Built Environment Matters

Navigating the Energy Debate: Challenges and Solutions | Martin Wood, Adrian La Porta and John Dyson

• Bryden Wood • Season 2 • Episode 1

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Join Bryden Wood's co-founder Martin Wood, Technical Director Adrian La Porta, and Professor John Dyson as they discuss the critical state of the global energy grid. Triggered by recent power outages in Spain and Portugal, this episode uncovers the hidden complexities of integrating renewables, the intensifying demand from new technologies like AI, and the debate over centralised vs. distributed power. They explore the concept of ‘network value’ for energy sources, the challenges and opportunities of energy storage, and the political and commercial influences shaping our energy future. Discover why a more nuanced and collaborative approach is essential for a stable and decarbonised world.

You can now watch this episode on Bryden Wood's YouTube channel.

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Intro:

Welcome to the Bryden Wood Podcast. Bryden Wood is a global strategy and design consultancy. We are inventive thinkers, designers, engineers, and technical experts. We integrate creativity and deep experience to resolve complex challenges and realize a better world. Find us at brydenwood.com

John Dyson:

okay, so we're, we're going to kick off by talking about the, uh, very recent power outages in, uh, Spain and, uh, and Portugal, and what that tells us about the, the grid, uh, and the reliability of energy supplies and, uh, and the implications to the energy market, developing energy market. So, what, Martin, what are your, uh, what are your thoughts about that?

Martin Wood:

Well, of course we dunno that much yet. So there's any, some stripping through of some of the reasons for it. Uh, but uh, what it does highlight is how little we know and, and the big concern is how much does anybody else know? So is there any great, um, mastermind behind the global grid systems or is in fact the grid system become quite so chaotic system? Or is it in fact a well understood system? We don't know that. And some of that's kind of coming through now because we're learning that what we all thought was probably a cyber attack. Um, that was kind of my initial thought. I guess it must've been many people's initial thought. Mm-hmm. Actively seems to be, if we believe what we hear again, but it's something to do with the lack of inertia in the system, which is coming from the fact that we've got so many more renewables in the grid, and particularly in Spain, obviously, which is heavily solar. Uh, and that's that lack of inertia, which kind of really means spinning things. It really is like inertia like that because it's kind of like the turbines that's spinning gas turbine or steam turbine, and they actually create that kind of inertia. Uh, in other words, the stored energy that, that allow people to get through these kind of incidents. Um, one thing I thought was actually quite impressive is how. The grid came back on. Mm. So let's, so therefore that does give you some confidence in the underlying knowledge of the, uh, the speed and pace, which, which was, was put back in place. But obviously it's super fundamental as to why it went down in the first place and what it tells us,

John Dyson:

I guess, I guess grids were started off being quite simple things when they were first created.

Adrian La Porta:

I think the, I mean, the first thing is that it just shows how reliant we are now on electricity in a way that we weren't 20, 30 years ago. Mm-hmm. Um. For transport, you know, communications, hospitals, you know, electricity is so vital to life now in our society, and as electrification continues, you know, it's going to, uh, that's gonna intensify. So it's a bit of a wake up call as, yeah, I guess

Martin Wood:

so. But then absolutely. But that's, that's, uh, one of the things that, uh, that sort of brings to light is like, how much. Do we actually rely completely on the grid? Do we have a hundred percent reliance on the grid or, well, we, we don't, obviously at the moment, because we have other systems and other power systems are outside the grid, but the question is, what is the proportionality of on grid and off grid, and how diversified should that be and how centralized that should that be? That's a sort of debate and, uh, whilst is not totally in. No one's totally in control of that debate. You certainly should, uh, try to lead the, the debate on that. So how many of the big energy sources that are growing with some of the new technologies, for example, ai, AI data centers, you've got great demand. Some of these AI data centers are looking to absorb, you know, uh, gigawatt power, um, which is

John Dyson:

a large town,

Martin Wood:

which is Yeah. It's, it's crazy. And, and, and we're involved in, in, in, uh. This deployment and technology, and that's kind of one of the reasons that we're so fascinated by, um, the power sources, is that actually a lot of the industries that we're working in are, are, are actually increasing the demand for power, increasing the demand for reliable power. And, uh, they're doing it, they're doing so for generally speaking good reasons. But the question is, what effect are they gonna have on the, the existing, uh, infrastructure? And also, you know, the problem generally speaking is that the, the way that we've allowed things to evolve historically is by the market, the demand of the marketplace, and by some forms of, you know, this mixture of market and central planning when it comes to power distribution. But that. The speed of pace of change and the speed of, um, increased, uh, demand for energy is just sort of, you know that word unprecedented? Mm-hmm. And it is unprecedented and it's happening in so many multiple industries where the demand mean. Just look at the electrification of, of cars and electrification of cars. Suddenly massive extra demand of power, one

