The world of energy generation has its established totems of sustainability. Solar panels, wind turbines – to many they seem beyond reproach. Yet for Jo Bandle, a process engineer at Atkins, the picture is more nuanced.
“Look at the waste you get from wind turbines,” she says. “A lot of them only have a life expectancy of 20 years, so when they get decommissioned that waste has to go somewhere. And think of the sheer numbers of them.”
Bandle, who specialises in nuclear power projects, knows her viewpoint is not an easy sell. “People are quick to see the negatives of nuclear and not the positives, but none of the renewables are wholly positive,” she says. The lifespan of Hinkley Point C, in Somerset, which Bandle works on, will be 60 years, during which time it will power about 6m homes – equivalent to about 8,000 turbines.
Bandle, deputy lead of systems design, points out that the nuclear power industry has come a long way in terms of sustainability, purely by designing with decommissioning in mind. “Today’s fleet can be decommissioned more easily. Forty years ago, people didn’t think about that. Nowadays, a huge amount of thinking goes into how we will decommission, how we will minimise waste – that is at the forefront of the design and planning.”
It’s a philosophy that’s shared across the Atkins workforce. Kristina Parry, who works on building developments as an interior designer, has seen how sustainability is considered at every juncture of a scheme – even in terms of choosing a site that promotes greener behaviour from its eventual occupants. “We think about the location, ask how people will get to the site. We’ll check that there are existing transport links, so people aren’t forced to drive, and we’ll assess the local facilities.”
The building itself then needs to be fit for purpose – and part of that is promoting a more environmentally conscious working life. “We’ll talk with the architects to make sure we have the right rooms with the right adjacency for how people are going to use the spaces,” says Parry. “If we’re designing an office, for example, we’ll design in videoconferencing facilities. That means the end users can have a more sustainable approach to meetings, rather than travelling to other sites unnecessarily.”
Even the finishing materials that give a building its aesthetic are scrutinised from an environmental perspective: “We are always mindful of making sure they have as minimal an environmental impact as possible, be it where they’ve come from, what they’re made from, or the impact on environmental air quality [from transporting them],” she says.
It’s this focus on sustainability that helped Atkins bag a Breeam excellent rating for its new office in Epsom, Surrey. “Everything from the architecture to the interiors was done by the in-house team. It’s an amazing place for staff to work,” says Parry. For the Breeam assessment, a building is scrutinised in eight categories – with energy, materials, and health and wellbeing making up more than two thirds of the eventual score. “It’s not just the physical buildings, but the social impact the surroundings have on staff, and on their physical wellbeing too.”
Buildings such as the new Epsom office set an important marker for what can be achieved. “We’re flying the flag for environmental buildings by showing clients that they are achievable and can be done on time and on budget,” says Parry. The recently opened Poole Gateway building at Bournemouth University – also rated excellent – is testament to what can be achieved when clients take that leap of faith.
“We’re always looking to use the most advanced materials, to build renewable energy into a building’s infrastructure. Quantity surveyors generally hate the design team because we want to spend so much money,” she says. “When clients start to look at the long-term benefits of switching materials or switching the building processes, or heating systems, the message starts to get through, but the initial expense is quite high. It’s a battle to get that passed sometimes. You’re investing for the future.”
The future of nuclear energy, meanwhile, could fork off down a path that allays lingering safety concerns. Nuclear fusion – which generates energy from forming an atom rather than splitting one – could eventually contribute to the energy mix. “At one point this was something out of a sci-fi novel; now fusion is becoming a feasible solution,” says Bandle. The Iter project in France, on which Atkins collaborates, is the big hope for the future of fusion and is expected to start the first experiments on its fusion machine in 2025.
Fusion is not just said to be much safer than nuclear fission it could also make energy so abundant that we no longer need to be frugal with it. But unfortunately it won’t be coming on stream any time soon.
In the meantime, experts such as Bandle and Parry continue their work to help the UK tackle the considerable challenges of becoming carbon neutral by 2050.
