Bradwell B Nuclear Power Station

[Cavalierbond]

Travellers don’t want to work .. they want to tarmac drives poorly and have pensioners over its “ roof repairs “ ....

 

[Capt Popeye]

Travellers don’t want to work .. they want to tarmac drives poorly and have pensioners over its “ roof repairs “ ....

Yep quite so, so there are easy pickings in East Essex now and loadsa work when the New Builds start West of Essex {#

 

[GlennG]

So the Chinese are the world's leading builders of port cranes and those who think of China in connection with cheap tat, may be surprised to hear that China also leads the world in building nuclear power plant these days.

Getting back to this thread, the nuclear technology supplier for Sizewell B was Westinghouse Nuclear of Pittsburgh. Their only sales after that were of their AP1000 design, 4 to China and 2 to a stalled project in the US. The Chinese contracts included some tough clauses on Technology transfer. After Sizewell B, the Westinghouse Electric Corporation made some unwise investment in low cost housing in the US and went belly up, selling off the various parts of its empire. Westinghouse Nuclear was bought by the UK government (through BNFL) who only kept it for a few lean years before flogging it on to Toshiba, for whom it has made a loss ever since. The Chinese meanwhile have evolved the Westinghouse design (much as French licensee Framatome did in the 1970's) and are selling their well developed design both at home and abroad. Over the past decade the Chinese have more experience in nuclear build than anyone and the only surviving European supplier, Areva (formerly Framatome) is still trying to sell a design which belongs in the 20th century. like the one they're building at Hinkley Point in Somerset.

China is developing at the sort of rate the UK was in the industrial revolution. Unlike Europe, they have no shortage of professional engineers and they are all wiliing to learn from other countries, rather than sit smugly thinking that they always know best, a feature I have found too common in the UK over the past 48 years of practice as an engineer. It's time that all of Europe paid heed to the world's leading nation in Technology. We have helped them get where they are by adopting Carbon policies which did nothing to reduce carbon emissions but simply relocated the industry of production from Europe to China - we're unlikely to see any of it coming back in my lifetime. I've been there and worked with them - their commitment, drive and enthusiasm are stimulating.

By the way, my mobile phone is a Huawei.

Peter

Just wondering if Britain could get a load of engineers to work on the new Nuclear powers station to gain experience and then simply copy the design and build a few more. Surely the Chinese wouldn't actually expect any payment for the training and intellectual property.

Dreaming of a future where jobs are imported back to the West. A lot of the imported Chinese goods should have tariffs applied to them that truly represents the cost of labour (minimum wages, health & safety, working hours, etc.), intellectual property especially creative design, environmental and pollution controls, etc. One of the Chinese playbooks is to look strategically at certain core technologies and essentially dump it on the west through low prices; Huawei, steel, etc. For whatever short-term reasons, the West fell for this and eventually lost capacity as those sectors were undercut. BT being able to buy cut-price networking for example.

All of this is now moot as we'll be saddled with wartime levels of debt to keep half our population cowering at home. No doubt the Chinese will be building the power stations for the future revenue streams. Our future's one of penury.

 

[Kurrawong_Kid]

GlennG misses an important factor that has got UK very little manufacturing these days-our present rubbish education system that prioritises rote learning and testing often useless information, sidelines creativity and inquisitiveness, encourages students to study “academic” or fashionable subjects at university but utterly fails to promote chem., mech.,prod. Engineering; or worthwhile apprenticeships to support manufacturing industry.

 

[GlennG]

GlennG misses an important factor that has got UK very little manufacturing these days-our present rubbish education system that prioritises rote learning and testing often useless information, sidelines creativity and inquisitiveness, encourages students to study “academic” or fashionable subjects at university but utterly fails to promote chem., mech.,prod. Engineering; or worthwhile apprenticeships to support manufacturing industry.

Absolutely. We so need the media studies daarlings to pick up a shovel so they can ponder doing a useful "degree". The Blair idiocy of 50% of the population with degrees killed off the 'craft' skills and put people through academic levels of knowledge which wasn't necessary. Half expected degrees in car maintanence and plumbing installations. We've too many politicians who are professional politicians with little knowledge of real work.

In the old days, most engineering was split into the craft and design levels, each requiring different skills, albeit with some crossover. This was clearly shown in the qualifications system: City and Guilds or degrees. It used to be common to do day release for much of those courses, or night school. But who's going to pay the £9k for some pitiful part time course, of which there aren't any nowadays as it's more profitable for the academic institutions to sell full time courses.

 

[Cavalierbond]

Couldn’t agree more ..