• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’ January 23, 2023
Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom January 23, 2023
IRON OXIDE: New Battery Brings Long-Duration Storage to Grids, 750 Jobs to West Virginia January 23, 2023
BREAKING: GFANZ Banks, Investors Pour Hundreds of Billions into Fossil Fuels January 17, 2023
Next
Prev

UK’s nuclear ‘white elephant’ stumbles

July 29, 2016
Reading time: 5 minutes
Primary Author: Paul Brown

 

Celebrations by the nuclear industry planned for today have been cancelled following the shock decision by Britain to put the world’s largest electricity project on hold.

LONDON, 29 July, 2016 − The British government astonished the nuclear industry late last night by refusing to go ahead with plans to build the world’s largest nuclear plant until it has reviewed every aspect of the project.

  • Concise headlines. Original content. Timely news and views from a select group of opinion leaders. Special extras.
  • Everything you need, nothing you don’t.
  • The Weekender: The climate news you need.
New!
Subscribe

The decision was announced hours after a bruising meeting of the board of the giant French energy company EDF, at which directors decided by 10 votes to seven to go ahead with the building of two 1,600 megawatt reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset, southwest England.

One director, Gerard Magnin, had already resigned in protest before the meeting, saying the project was “very risky”. All six union members, who are worker directors, said they were going to vote against because they believed that any new investment should be directed at making ageing French reactors safer.

So certain were EDF that a signing ceremony with the British government would take place today to provide the company with 35 years of subsidies for their electricity that they had hired marquees, invited the world’s press and laid in stocks of champagne to toast the agreement.

Myriad voices

But EDF chief executive Vincent de Rivaz, who had pushed for the deal, cancelled a trip to Britain on hearing the government announcement.

Britain’s new prime minister, Theresa May, who had never publicly endorsed the project like her predecessor David Cameron, has clearly heeded the myriad voices outside the nuclear industry that say this is a bad deal for British consumers.

Her new business and energy secretary, Greg Clark, in a brief statement, said the decision was deferred until “early autumn” while the “government reviews all the component parts of the agreement” to build what is the most expensive power plant the world has ever seen.

Hinkley Point C, as the new station would have been called, is estimated by the company to cost £18 billion, take nine years to build, and provide 7% of the UK’s electricity via two 1,600 megawatt reactors.

This is a new type of reactor, of which four are being built − one at Olkiluoto in Finland, one at Flamanville in France, and two in China. All are years behind schedule and costs in France and Finland have trebled. None are expected to produce power until 2018, although what is happening in China is not clear.

Because of these delays, the French were not actually going to start pouring concrete for construction until 2019, and there were already severe doubts that the timetable proposed by the French for Hinkley Point could be met.

“Countless experts have warned that for British families this power station will be
terrible value for money”

Some have even suggested that the delays elsewhere have shown that the design is flawed and that the reactors may never work efficiently. This may concern the British government, but the sticking point is more likely to be the staggeringly high cost that consumers will have to pay for electricity produced by the plants.

In 2012, the previous government agreed to pay £92.50 for each megawatt hour of electricity produced − a price that would rise with inflation.

With wholesale prices going down, that is already three times the current price of electricity and it is calculated that it would cost every bill payer in Britain £10 a year for 35 years just to keep the station open – and it could be more.

If Theresa May is anything like her predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, who did not think nuclear power was value for money, the project will be in jeopardy.

EDF already runs 15 ageing nuclear reactors in Britain and was looking to build the two at Hinkley and another two in Essex to replace the old ones as they close down. The Chinese, Japanese and Americans were being encouraged to build reactors in other parts of England and Wales. All these look less likely now.

The problem for nuclear power is that new stations cost billions to build and take a decade before they get any income back. This has brought EDF huge debts and borrowings, which has put the company in financial difficulty − hence the internal controversy about the Hinkley decision.

Claire Jacobson, head of climate, energy and environment policy at EEF, the British manufacturers’ lobby group that supports the nuclear industry, said the government’s decision was “yet another blow to a decision that has been hindered by many delays and uncertainties”.