John Dyson:

in five in the world. Now apparently electric, which is. And this,

Adrian La Porta:

this opens up, you know, opportunities as, as, as well as threats of course. And the, the, um, you know, every car is a potential energy storage system and there's been a lot of talk about utilizing that. I think there are some schemes, uh, available now, uh, where you can plug a car into the grid and that that storage can be used, but the as demand, uh, demand is added to the grid and supply is added to the grid. The, um. Um, you know, how is that process managed? If even if that's even the right word, you know, who, who understands how the system is changing. Um, it, it's, um, it's a huge challenge, isn't it?

John Dyson:

Mm.

Martin Wood:

I, um, I guess one of the things we all want to know as the general public is, is, is this system reaching point of chaos effectively, or is it in fact a, a managed, understood, and carefully modeled system? Um. I think neither of those are true. It's somewhere in between, but somewhere in between. Understanding that somewhere in between is pretty, pretty, pretty important. One of the main reasons for me is it's so important apart from keeping the lights on, which is clear. Um. Is that, uh, if you're ever gonna invest in and, and, and you're gonna decarbonize the grid in the right manner and at the quickest possible pace. And the pace, by the way, is something we just can't leave to, you know, market forces in a typical way. We just can't do that. It's never gonna be quick enough. Absolutely never gonna be good enough. If we are going to do that, then we need to get, um, some better sense of how to understand and model the grid and better sense of how much power we want to actually put on the grid. And we wanna leave locally. So do we service these high demands without, without using the grid? We've gotta understand the grid profiling. We've gotta understand how much we can actually flatten profiling outta the grid. And then we've gotta really understand the different. Energy sources and their different characteristics as what we call network value. So it's absolutely no point understanding the strike rate of a particular energy source. So for example, famously, uh, um, wind power effectively dropped particularly offshore, dropped in cost enormously, I think Australia, 57. Um, and that was that, that really spurred that industry on and we see the massive advance of that and see, yeah, fantastic. But of course we all know it's got a one of the worst. Profiles when it comes to the generation of power because when, when the wind blows, so you've got this cheap energy and then it suddenly, suddenly that's becoming kind of like the, what the market's expecting. And you go, yes, I know, but, but what value is something that can turn off and ramp up and ramp down, such as combined cycle gas, turbine plum, you know, that you see got the most flexible at the moment as far as I understand it. Mm-hmm. It's pretty well, the most flexible pass also, therefore, it has a. Significantly higher. But the problem is it's not decarbonized than actually carbon capture. And that's very difficult because flue gas is a very dilu CO2,

Adrian La Porta:

so,

Martin Wood:

you know.

Adrian La Porta:

Yeah. I mean, it is an established technology. It just happens to be expensive. So it brings back to that, that question, what, what does expensive mean? Well, it expensive. Yeah. Expensive

Martin Wood:

network value. Yeah. So, and if we don't get network value, sorry, rant on this one, but if we don't get network value sorted as an understood. At least as a nation, although this is actually of course, doesn't actually find itself to national boundaries because of all the interconnects there are between different, uh, countries and states. And there should be of course, because of load balancing. But we've got to get the investment in different technologies correctly. We've got to understand where to invest and how to invest and to what degree to invest. And we do that by getting a better understanding of network value, not absolute cost of energy.

John Dyson:

What, what are the, what are the key measures of network value, do we think? I mean, there's clearly price points. One that's always talked about

Adrian La Porta:

what, what do we mean by network value? Can we define it better? Yeah. Well, uh. We can have a go.

Martin Wood:

It's tricky. Yeah. It is a, it's easy to say. Well then easy to say, to define if you think

John Dyson:

about it, actually more, more factors come into play, but, uh,

Martin Wood:

well, yeah, exactly. Because you start, I mean, you can start with some simple things like can it ramp up and can it ramp to demand? So that can it, can it follow demand profile? It's gotta be one absolute. The huge one, uh, in terms of network value. The other things is, you know, what's, its, what's its reliability to balance against. So, so, you know, I'll use some examples. Nuclear gives you a very good, consistent, but it's, but it's overly consistent. Yeah. It's totally flat. It doesn't, it gives you power, wind, it doesn't go down.

