We told you all along : New Nuclear will be expensive, and the privatised Energy suppliers will not be interested in financing them on their own. Too big a risk.
All that capital tied up in projects that could roll on for years and years and years with no guarantee of a decent generation capacity at the end.
Building infrastructure with no assurances of a return on investment – well, in this Economic climate, it’s not going to happen. New Nuclear will need public sector finance – yet another bailout.
But the British Government, ever since their White Paper of February 2003 on the future of energy, have been stuck on the idea of New Nuclear, for one reason and another, so it had to come to this : something that looks like “negotiation” but was planned all along.
Mr Miliband Junior even hinted at it in his eulogy to the holy “trinity” of Nuclear, Carbon Capture and Renewables, why, only a few weeks ago.
Sneakily, State funding for New Nuclear was not announced with the rest of the Low Carbon Transition plan on 15th July 2009. We knew that, who was it, Malcolm Wicks, probably, was to be sent away to look into how much to promise New Nuclear from the public purse.
Now it looks like that projected November date for spilling the beans is nearly upon us. On the 16th November ? I read somewhere that the Energy companies were going to make an announcement on 16th November. No ? This news report below suggests 9th November 2009 for the announcement. We have until then to complain loudly in the Media and to our elected representatives. Although most people are way too busy to be able to spend any time doing this.
Well, OK. A feeble web log post is all I can manage : No Handout to New Nuclear ! You won’t be able to hear the voice of reason in amongst all the din of the blare of the State funding announcement.
We can get a steady baseload from 40% “penetration” into the National Grid with a variety of Wind Power schemes – just ask the engineers in the Claverton Energy Research Group. We don’t need Nuclear or “Clean”, Carbon-Captured Coal.
New Nuclear and Carbon Capture and Storage just need to go away and get buried permanently with all that radioactive waste we still have to pay to dispose of. Bad ideas. Bad expensive ideas. Bad unworkable expensive ideas.
Bring on Energy Conservation and Renewable Energy : a truly sustainable package !
“From The Times : November 7, 2009 : EDF Energy wants Britain to fix the market if it builds nuclear plants : Robin Pagnamenta, Energy Editor : British families could be forced to pay up to £227 extra on their annual energy bills to help to fund a new generation of nuclear power stations under plans proposed by the French company expected to build most of them. EDF Energy, which wants to build four reactors in Britain at a cost of about £20 billion, was accused of holding the Government to ransom last night, after an executive told The Times that none would be built unless the Government agreed to underwrite part of the cost. Speaking before a government announcement on Britain’s energy future on Monday, Humphrey Cadoux-Hudson, managing director of EDF Energy’s new nuclear business in Britain, said the nuclear programme would proceed only if the Government ensured that consumers paid more for electricity from fossil fuels, such as coal and gas, which is cheaper but produces more greenhouse gas, making nuclear more competitive. To fix the market in favour of nuclear energy he proposed a minimum price on the permits that energy companies need to buy to emit carbon dioxide. The cost of permits was too low — at about €14 per tonne — for energy companies to be encouraged to invest in nuclear rather than gas-fired power stations, which are far cheaper and quicker to build. He said that a price of €25-35 per tonne of carbon dioxide was necessary to make construction ofnuclear stations profitable. “A floor price for carbon is needed … The waste product of fossil fuel generation needs to have a cost,” he said…”