Hartlepool and Heysham

There don’t appear to be any current proposals for new reactors at Heysham in Lancashire or Hartlepool in County Durham, although Hartlepool has been mentioned as a possible site for a Small Modular Reactor (SMR). Newcastle company Penultimate Power, formed by long-standing nuclear power advocate Ian Fells, emeritus professor of energy at Newcastle University, was created in 2012 to develop SMRs. It is the only UK company positioned to do so and wants to develop a manufacturing plant in the region and trial the world’s first SMR on land next to the existing Hartlepool nuclear power plant. (See nuClear News No.76 August 2015)

“In response to the climate emergency Lancaster City Council should embrace the local energy revolution, not old, dangerous, centralised, redundant nuclear technology.” Radiation Free Lakeland have been watching with increasing frustration not to mention growing horror as climate emergency resolutions are adopted by councils without any clause or caveat at all that new nuclear should not be an option. The reasons why it should not be on the table or anywhere near it are outlined in a new report by the Edinburgh Energy and Environment Consultancy which is being delivered to Lancaster City Council with a demand that LCC include a ‘No Nuclear’ Clause in their Climate Emergency measures.

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Hartlepool & Heysham News Update

Hundreds of jobs could be created on Teesside after a partnership was launched to build a new type of nuclear power station across the UK. Newcastle’s Penultimate Power UK is planning to use Japanese nuclear technology to develop a string of power stations up and down the UK, starting on Teesside. The company has signed a partnership with the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) – an agency of the Japanese Government – to replicate its nuclear technology in the UK, in a bid to help ease the UK’s energy crisis. Taking up around five acres, high-temperature gas-cooled (HTGC) reactors are small in size compared to conventional nuclear power stations. Many of their parts do not need to be built on site and instead can be produced in a central factory, which Penultimate Power hopes to build in Teesside. Penultimate – which has been launched by two energy experts – wants its first nuclear site to be in the area. Prof Ian Fells, emiritus professor of energy conversion at Newcastle University and a long-time and well-known advocate of nuclear energy, is technical director at Penultimate Power. He is joined at the company by Candida Whitmill, a former Government advisor on energy policy who has written widely on various energy sectors. Teeside Gazette 12th Feb 2019
Greenpeace has criticised plans to build nuclear power plants that could bring hundreds of jobs to Teesside , saying the new reactors will fail to solve any of the problems associated with nuclear energy. Commenting on Penultimate Power’s plans, Dr Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace UK, said: “Without strong evidence to the contrary, we think it’s fair to assume that these proposed reactors will suffer from the same problems as all other reactor designs. They are likely to be too expensive to compete with renewables and too slow to build to help fill the UK’s looming energy gap. “They will create dangerous waste for which there is no workable plan anywhere in the world, and increase the risk of extremely costly accidents. “The Government has now realised that backing nuclear was a huge strategic error and are having to re-write their energy policy in a hurry. Sooner or later people will have to accept that the next reactor design is no more likely to solve nuclear’s fundamental problems than the last one or the one before that.” Teeside Gazette 13th Feb 2019