Adrian La Porta:

Yeah.

Martin Wood:

But of course it's fantastic at filling the gaps in when you've got Peaky. And we do get, unfortunately, particularly in the uk. I dunno how much we should talk specifically about the UK in this actually.'cause of course it's, it's this, I guess every, every,

John Dyson:

yeah. Just by every country will have peak, very peaky demands because of usually the day has a, has a flow to it and

Martin Wood:

Yeah. But I suppose at least in areas where, for example, there's a great deal of solar availability, like Arab regions or, or well,

John Dyson:

I guess, uh, yeah, inconsistent weather. Patterns, whereas we have inconsistent, we, we do. And we get those sort of the calming

Martin Wood:

periods where we need to get wind or we get sun for, I think there was a, there was a, uh, last year or the year before, I can't remember. There was a specific, specific period when we had about two or three months of very low. Um, so setting all energy generation because the wind was low. Yeah. And we had low solar. So I think November sort of period, October, November period. Um. You know, how do we overcome those? There's a, so that brings us onto the, the, the, there's, there's a little bit of competition. Perhaps there should be, there's this competition between storage and the concept that storage and, and that's, that's derives quite a lot from the nuclear debate because people who don't particularly want to see the mass introduction, or sorry, the significantly increased introduction of nuclear, uh, of new nuclear power. Yeah. They call it new nuclear. We can get onto that in a minute, but the new nuclear power are looking to say, well, actually just a sustainable sources, and then just store.

John Dyson:

Yeah. Yeah.

Martin Wood:

Energy storage. I'm a bit of an energy storage skeptic, but I perhaps don't have. Mm-hmm. Enough knowledge to be that skeptical, but the, generally speaking, the efficiencies of the reclaim of that power are quite low. And the scale of it's just, just, it's just incredible. Yeah. You, you've gotta wonder whether the scale and effort that goes into building those and, and, and the, and the time it takes to build those storage systems. Unless it's battery. And of course then you've got all this sort of rare earth and all this kind of other problem of the, the, the, the, the rare earth metals you need in them and so on. Lithium, whatever. Um, is that you, the time spent on that, would it be better spent on actually putting into just some fundamental energy producing systems in the first place, be they sustainable or be they nuclear or whatever else?

Adrian La Porta:

Well, that does take us onto the question of distributed versus, uh, centralized, uh, power, uh, generation and storage 'cause storage. It just might look more appealing if it's, if it's much more distributed. Uh, and, um,

John Dyson:

which comes back to your point about car batteries, because that, I mean, car batteries, you could argue is a hugely distributed storage system.

Adrian La Porta:

Yeah. And I, it raises a question of, you know. Who owns or, um, and I, I don't mean that in a sort of broad sense, you know, the, um, energy system, you know, a particular subset of the energy grid. So we talk, we keep talking about the grid. What is the grid? You know, we are connected to the, uh, in the uk we're connected to the European grid, connected to Spain. So, um, uh, the. US grid is quite different in its characteristics I understand to the, to the UK grid not as integrated. So, um, I guess we have to think about what we mean when we talk about grid. Where, where do we draw our boundaries? Although there, there and, and how do you I sorry. I suppose it is because where you draw the boundary very much drives the way you analyze and then come up with solutions within, within. It does,

Martin Wood:

it does. Bring in some political preferences, quite frankly. Yeah, definitely. Um, the political preferences, and one of the things is there's a sort of interesting question between political preferences and resilience. So does distributed, does, does off grid distributed. Energy generation of storage give you more resilience or less resilience? It's an interesting question now because it it, it and back to also

Adrian La Porta:

Yeah.

Martin Wood:

And you know, other things left, doesn't it?

Adrian La Porta:

So, you know, I'm on the Strom grid, I'm not sending my electricity at Per Yeah. Right.

Martin Wood:

I mean, but it, but, but on the other hand, you know, there's, there's a lot of. Uh, there's a huge common sense, for example, in interconnecting different nation states with energy. So that's politically, uh, problematic in some instances. But I mean, it's fantastic for reducing demand. I mean, for example, it's pretty obvious, but if you, the more east west, um, interconnection you make, the more you can overcome day night. The obvious day night power problem. I mean, in the US that actually happens. So there is actually, there is actually a distribution system, backbone system to some degree that has an east West influence in terms of load spreading. But because the US is obviously quite federal, state driven. That's not how the network zones done. Quite a done, but there's quite a divided network. Maybe it's not as strong as it needs to be, perhaps, but you know, that's an obvious way of distributing loads. Um, that's a fantastic thing. But then that's a central system. So are you sort of pro the central system? So certain things politically say, well, I feel, I feel that. I feel that's a fantastic European, for example, pan-European. Um, initiative. Yeah. Yeah. You know, on one hand, on another hand, I'm going, Hmm. Well that's, that's hitting away power.

