By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
A short piece by Ross Clark in the Spectator on the looming problems at Hinkley C:
Should we be bothered that Hinckley C nuclear power station has run even further over budget (the latest estimate is £35 billion, nearly twice that quoted when the project was given the go-ahead in 2016) and that its completion date has been put back yet further, to 2031? After all, the whole point of offering French energy giant EDF a guaranteed ‘strike price’ at the then juicy rate of £92.50 per megawatt-hour (at 2013 prices, rising with inflation) was supposed to be to transfer financial risk to EDF and its financial backers. ‘It is important to say that British consumers won’t pay a penny, with the increased costs met entirely by shareholders,’ EDF’s managing director of the Hinkley project state this morning.
What if EDF threatened to cut its losses and withdraw?
I wouldn’t be so confident. Yet more delays to Hinkley C punch a huge hole in the government’s net zero plans, which include the full decarbonisation of the national grid by 2035 (Labour says it will do it by 2030). By 2028, all but one of the UK’s existing five nuclear power stations are due to close – and the other one, Sizewell B, is due to be gone by 2035. From generating nearly a third of the UK’s power at its peak in 1998 the nuclear industry could be down to virtually nothing by the time Hinckley C eventually opens.
The government simply cannot afford not to have a strong nuclear industry. It has pledged over £200 million to go into the development of small nuclear reactors – the subject of a competition now being conducted – but even if all goes well with those they will not be operational until the mid 2030s.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
January 26, 2024 at 09:24AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 