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Asked by to Becky, Clara, Daniel, Simon, Thomas on 13 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Simon Albright answered on 13 Mar 2014:
It depends entirely on the reaction.
Nuclear power plants cost millions of pounds but we pay for them via our electricity bills. Some nuclear reactions are used in medicine to find and treat cancers, they don’t cost as much but we do lots of them and they’re payed for by the NHS, which is payed for by our taxes. Then there are big expensive machines called spallation sources which make neutrons by firing protons into blocks of lead or other heavy metals. Spallation sources are used for research by people all over the world and the people who fund the research are the ones who pay, so some of it is private companies and some comes from governments (and therefore taxes).
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Thomas Elias Cocolios answered on 13 Mar 2014:
There are so many reactions with so many goals and ‘regimes’ that it is impossible to give a simple answer.
The electricity bill from CERN is huge (it uses as much power as 500,000 people!) so you can imagine that bill too. And there are 2,000 staff and 10,000 users.
As far as my work is concerned, I do there 2 kinds of reactions: production of radioactive isotopes from the impact of protons on a target. The target itself costs ~£20k. + people’s salaries. The second type is for my research itself. There, you need an accelerator (the new one we are building costs >£10M) and a good detector (e.g. MiniBall, costing ~£5M). However, those costs are shared between different international partners over many years. The money come from funding agences, such as the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC, who is financing the Nuclear Zone, thank you so much!), which are themselves funded by tax money. The EU contributes as well through programmes such as Horizon 2020.
Finally, my own research budget (including my salary and that of my team, my equipment, my travel, …) is £150k / year, give or take.
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Clara Nellist answered on 14 Mar 2014:
There’s a huge nuclear reaction happening for free 24 hours a day, called the sun! Our nearest star is fuelled by nuclear fusion, which is a process whereby hydrogen is turned into helium, releasing energy out into the solar system.
The research I do at CERN uses the Large Hadron Collider to smash protons (the positive particles in the nucleus of atoms) together to make a huge amount of energy that we can then use to make new particles. The LHC cost £2.8 billion to build, which is a lot of money, but it was split between many countries that all send scientists to work on the data. What the cost doesn’t tell you is if it’s worth it. Scientific reasons aside, we also get a lot back from the LHC in terms of money. Some examples are that some of the people we train there go on to do different jobs and take their skill with them. Also the companies that build things for the LHC will have learnt a lot of new techniques that they can use to make new things.
Also we do cool research and find out a lot about how the Universe works!
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Daniel Roach answered on 14 Mar 2014:
Nuclear reactors used for power generation are run by power companies, or nationalised companies in some countries. They are very, very expensive to build and they have loads of additional costs (such as waste reprocessing, safety costs, fuel costs and the cost of safely closing and cleaning up the reactor after it is no longer safe/profitable to run – called ‘decommisioning costs’). But they are also very profitable, and makes millions of pounds of profits for the companies running them. They also produce ‘carbon neutral’ energy, which is not subject to new carbon taxes, so they are a safe investment for most energy companies with the expertise necessary to build and maintain them – you can’t just buy a reactor from a shop or a catalogue – they need very complex infrastructure to be able to run, one of the most important being the skilled, educated people necessary to design, build, mantain and decomission these power stations safely.
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Becky Martin answered on 17 Mar 2014:
It depends upon your reasons for running a nuclear reaction!
If you are generating energy, then the cost of the reaction will be paid over time by the people you are providing the energy to. As Daniel said, it’s a safe investment, as people always need energy!
We also fund scientific research through organisations called research councils, at national and international levels, who pay to ensure that we investigate new ideas that could improve our understanding of the world.
There is also privately funded research and work by businesses too.
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