John Dyson:

Well, of course that's a lot has been driven by, uh, you know, individual country power security as it started to drive people the other way and looking very insular about controlling their own power.

Martin Wood:

Well, yeah. Well, on that insular thing, I mean, I, I think there's, there is a political one, political imperative I think is, uh, the sort of, uh, relationship between. Big commerce and state in the sense that I think it's fair enough to say that some of these big, uh, commercial entities that are now looking to consume vast amounts of power, why are they looking to consume power? Well, it's, it's, in some re regards, it's an essential service. So, you know, um. But uh, uh, in terms of, say, for example, the provision of data centers, but in another way it's just making commercialism to, to, to to attract as much of the market as possible. So they have a responsibility not to skew the grid. They may be able to afford. I mean, one of the things we see there is them buying green energy packages that are so large that it starves everyone else with the availability of the green energy. So you go, well, that's, that, that isn't a way to decarbonize and just, and then, then they, then they will put out vast amounts of advertising saying that they're the greenest. Provider of this particular thing, but only because they're the biggest financial, uh, uh, yeah, uh, buyer in this marketplace, and therefore they can skew the market. Have we seen

Adrian La Porta:

that in Ireland? I think there's, there's been, uh, you know, central government pushback against the development of data centers, but precise in that reason.

Martin Wood:

Well, yes, and, and of course one of the things is that. You know, it's, it's, I mean, one thing about that, since we know a chunk of the energy is lost in the cooling, and of course there's been an attempt to turn them into district heating schemes and these kind of things, but these, these kind of, this kind of integration, I don't, one of the things, and it goes for all of this power integration, is that it's just incredibly slow.

John Dyson:

Yeah.

Martin Wood:

So there's going to be, have to be quite a lot of effort putting, I mean, sort of distributed systems. Have to exist because of speed. Mm-hmm. Because centralized systems, I mean, another classic case, again, no expert, but we know that most of the wind energy production for. Germany's in the north and most of the commerce and industries in the south and their grid system isn't currently efficiently transferring from the north to the south. Now, do we expect that grid system to change rapidly? No, we don't. So is the answer therefore to get more sustainable energy productions courses? I don't wanna speak for Germany here, but you know, but is it to get more sustainable, um, point of view sources down in the, uh, south of Germany and you've got to think that form. Distributed energy production has to, to, has to be here. And I, I guess that's one of the reasons why people have got quite excited about small modular reactor sm so-called SMRs. Um, because they suddenly think, hang on a minute, it's decarbonized, it's small. Apparently we're gonna be able to build them really quickly, which we maybe get onto to later. And, uh, we can take out these point source loads and we can basically make these, uh, particularly these big commercial entities, cl you know, clean up their own act effectively. Yeah. They don't, you know,

Adrian La Porta:

well, uh, uh, there is, it's another dimension, isn't it? Is the, the hard to decarbonize sectors, uh, tend to be very high. Users and things which are quite difficult to move, you know, like steelworks. So you know, to think that they're going to decarbonize by taking grid power, you know, in light of the compensation we're having, seems quite unlikely.

John Dyson:

The grid would won't adapt quickly enough to distribute green power from where it's generated to, to where it's demanded.

Adrian La Porta:

And I think the, the way when, when there's, um, supply pressure on the grid at the moment, then domestic users get priority in the UK at least. So, uh, you know, you don't wanna be switching. Not sure that's global

John Dyson:

the case.

Martin Wood:

Probably not. I. So a lot of those hard to decarbonize areas are either gonna, are either going to get, derive their fuels from bio. Sources in the first place, gasification or whatever, or there, or other forms. Yeah. Familiar with, um, or they're going to use hydrolysis, which is gonna use a huge amount of power and then, and that, but then, then that's obviously gotta be green energy. So I, I think somebody, some people thought for. Period, that there was a bit of a silver bullet in the idea of using sustainable when it wasn't, when it was peaking in its production and must've been used and then turning into hydrogen through hydrolysis. But the problem with that is the hydrolysis equipment's incredibly expensive and you, you are amortizing the cost of the, uh, of the, uh, the equipment against the period that it's used. Yeah, it was only used in. Points of, it's fantastic because you get the energy used and you store it effectively in the hydrogen, but it's only happening from hydrogen sort of who, who's gonna invest in that kind of equipment that's only gonna get a sort of 15, 20% usage. Well, unless you set a different For different e. E, exactly, exactly.

