Had Labour done it, the Tories would be screaming bloody murder. I am, of course, talking about the deal with the Chinese to build two nuclear power stations. If the Tories really were standing up for Britain, from a national security perspective it beggars belief that key national infrastructure be handed over to a power they would ordinarily be opposed to. But these are not ordinary times, and for Dave and Osborne, they are quite prepared to do anything to be China’s best friend in the West. Continue reading
Tagged with Nuclear power
Is Hinkley C the turning point against nuclear power in Britain?
Despite the government’s constant assertion that funding is impossibly tight and that any departure for a rigid status quo by the Labour party is unaffordable, there seems to be no limit to government subsidies gushing into the doomed nuclear project at Hinkley in Somerset.
Last year the government offered the French energy company EDF the contract to build a third nuclear power station paid for by increases in electricity bills over 35 years and Treasury-backed loans. Now confidence in the project is evaporating as it is increasingly realised that the same construction problems, delays and spiralling costs which have devastated EDF’s building similar nuclear plants at Olkiluoto in Finland and Flammanville in France will hit Hinkley C in the UK. Centrica, which was supposed to be a joint partner with EDF, pulled out. Continue reading
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Nuclear power is turning out badly: why is the government clinging to it?
The news for nuclear gets worse every day. The latest news is that the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant in Somerset, the government’s flagship nuclear project is near the point of collapse. After Ed Davey, the LibDem secretary of state (there was a time before they joined the government in 2010 that the LibDems were solidly against nuclear) waved through the most expensive power station in history, and then the EU Commission suspiciously decided that the huge financial concessions (bribes?) offered to EDF did not mysteriously constitute an illegal state aid, it now looks as though Areva, the French designer of the reactor and the only company that can provide the equipment, is in a state of free fall. Continue reading
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Nuclear gets a glowing review
One major reason why UK governments fail to advance the drive towards renewables, with which Britain is uniquely endowed, is the colossal burden of the nuclear legacy. The nuclear clean-up now swallows up about tw0-thirds of the entire DECC budget. Sellafield alone costs £1.7bn a year, almost as much as the nearly £2bn spend supporting renewable energy in 2013. A month ago the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) awarded a £7bn contract to decommission 12 more of Britain’s oldest reactor sites over a 14-year period to a UK-US consortium. During the whole nuclear saga stretching back to Britain’s entry into nuclear bomb-making in the 1940s and into nuclear power in the 1950s, the costs of decommissioning were constantly underestimated. Even as recently as 2009 the costs of decommissioning Sellafield were reckoned to be £47bn, yet the latest estimate is now over £70bn, and rising. The impact on energy policy and government spending is literally draining. Continue reading
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Who trusts Cameron to keep the lights on?
So Britain’s first major nuclear power station construction in a generation – at Hinckley – is to come courtesy of the French state owned EDF energy company and Chinese state owned interests. In return for providing up to 7% of Britain’s energy needs, the French and Chinese will be guaranteed fixed rate electricity price deals, which are double current prices.
This jaw-dropping deal has been trumpeted by David Cameron and George Osborne with the sort of platitudes that a Sixth form student can see through. For, if it all goes belly-up, and if Messrs Cameron and Osborne have got their sums wrong, British consumers will end up helping to subsidise French taxpayers and the Chinese state by paying through the nose for energy for years to come. Continue reading
