The Energy Bill is looking more and more like a dead political duck to me.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5f27...9a.html#axzz2I46UJBMY

"EDF says the EPR is too expensive and complicated for many customers and that smaller reactors will account for much of future demand."

There will be no EPR nuclear station built and commissioned in this country now, that is now clear. Hinkley point C may have been started, but it will never ever get finished.

If parliament allowed 30 year CfD's, to be agreed now in secret negociations in "smoke filled rooms" by the small band of old nuclear fanatics, it would mean all political aspiration toward a free market in energy generation in Britain is effectively killed off for at least another 50 years into the future.

The cost of the Energy Bill is not just monetary it is political as well.

James Arathoon

I would add that the FT article may be factually wrong. The writer asserts that the cost of a MWhr from on-shore wind is more than 70 - 80Euros. Data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (April 2012) suggests that it is around Euro50/MWhr (= LCOE). This calls into question two things: 1) why are we still providing ROCs to new wind siystems of 1MW+ (given they now have price parity with CCGTs) 2) if the UK has the best wind resource in Europe why not exploit this on a very large scale and focus subsidies away from nuclear and on to, for example interconnectors and off-shore (and perhaps storage).

According to rumours circulated by Mark Leftly in the independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/n...ice-deal-8466336.html

and utility week etc

http://www.utilityweek.co.uk/n...%26%23163%3B100%2FMWh

DECC is close to agreeing a strike price with EDF for new Nuclear energy of between £95/MWh and £99.50/MWh, with confirmation of the exact details behind the deal in March this year.

Importantly we don't know the exact timescales for the proposed CfD's yet or if EDF is demanding extra money or guarantees from the UK tax payer to cover the inevitable contruction cost overruns etc..

DECC is starting rumours to tell us that it plans to buy Nuclear baseload electricity for a price no lower than offshore wind and likely with a framework of much longer fixed price "contracts".

I am willing to predict that the Energy Bill (perhaps even including the ONR clauses) will be in the waste paper recycling bin within a few weeks of the new permanent secretary starting his job (4th February 2013). He will be probably be flying over to America with the minister signing up for some extra shale gas supplies instead.

James Arathoon

ah yes, the 'levelised cost' which ignores the cost of connecting remote windfarms to the grid and providing 24/7 conventional spinning reserve, inefficiently ramping up and down for 70% of the time when the windfarm is producing nothing. Ignores the cost to local people and businesses who's lives are blighted by hundreds of 200m tall industrial bird blenders ruining their environment.

'Levelised cost' which loads a bunch of fictional costs onto conventional power like the 'cost of carbon' and reparations to developing countries for the non-existent damage done by non-existent global warming. What a load of nonsense. If you pay a bunch of activist accountants to sit around inventing ways to fudge the numbers to make medieval windmills look financially attractive, it's amazing the rubbish they can come up with.

One of the biggest problems for the nuclear industry is the risk of politically/ideologically motivated changes in legislation.
Would you want to install a facillity with a planed 60 year life when there is a risk of having it shut down due to green lobbying as in Germany and Switzerland?
I wait to see if UNSCEAR are allowed to fully publish their latest report that says that the risks of low dose radiation have been greatly overstated.

http://www.world-nuclear-news....n_advice_1012121.html

http://www.nature.com/news/fuk...doses-tallied-1.10686

Best regards

Roger

The biggest problem at the moment for the EPR is cost...Chinese investors might not like what they see either a few months down the line.

"Centrica withdraws from new UK nuclear projects"

"British Gas owner's unexpected exit - blamed on rising costs and construction delays - clears way for Chinese investors"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/envi...-new-nuclear-projects


James Arathoon

And a significant cause of increased costs and construction delays is over regulation.

If I bought a little granite statue at the local garden centre and took it and put it on my desk in a NPP it would have to be removed as radioactive waste. Is this sense of politcal/ideological interference?

As the Nature article states, most of the Fukushima health issues are due to stress from the scaremongering rather than radiation. Similar results were reported from Chernobyl.

Best regards

Roger

The over regulation is due to the fact that the current batch of nuclear power stations do not fail safe when they lose power. It reflects that the public do not trust the engineers designing these systems.

The flawed design methodology adopted (functional safety systems) does not allow the probability of failure to be calculated accurately; precise theoretical figures are obtained which are normally found to be orders of magnitude in error in practice.

Allowing inceased dumping radioactive materials into the environment will not reduce costs for Gen 3 reactors, as it does nothng to stop the big accidents from happening. Completely revamping the engineering design methodologies used to design nuclear power plant is ultimately the only sure way of reducing costs long term.