John Dyson:

Which is, which goes back to that

Martin Wood:

point. You

John Dyson:

represent the network value for the, the power source.

Martin Wood:

I'm, I'm bound to say that's another place where, actually, another way, instead of thinking of small modular. Uh, or thinking of new nuclear more particularly as being needed to be distributed in points. Actually doing things like, for example, hydrogen production, for some of them harder to decarbonize.'cause I think, you know, that's where I think we all agree that. That's where that's gonna be needed.

John Dyson:

Mm.

Martin Wood:

It's not gonna be, I, I think the, the old concept, one of the concepts of the, of the hydrogen economy where everything was, everything was wrong on hydrogen. The classic being everyone's home, just having a a, a domestic boilers. Domestic boilers running on hydrogen. I think that's pretty well disappearing. I certainly hope so. Because everyone realized, I think the, the head of octopus energy, I think it was said, you know, it's, it's, it's akin to flushing the toilet with champagne. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I thought was, you know, obviously he was biased when he's the first place. But yeah, it was a nice, it

John Dyson:

was a good one of those good statements. It was, which gets every thinking in the, it

Martin Wood:

does. I think that's just sort of gone and, um, it wasn't that long ago. I think it'll be mooted two or three or four

Adrian La Porta:

years ago. Oh, the, the debate continues to rage and I think, I think the hydrogen debate is quite a good. Example of how different technologies are, um, tute I suppose might be a word or promoted by, you know, specific commercial interests and, you know, is this really the best way of trying to work out? How we should arrange this very complex system. I'm not sure what the alternatives are, but it seems to me that, you know, do I, you know, create hydrogen using electrolysis and then feed that into a. Into my plant or do I use methane and capture the, the CO2 to, to, to use the medium of, I've got a great technology, you know, invest in, this seems quite an indirect way of addressing the product,

John Dyson:

but it comes back to that if we, if we had a, a. An agreed view of what network value was. Yeah. Yes. And you would go, how does this technology fit? How does it fit into the system? Yes. I, I think what's its price point? How sustainable,

Martin Wood:

that's

John Dyson:

exactly

Martin Wood:

the problem you've got. You've got to have, there has to be this, in this kind of emerging new technologies, there has to be a kind of startup mentality where you, you are producing a new. Technology or you are falling that in each other. You gotta tell everyone it's the best thing ever because that's, that's what, that's, that's what you gotta do. Therefore,

Adrian La Porta:

you, the danger is you might succeed

Martin Wood:

well, you might succeed in that, and, and, and therefore there needs to be some method of contextualizing those claims. That's the point is there's nothing wrong with a claim. Yeah. That I can do this thing and I can produce a, a, a biofuel or whatever, and I can do it lower rate than anyone else. But the point is the claim has to be contextualized somehow. So there needs to be something, and this is where we come to this sort of like business of how much is this done at a sort of nation state level, and how much is this done at a, at a market, uh, investment level is someone has to be orchestrating somehow or there has to be some level of orchestration. This is one of my, one of the real worries is, is this is very. Complicated. There's many people who could, uh, contribute to this conversation. One of the reasons we are doing this podcast, because people should feel free.

John Dyson:

Yeah.

Martin Wood:

But, but it, it should be, uh, there's many people that could be contributing hugely to this kind of debate. The question is, where is that knowledge being collected and, uh, and where is it being, um, channeled? Mm-hmm. So, I mean, I sat in a. Uh, in a chamber in the House of Lords. Not the main one, but some side room. Some were having a ba debate about, um, uh, small modular reactor introductions into the uk. And uh, there was a group of, uh, uh, Lords in the room, uh, who just kept saying, how much is it gonna cost? What's the strike rate? Thomas, the strike rate.'cause we are gonna go into the chamber and we like to, we like. We like the idea of the technology. We think we're advocates of it. Uh, we just like to see how, how, how it is and how it, and, and therefore basically claim that it's low cost or is the fundamental and. Everyone who else was in the room kept saying, Hmm. But it depends on how you view the cost of it. What's the network? And um, unfortunately that was an illustration that this debate, which is being, you know, in, in our own parliament

Adrian La Porta:

Yeah.

