Fusion, breeders.

Comment on UKIP Policies : Nuclear Energy by Jon Stanley.

We need a strong nuclear power sector to give a secure and stable energy supply and support our heavy and chemical industries.

We should put efforts into better ways of storing off peak power as in done in japan using NaS batteries and similar technologies. This would allow us to increase our nuclear generation to more than 505 of total.

We should look at large scale users of hydrogen that don’t rely on hyrogen storage such as oil refineries. If hydrogen delivered, using off peak nuclear power isn’t cost effective, quite frankly it won’t be anywhere without huge subsidies.

We have over 200 tonnes of plutonium already separated and more being made in our thermal reactors. Large uranium supplies are coming online so we should only use breeders, which are definitely proven, when economically necessary.

Fusion is NOT proven beyond a few isolated breakeven events and has a terrible history of cost overruns with the outcome only ever to build a larger tokamak, use more power and funding, only to arrive at the same conclusion ( we need a bigger one again….). We should put the UK contribution to ITER to fund Generation 4 fast reactor research, especially at Dounreay and Cumbria. That funding would make us number one is the world within a decade in fast reactor research. Nuclear fusion needs a radioactive gas called tritium that is currently only proven to be made economically in a…wait for it….nuclear reactor.

As a small consumer of power in global terms we can always licence such technology later when it is proven.