” on the road to fusion becoming a viable and sustainable low-carbon energy source.
Government has put ‘clean’ nuclear power at the forefront of its energy security strategy, setting a target of 25% of electricity coming from nuclear. That means increasing capacity from 7GW to 24GW by 2050 overseen by a new body, Great British Nuclear.
Ageing reactors still supply some 16 per cent of the UK’s power as they run up to retirement, with the last due to turn out the lights in 2035. Two new reactors are being built at the Hinkley Point C site in Somerset. But it’s a programme called STEP that could lead nuclear power back to Gloucestershire again.
STEP stands for Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production, a world leading programme to build a prototype fusion power plant in the UK by 2040. Long associated with ‘old nuclear’, the decommissioned sites at Oldbury/Berkeley are shortlisted as locations likely to support STEP in shifting fusion from science fiction to science fact.
To get the plant operational by the intended 2040 target, Severn Edge is up against Ardeer (North Ayrshire), Goole (Yorkshire), Moorside (Cumbria) and West Burton (Nottinghamshire) to take STEP. The final decision, later this year, will lie with the Secretary of State at the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
The intended timetable fusion decision is:
■ Site assessment – Spring 2022
■ Final report stage – Summer 2022 ■ Final review by United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) – Autumn 2022
■ Site Selected by Secretary of State for Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy – Winter 2022 for a