Martin Wood:

Is not being had at anything like a sophisticated enough level. Now I'm not saying that was, that was a. I dunno, 18 months ago, so it wasn't a lifetime ago. I doubt the debate has advanced massively and it needs to advance massive advance massively. There's no point pretending something as complex as this is simple. No. And reducing it.'cause it won't get you any further. It won't get much. It never is, is

John Dyson:

it? If you pretend that something's easy when it's not, then you just start making the wrong decisions very quickly. Yeah.

Adrian La Porta:

So that, that, if you like, framing of the marketplace is, is, is insufficient at the moment. Yeah. And, and it's very difficult for investors, you know, let's say, you know, in data centers.'cause you, you can look at your problem in, in the context of the power for that, for that data center. But when you look at it globally, that's, that's not necessarily the best investment of, um, you know, the best investment in energy production. When you look at a broader. Societal need, you know?

Martin Wood:

No, and I, I mean, and even worse for, for, for potential, you know, technologies in actual power production. I mean, how do, how does anybody know what, you know, how do they know they fit in? What did they expect to see as a, um, how on earth do they gauge what their, the value of their product is at this point in time? Yeah, because

John Dyson:

there's no guidance really, is there? No. So there isn't no, well, there's no shared, shared view. I mean that,

Martin Wood:

I mean, that's the, I mean, I think that's one of the keenest areas. That's felt. Is that, um, uh, the, you know, the white, well, it depends. It's an interesting one, isn't it? The, the new nuclear debate is a big one, and it's a kind of, it's hard to avoid. It's hard to avoid this, this, this, this, this point, because we kind of understand wind production, we understand that it's getting a bit harder as it, it's, it's some of the group, the best possible sites, easiest possible sites have been taken and they get a bit more difficult. But we sort of can get our heads around that. We can sort of get our heads, heads around solar, although I find some of the. The, the solar locations in the uk and the, um, the, uh, ability for them to be blocked by local, uh, politics is quite interesting. Um, you can argue it's, you know, the UK struggles with that or benefits from that. Depends how you look at it. Yeah. Local power in that sense. But, um, the, uh, one of the things I think it's quite clear, and it's interesting, obviously Tony Blair came out and said it the other day, and you can see that, uh, uh. It's seen as a criticism of current government policy and you find it star are trying to, uh, suggest that they're in fact exactly on the same page. But really all it is, is what a previous prime minister can say compared to what a current minister can say. An actual fact. There is a pretty unification of understanding and that's just one can say at a one can't, which is Blair's completely Right. Got no chance at the moment on current trajectory. Is any of the ambitious targets made for, um, restriction of increase of warm with the globe, but just completely and phasing out fossil fuel? Mm-hmm. Absolutely nowhere here at the moment. I mean, I just, I think until you sort of accept that and stop kidding yourself, um, then you won't, um, you won't take this, you know, this debate won't, won't go forward at the speed it needs to go forward because it really does need to go speed. The silver bullets. Some people see. It's very controversial because some people see the proliferation as nuclear power as being a, a, a terrible thing. Some people seeing it as being an essential thing and something that should be welcomed, and that's a, that's a debate that's gonna carry on. But, but the, but the essential thing is that the. Behind every new technology, there is a set of value drivers that, in this case are set at a, yeah, set at a society level. I mean, normally you, they'll be set at a sort of commercial level or a company level. These are set at a society level. So one of these questions I could say is, how safe do you want nuclear power to be? Well, I mean, what a question. Because everyone's gonna go totally safe or so totally safe. For example, has driven the, uh, some of the new nuclear providers to head for reactors that quite frankly. Just decay, heat. The way they cool down in the event of a, uh, in the event of a a, a, a a serious problem is they're just passively cool. Which, and it's a lovely concept, but, but of course it's very limiting in terms of their, they, they become less economical to build, less economical to run in certain instances. Gotta be careful here 'cause there's all sorts of different. Providers will claim all sorts of different things about their new technology, but fundamentally it's not going to produce the most economical nuclear power.

John Dyson:

Mm-hmm.

