Wondering what to do with the children over half term, or fancy a weekend challenge, why not build a nuclear reactor model...

During the October half term you may recall I wrote an article titled “ It's half term, the weather is not looking great, it is CoP26 next week, what should I do with my children?” within which I used some material produced by the National Nuclear Laboratory to explore the energy challenge and the part nuclear can play. If you have not read that article, it is worth reading first as this delves one level deeper.

At the bottom of the article, I shared this video of my own model of a nuclear reactor

Well how do you fancy building a nuclear reactor model of your own?

There are two models on offer, firstly the one I built in my video which is a model of Sizewell B, in Suffolk on the coast about halfway between Norwich and Ipswich. (Click on image below for the "kit")

Or a more detailed version version via the image below.

I must point out that these are both a good few years old and company names have changed, effectively you could say EDF (the operator of our current nuclear stations) are the “owner” of both these reactor designs now. Also to note neither of these files are mine but they were both issued freely online.

?While building your model nuclear reactor here is something to think about

Many of you will probably be sat in warm homes or on some form of transport while reading this, so let’s explore how much energy is used for heating & transport and the carbon emissions.

The UK governments department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), collect and review a lot of data to support them in their work and produce very useful reports. One they released at the end of 2018 (which you can read here) had these graphics in, of the Energy Consumption and carbon emissions in the UK.

At first glance they may not look very interesting but if we delve into the types of energy being used and emissions it is fascinating and shares the challenge we face.

If you are sat at home it is highly likely you have the heating on, over 85% of our homes have gas or oil boilers, the vast majority making use of the gas network across the UK where gas is piped into our houses, burnt in a boiler and toasty warm heat is generated which is pumped to our radiators. This gas which is burnt is made up of what we call short chain hydrocarbons, mainly methane (CH4. On burning these emit lots of heat (which is great) but also carbon dioxide (not so great) (Methane (CH4) + Oxygen (O2) produces heat +?Carbon dioxide (CO2) + Water vapour (H2O)). Heating accounts for 44% of our energy use and 37% of our carbon emissions in the UK!

Moving on to travel you may be in a car, bus, aeroplane, train or maybe even a cruise ship reading this, we rely heavily on transport for our lives. Transport accounts for 42% of our energy use and the vast majority of this is carbon based (petrol, diesel, kerosene) which are made up of longer chain hydrocarbons. These burn in the engine like the gas in our boilers at home with the energy used to drive the wheels, aircraft blades or ship propellers and the carbon dioxide and water vapour released to the atmosphere. While we have some electric trains and electric cars are becoming more common, electric jumbo jets or cargo ships, where long distances and lots of energy are required between fill ups, electric batteries are heavy and just can’t store enough energy.

To give you an idea of how much energy is in petrol here is a quick sum.

Powerful stuff these fossil fuels, however we rely on them a lot and transport accounts for 27% of our carbon emissions!

If we look at heating and transport together in 2018 they account for 86% of our energy use and 64% (almost 2/3rds) of our carbon emissions! We need to find a way of preventing those emissions as we go forward to 2050, when we have set into law that we will meet net zero carbon emissions.

So what options do we have, while we need to make changes like more solar panels and storing energy to use at peak times, we really need something very energy dense (small volume lots of energy) and transportable to our homes for heating or into aircraft and that is where nuclear can support.

In the UK we are in the process of building Hinkley C, this is similar to the models above. This is what we call a large scale or GW station, meaning it will provide Gigawatt levels of energy like our current nuclear reactors in the UK. You can read more about Hinkley C and explore opportunities here. Hinkley C in fact will provide enough electricity for 6 million homes, that is twice the number of homes then there are in Wales! You may have also heard discussion of a potential new reactor called Sizewell C which would be next door to Sizewell B (the model above) you can read more about that here.

EDF have a good virtual reality reactor fly through which is worth watching in YouTube as you can look around you as you fly through the video.

Then we have what we call Small Modular Reactors or SMRs, these are reactors which are as the name suggests, smaller versions of those described above (100’s of Megawatts of energy) and are built as modules. Imagine it a Lego set, each brick is sent from a factory to a site, you then attach the “bricks” and have a fully functioning reactor. A company in the UK called Rolls Royce SMR, are at the early stages of building these. You can find out more about them here and watch a video below. It is worth noting UKSMR is just one of many SMR designs across the world.

Then we have what the UK calls Advanced Modular Reactors or AMRs (many countries call these forms of SMRs). These are similar to SMRs in the way they will be built, but will operate with different fuel and higher temperatures and are at an earlier stage of development. There are a number of potential designs from small reactors like U-Battery through to bigger designs. The video below tells you a bit about the U-Battery design.

Now all three of these can be used to produce electricity but equally importantly nuclear reactors can be used to make other fuels. EDF are looking at producing hydrogen from Sizewell B to power the construction machine for Sizewell C for example, you can read about that here. Hydrogen could also be used as a replacement for the methane in the gas to our homes and then all we would get out of our boilers is heat and water vapour H2+ O2 producing H2O. DNV produced a useful video about hydrogen to homes for the BBC. I specifically like this video as Sarah starts with the words “I think people take the energy in their homes for granted” which I very much agree with.

Then when it comes to planes and ships, we could have a system where we take the hydrogen and extract carbon dioxide from the air in a process called Direct Air Capture (discussed here by EDF) and then in a chemical reaction produce hydrocarbon fuel which can be used in the current planes, ships and other forms of transport without any changes to the engines. They are called “drop in fuels”, as they are exactly that you can fill up your fuel tank as you usually would and carry on without any changes. The carbon emitted is then captured from the air and manufactured into hydrocarbon fuel again as the image on the right shows (a modification of that shown in this royal society paper.)

Finally here is a useful video from the Netherlands which helps explain this process for synthetic kerosene manufacture for planes.

As you can see we are entering an exciting time for our energy sector, we need to stop increasing the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere while also continuing to produce vast amounts of energy. As the video about hydrogen above opens with, people take energy for granted. Many people think electricity is the majority of our energy use, in fact it is only 20% of our energy use in the UK,with the majority, as discussed above being fossil fuels used in transport and heating both extremely high carbon emitting sectors.

As per my last article, I must add the disclaimer that this article is written by me as Robert and is in no way endorsed by my employer or anyone else. While I mention EDF, UKSMR and U Battery, they are just examples of UK companies in the nuclear sector I am in no way affiliated or endorsing their technology. I am just sharing my thoughts and some links helping people understand the energy challenge we face and the opportunities nuclear can offer.

Finally if you or your children do build a nuclear reactor model please do share a photo below.