James Arathoon

If we are talking about costs there is also the cost of looking after the end product of nuclear power generation, nuclear waste.
Has the fig leaf fallen off the "Nuclear Renaissance?


**Sellafield**

The Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public
Accounts, today said: "An enormous legacy of nuclear waste has been
allowed to build up on the Sellafield site. Over decades, successive
governments have failed to get to grips with this critical problem, to
the point where the total lifetime cost of decommissioning the site
has now reached £67.5 billion, and there's no indication of when that
cost will stop rising. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority believes
that its decommissioning plan is credible but it has not been
sufficiently tested and uncertainties remain - not least around what
precisely is in the waste that lies in the legacy ponds and silos.

Parliament 4th Feb 2013

James,

I agree that are current generation of reactors are not optimal, being incremental developments of military plutonium generators. Having sensible dose limits greatly reduces the impact of accidents if they do occur and simplifies the handling and processing of spent fuel.

However until there is sensible regulation and LNT and collective dose are replaced by a reasonable threshold there will be problems in getting funding for new nuclear reactor systems, pebble bed, travelling wave, thorium etc.

poo,

The cost of disposal and remediation is fairly directly related to the levels that you have to achieve. As long as the greens continue shooting themselves in the foot by demanding ever smaller dose limits the spent nuclear fuel will remain above ground and a good source of low carbon energy will be denied to us.

Best regards

Roger

World best practice is to encase intermediate and high level nuclear waste in concrete or glass and store it for several hundred/ thousand years in an underground repository. The trouble is every county, even Cumbria has rejected a repository. Where do you go from there?

The past week has not been a good time for those wedded to a resurgent UK nuclear renaissance. This week Centrica decided there's too much risk involved. It remains unconvinced by the sums. So it's walking away from having a stake in EDF Energy's new nuclear programme. And last week Cumbria County Council drove a coach and horses through the administration's nuclear waste strategy, one concocted by Labour and embraced by the present incumbents. That strategy relied on two questionable assumptions. First, that communities existed who wanted to host a multi-billion pound repository in which radioactive waste and spent fuel could be safely buried deep underground. And second that the local geology was suitable. Cumbria decided that having a repository in its backyard was not worth the candle. As a result the government is left with no obvious host community. The administration's policy principles of "voluntarism and a community-led approach" are now looking very threadbare indeed. Its nuclear waste management strategy is in tatters. There is no Plan B. In fact it gets a tad worse. The Government, in its wisdom, decided that the process for the development consent for Hinkley C, planned as the first of the new breed of nuclear stations, need not consider the nuclear waste issue on the grounds that had been taken care of. Manifestly that is not the case now. If Barker approves Hinkley C next month that decision will surely face a judicial review in the light of the hopelessly flawed radioactive waste management policy context. Later this week (on Thursday) the Government will get an earful from some MPs over subsidies for new nuclear (and the existing stations). Ironically, rebooting both the electricity market and the planning system has failed to make nuclear power bankable, loveable or a commercial shoe in. And remember it's still not clear whether the European Commission is prepared to view long-term contracts for difference as anything other than protracted state-aid. What nuclear spring? It's still definitely nuclear winter.

Utility Week 5th Feb 2013

We also have that kind of problem here in our place. We are the very source of the electricity in our Province but sad to say we are one of the most expensive electricity payers here in the country. I dont know what exactly these politicians have been doing for the fact that we are the source then we still have that highest amount of EPR. Were hoping to resolve this issues because we are really affected by the current standing we are facing! lemonade dietlemonade diet

Until the hype/lies from the anti-nuclear groups is discredited the public will be unlikely to support the neccessary nuclear facilities. Another simiar viewpoint:

http://www.nucleartownhall.com...sure-ever-make-sense/

"You have to wonder how there can be a scientific issue of extreme public importance where the disputing parties differ by about 10,000 orders of magnitude."

At least people agree that the climate has changed, is changing and will continue to change even if the causes are disputed.

Best regards

Roger

That this House notes that both the Coalition Agreement and numerous
ministerial statements have committed the Government to provide no
public subsidy to new nuclear; further notes that negotiations are
currently ongoing between the Department of Energy and Climate Change
and new nuclear suppliers to fix the strike price in advance of the
legislation on energy market reform; is concerned by wider issues of
subsidy and transparency and in particular that this process pre-empts
the legislation; is further concerned that new evidence suggests that
this constitutes an unjustifiable subsidy to a mature industry; and
therefore calls on the Government to pause the process so that the
Public Accounts Committee can examine whether the contract for
difference being offered for new nuclear power generation offers
genuine value for money.

House of Commons Debate 7th Feb 2013

http://www.parliament.uk/busin...ates/read/unknown/436/