Martin Wood:

Um, so then that means you've gotta rely on systems. And then people say, well, it's, as soon as they rely on systems, well then failure is go is is has got a chance of occurring. I think it doesn't

John Dyson:

rely on, in the airline industry, they they do. They have set. I mean, they haven't set zero Yeah. Limits. Well, they set themselves well, very low limits of death and injury. Accept, but they still have,

Martin Wood:

but they still have to accept a plane will fall outta the sky. Yeah.

John Dyson:

Now and again, yeah.

Adrian La Porta:

I mean I, I've, I've in, in, in my exposure to the work we've done on, uh, new nuclear, if that's the, the terminology is, um. And people tend to focus on the, the reactor technology and not the, um, the full fuel cycle. And yeah, and really the, the bits that are, you know, more worrying and the bits that are not at the power generation point in the storage and production, production and dispose of the fuel. So I think. When, when you, again, you look at technology selection, you've gotta look at all that

John Dyson:

and that. That's another net worth value, isn't it? Well, it's all just about the value in the moment. It's about how do you create that? What does it leave behind? The legacy and all those sorts of things. I mean,

Martin Wood:

that's one of the things, I mean, first thing is to say, actually we talk about SMR Small Modular reactors. The first thing is it. People don't think generally understand is really what that should refer to is the size of the reactor itself and the whole concept that you should be able to produce the reactor offsite in a factory and then bring the reactor to the site, thus saving huge amount of the work and effort and increasing the quality and so on of the reactor. That's a good aspiration, but that doesn't mean that you have to have lots of small nuclear power stations. That just means the reactors small. So one of the big questions here, is it a good idea to actually say, suddenly going right back to the beginning of our conversations in some way? I'll tell you what, we'll distribute power from a green source by having all these small budget reactors. And I think this was generally the concept people had in their head. Yeah. Is they'll be scattered around the place. But my real question with that is yes, okay. But fundamentally, you know, that's not gonna be as economical per kilowatt hour when it comes down to it because you're gonna be building loads of different power stations as opposed to a single one. So that's a problem is in. First case and second about that is, you know, think about just the regulation and the planning and the approvals and the environmental and the, the neighboring issues and all the thing in the planning. It well

John Dyson:

be 90% of the cost.

Martin Wood:

Exactly. With, with the many distributed places. In fact, you, what you should think of is, again, go back to the, go back to what it says, which is the small modular act. It's only the reactor you're referring to in that, and therefore you could group. 30 reactors. Most of the, the ones that are going forward now in the US are using multiple reactors on a single site, but tendencies, 2, 3, 4, 5. Actually, they're not odd numbers, but anyway. Twos from fours. Mm-hmm. Sixes. Um, in a site. Uh, but I mean, there's no real limit to that. So you can make up your traditional, I say traditional scale, uh, power station of, um, three gigawatts, or I mean hinckley's three and a half, I think it is gigawatts, um, with uh, with small ones, your access if you wanted to. So there's a different way of looking at it and consolidating them, but using them as small scale for the building. So we don't know what the exact balancing factor, but firstly it's a bit of a misnomer. Small mod act, not. For the reactor, but for the power station size of it. And secondly, the, the question is, well, which ones of the technologies are gonna be acceptable going forward? And, um, from a, a safety versus cost of, of energy. Point of view. Because the trouble is if you offer a nuclear, people say, I just want a hundred percent safety. And you go, well, that has a certain cost associated with it. 99.9999% safety. Right. And the other thing is, as you rightly pointed out earlier, traditionally there's a traditional fuel. Uh, provision, uh, in Richmond uranium and so on and type of production of fuel rods and the way that they are, uh, appro, reprocessed and stored. Do we fit into that industry or do we create a whole new industry where actually a lot more of the work that's done in the nuclear power station currently is actually done offsite and super sector sort places elsewhere, and not in the, in the central thing, but this, this, this is what, you know, those kind of questions, again, many more people could contribute. Uh, to that debate, but that's a debate that needs to be understood. And we've got to stop having people saying, it's okay. We'll put an SMR there. It's just not, that is just not the sophistication. Debate isn't high enough for, so I think, I mean,

John Dyson:

that's a general point, isn't it? Is it we need a much more sophisticated, uh, layered debate about this and not, not very simple, small nuclear's gonna do it, or hydrogen's good or hydrogen's bad, or. Yeah, no, absolutely.

Martin Wood:

Um, um, no. So I suppose the question is how does, how does, how does, how does that debate get stimulated?

John Dyson:

Yeah.