Emissions targets

Tom Greatrex, chief executive of the Nuclear Industries Association, warned that failure to go ahead with the project would risk the lights going out and missing the country’s carbon emissions reduction targets. He said ministers “need to act quickly to endorse the decision [to go ahead]”.

However, critics of the controversial project were delighted. John Sauven, the executive director of Greenpeace, said: “Theresa May now has the chance to stop this radioactive white elephant in its tracks.

“She should look at the evidence and see that this deal would be a monumental disaster for the taxpayers and the bill payers. Countless experts have warned that for British families this power station will be terrible value for money.”

Until last night, the UK was the most positive country in Europe about nuclear power and planned to build a total of 10 nuclear power plants, Hinkley Point being the first of them. This was despite the fact that nuclear costs continue to escalate while its main competitors − renewables of all kinds − fall in price.

The Hinkley Point project is now more expensive than offshore wind power, which is the most expensive renewable, and is far more costly than solar and onshore wind. Biogas and small-scale hydro projects in Britain, all so far underdeveloped, are also cheaper than nuclear.

Safety fears

The price of all renewables is going down as they develop, while the price rises for nuclear power, with safety fears and threats from terrorism pushing costs up.

It is also argued, even by the UK’s national electricity grid, that the day of the large power plant is over, to be replaced by small local generators providing electricity near to homes and factories − something that renewables are ideally suited for.

Even France, which has 58 reactors, and is building a Hinkley prototype at Flamanville in Normandy, has no plans to build any more. All its new energy projects are renewables, and it has plentiful supplies of untapped wind and solar power, which are cheaper.

China, which is currently building more nuclear plants that any other country, is also hoping to build new plants in Britain, and China General Nuclear Power had agreed to fund one-third of the Hinkley Point project to get an entry to the UK market.

They were due to be at the celebrations in Somerset today, but in a statement said: “We respect the new government’s need to familiarise itself with a project as important to the UK’s future energy policy as Hinkley Point C and we stand ready to help the government in this respect.” They then flew home. – Climate News Network

● The Climate News Network daily service will be closed from today for some technical website modification work. We will be back on Monday, 15 August.



in Climate News Network

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

U.S. Geological Survey/wikimedia commons
Biodiversity & Habitat

Climate Change Amplifies Risk of ‘Insect Apocalypse’

December 1, 2022
42
Alaa Abd El-Fatah/wikimedia commons
COP Conferences

Rights Abuses, Intrusive Conference App Put Egypt Under Spotlight as COP 27 Host

November 14, 2022
26
Western Arctic National Parklands/wikimedia commons
Arctic & Antarctica

Arctic Wildfires Show Approach of New Climate Feedback Loop

January 2, 2023
27

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

RL0919/wikimedia commons

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.1k
@tongbingxue/Twitter

Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’

January 23, 2023
270
Rachel Notley/Facebook

Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom

January 23, 2023
255
James Vincent Wardhaugh/flickr

Canada Sidelines Ontario’s Ring of Fire, Approves Separate Mining Project

December 4, 2022
379
United Nations

Salvage of $20B ‘Floating Time Bomb’ Delayed by Rising Cost of Oil Tankers

January 27, 2023
13
Weirton, WV by Jon Dawson/flickr

IRON OXIDE: New Battery Brings Long-Duration Storage to Grids, 750 Jobs to West Virginia

January 23, 2023
493

Recent Posts

EcoAnalytics

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
188
Sergio Boscaino/flickr

Dubai Mulls Quitting C40 Cities Over ‘Costly’ Climate Target

January 24, 2023
84
hangela/pixabay

New UK Coal Mine Faces Two Legal Challenges

January 24, 2023
43

Gas Stoves Enter U.S. Climate Culture War, Become ‘Bellwether’ for Industry

January 22, 2023
73
Jeff Hitchcock/flickr.

BREAKING: GFANZ Banks, Investors Pour Hundreds of Billions into Fossil Fuels

January 23, 2023
494

Exxon Had the Right Global Warming Numbers Through Decades of Denial: Study

January 17, 2023
223
Next Post

Cambodia Joins List of Countries Reconsidering Big Hydro

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}