Rising seas and fiercer storms threaten to flood or erode the ground beneath the UK’s coastal nuclear power stations and the cables that carry their electricity. The project builds a computer model that predicts how the coast will change—estuaries, beaches, dunes, and cliffs—out to the year 2500, then turns those predictions into maps of future flooding, erosion, and shifting habitats. These maps become a decision-support tool for drawing up coastal management plans. This matters because the UK’s nuclear fleet and much of its coastal energy infrastructure sit in zones that will be reshaped by climate change. Without knowing where the water will go, how fast the cliffs will crumble, or where sediment will build up, planners cannot decide whether to build new sea walls, relocate substations, or redesign the distribution grid. If the research succeeds, energy companies and local authorities will have a practical, visual tool to adapt power stations and grid connections decades in advance. The result is a more resilient, low-carbon energy supply that keeps the lights on even as the coastline shifts.
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The project aims to identify the challenges facing the future security of the UK nuclear energy sector and coastal energy supply in the NW region as a result of changing patterns of temperature and rainfall, sea-level rise and storms. In particular, we will determine the threats posed to future energy generation and the distribution network by flooding and erosion, changing patterns of coastal sedimentation, water temperature and the distribution of plants and animals in the coastal zone. As well as having important consequences for the operation of coastal power stations, these climate change impacts also affect the neighbouring coastline as well as the coastal waters. As a result, communities need to be made aware of these future threats, and to be brought into discussions that decide the future of energy supply in the UK. To support this, the project will first build a computer model of the coast that can operate at scales of 25-100 km and that can predict coastal changes for estuaries, gravel beaches, sandy beaches and dunes, and cliffs made up of both hard and soft rock. The coupled outputs from this integrated model will be converted into maps of future flooding, erosion, sedimentation, water quality and habitats that are the result of climate change projections to the 2020s, 2050s and 2080s and, over longer periods of time, our best understanding of long-term coastal change to 2100, 2200 and 2500 AD. These maps can then be consulted and overlain using a computer-based geographic information system as a decision-support tool to assist in drawing-up coastal management plans, looking at the different threats that we face and the options to address their overall impact on coastal energy supply. The aim is to identify how the coastal power stations, substations and distribution grid can adapt to future climate change impacts and thus become more resilient, thus securing our energy needs as we move into a low-carbon future.
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