Martin Wood:

Where does it get stimulated? Um, where does it get, um, where does it get, uh, effectively, um, um, contained well in what political. In what political, uh, uh, construct is it, is that debate to be had? Mm. Because the, the problem is you could see it as being this has being such an important subject. You could see it as being, uh, quite politically, uh, you know, influential. Well, it is politically charged. Yep. So, but is it done highly centrally? Is it done at a, is it done at an advisory level? You know, what, what level of, uh, what level of, um, uh, what purpose does the debate serve ultimately?

John Dyson:

And I guess, I guess the question as well is there's questions for businesses and who are producers and there's questions for government and um, and they might be different questions

Adrian La Porta:

and questions for businesses as consumers as well. Yeah. And s for the consumers. Yeah. Uh, looking at the decarbonization of pharmaceutical industry, for instance, is that, uh, that's a good example where, um. A lot of companies are doing a great job in decarbonizing, but they're doing it by buying green electricity off the grid, which, which is in short supply. So if you take it, if you take it from there for pharmaceuticals, because you know they've got the sort of margins on their products and, uh, that are sort of supply chain configuration that allows them to do that, um, then that, that, um, instead of perhaps reducing their demand. Uh, uh, you've, you've lost the opportunity to use that green power, uh, somewhere else.

Martin Wood:

Well, I think one of the, one of the, one of the first problems with that whole pharmaceutical basis, I just don't think the general public realize quite what a impact pharmaceuticals have from a color perspective. Intensity of pharmaceuticals is sky high. Yeah, exactly. High and um. It's high. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, and uh, they don't, and people just don't necessarily appreciate that it's not an obedient thing. They associated with the, uh, pack of the tablets. They're Yeah. Consuming. It's, it's, got it. So understanding the context of all, um, of the carbon, you know, the, the hard to get decarbonize areas along with the whole debate of, of, of distributed or centralized power systems and grids, you know. This, this, we somehow, we have to get this, uh, level of debate more sophisticated, and, and we have to find a, we have to find a, uh, a, a a a center or a, um, some sort of fulcrum for this, this, this conversation. Um, and I'm not, I'm seeing a huge amount of information, but I'm not seeing a huge amount of, um, uh. Not interaction and debate. With, with, with communicating, communicating, understanding. Yeah. I

John Dyson:

mean, it's just not there. Is it? So, yeah. To bring this to a close, I mean, what I, I'm left what's on in my head. I'm left with, with trying to get some shape and understanding of how you work out, what, how you distribute power, what's locally sourced and what's shared and, and, and, and at what level do you share that between countries or localities and that we need some. Some rationality about, about that model, that evolving model. What, what are yours? Uh, Adrian,

Adrian La Porta:

I, I think the debate needs to move away from being a competition between technology. So it doesn't make any sense to me that I'm, you know, some people, a pro wind, some people are pronuclear, but. If you look at the systems are complex, as we said, and you have to be able to pick the right combination for the right situation. So it's more about having that framework for, for making those decisions rather than arguing one technology versus another.

Martin Wood:

Well, from my perspective, just from a, from a personal perspective, we are involved in. Uh, designing and developing, uh, technologies that are all massively power hungry, and it's a bit like needing to. To do something about clean up your own mess, really? Mm-hmm. It's, it's one thing to produce a, a demand and that demands for all sorts of great reasons in terms of, you say pharmaceuticals or, uh, hard to de carbonate, make sure we can keep flying effectively and so on. All these things are, are, are great thing to contribute to, but at the same time, it's uh, mass creating an enormous energy demand. What feels compelled to do something about that. And, uh, I guess, uh, one of the questions is what is the forum for the debate to, that links all these things together? Because at the moment it feels like there's a lot of lobbies. Exactly. A lot of lobbying and, and, and they're lobbying to, in certain instances, and I don't mean to be disparaging about it, but to the ill-informed, so there's a, there's a lack of information held centrally or knowledge held centrally. And there's a lot of, uh, lobby groups that have been distorted by commercial interests. And somehow we need to diminish the power of the commercial interest lobby. Um, and we need to increase the, uh, the understanding centrally held so that this, there can be a, a forum that allows exactly what Adrian said for the competition between these parties to reduce so that we can make a more, I won't say orderly transition towards a decarbonized vision.'cause it is not less disorderly, less disorderly. Advance towards, uh, decarbonized world and the elimination of fossil fuels.

People on this episode

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Jaimie Johnston MBE

Host
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Adrian La Porta MSc (Eng). MIChemE

Guest
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Martin Wood BA. DipArch. RIBA

Guest