Sellafield, Europe’s most hazardous nuclear site, has a worsening leak from a huge silo of radioactive waste that could pose a risk to the public, the Guardian can reveal.
Concerns over safety at the crumbling building, as well as cracks in a reservoir of toxic sludge known as B30, have caused diplomatic tensions with countries including the US, Norway and Ireland, which fear Sellafield has failed to get a grip of the problems.
Nuclear Reactors have a certain Limit on Powercycles. While you can power up an down with up to 10%/min that puts a huge amount of stress on all parts which leads to cracks and leaks. So you can’t actually replace the flexibility of gas powerplants with nuclear, because the risk associated with leaks is so much worse.
That’s fair, I was kinda thinking base power generation by nuclear and solar/wind for peaks. But the solar and wind probably wouldn’t be reliable enough so would still need some gas in the mix.
The reliability issue of regenerative energy can be lessend with better grids, because somwhere is always wind or sun. And then adding different storage technologies like battery, pressurised air or thermal storage should get us to a reliable power supply without emissions in the next decades.