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Site Tour of Sizewell B Nuclear Power Station 14 Feb 2025

From my visit to the PWR at Sizewell B yesterday. 

We toured all the site not including the containment building obviously. 

The turbine hall was spectacular even for a 1980's design. I pressed my body agains the low pressure turbine to feel the heat and vibration at 50Hz. Amazed at how both the enormous blue turbines and generator sets sit at the highest point in a tall building. Looking down through the mezzanine floor below at a sea of ducts, tanks, cables, electrical busbars and cabling for what seemed like forever. 

The remarkable thing about this stations is how clean and tidy it is kept. The turbine hall is a works of the highest civil engineering yet is the most spotless place I've ever been to. I paid them a visit in December 2014, ten years ago and it looks no cleaner today.

We look forward to the advent of the new EPR's at both Hinkely C and Sizewell C. And hopefully a third twin unit station at Sellafield. Further still, if our leaders have the wisdom many more existing nuclear sites upgraded equally. 

My costings show per kW, the EPR(£0.18) is about twice the present value of this PWR(£0.09), which itself performs much better than the American units on price. This was quite a surprise. I think this is due to additional unnecessary safety in the EPR.

So in the UK's EPR, we have the latest and greatest technology, 40 years newer than the PWR and it costs 100% more per kWh over its lifetime. (I've not accounted for the additional operating costs yet)

Its also possible its a systemic institutional legalised scam much like the HS2 railway project currently running at over £100 billion.

Many mock the new US administration, often justifiably. But the one thing they do seem to be trying to sort out is these kind of macro level gangster scams.

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