European Commission gives green light to new UK nuclear plant

Macha

In case anyone missed it, yesterday the European Commission said that UK can subsidise a new nuclear plant at Hinkley, Somerset:

Link to story

If it goes ahead (which is still unclear), it will be the most expensive nuclear plant every built. E3G, a UK-based think tank explains in this note why the UK government had plenty of other much cheaper options, including demand reduction, demand response and most importantly interconnection.

bk

I expect this is the start of a massive resurgence in Nuclear Power across Europe in response to the Russian gas crisis.

Europe needs to be energy independent and it certainly won't achieve that with solar and wind. Just look at Germany building lots of new coal burning power plants after it's policy of closing Nuclear power plants.

Macha

bk wrote: »

I expect this is the start of a massive resurgence in Nuclear Power across Europe in response to the Russian gas crisis.

The plant is expected to be online by 2025 at the very earliest. It's more likely to be 2030 or later. How that helps us with the Russian gas crisis is not clear to me, also when 3/4 of Europe's gas is used in the heating sector, not power sector.

bk wrote: »

Europe needs to be energy independent and it certainly won't achieve that with solar and wind. Just look at Germany building lots of new coal burning power plants after it's policy of closing Nuclear power plants.

No new coal plants have been announced since the nuclear phase out was planned. Germany is burning more coal like most of the rest of Europe but that's because of cheap US coal imports and the failure of the ETS to keep it out of the market.

Even the Financial Times is agreeing that the Hinkley deal sucks:

The obvious losers are the UK’s consumers who are trapped into paying a price for electricity that is double the current wholesale price for 35 years after the plant starts up. The deal will go down in history, alongside the privatisation of the Royal Mail, as an example of the inability of the British government – ministers and civil servants alike – to negotiate complex commercial deals. The phrase “rolled over” will enter the French language and be accompanied always with a Gallic smile. Still, one should recognise talent and so chapeau to the French negotiators.

Given the amount of money involved, the deal deserves a full inquiry by the House of Commons public accounts committee, and the negotiating failure deserves a comparable investigation by the PAC.

http://blogs.ft.com/nick-butler/2014/10/08/hinkley-point-the-nuclear-winners-and-losers/

Judgement Day

I thought that nuclear power was too cheap to meter. :rolleyes:

bk

Macha wrote: »

The plant is expected to be online by 2025 at the very earliest. It's more likely to be 2030 or later. How that helps us with the Russian gas crisis is not clear to me, also when 3/4 of Europe's gas is used in the heating sector, not power sector.

Sure it won't help with the immediate crisis. But the current crisis has proven that you can't be relying on energy imported from outside, in particular from Russia. Europe desperately needs to be energy independent, just as the US currently is.

It will be a long term political change, but the signs are already clear with this decision.

Even getting that 1/4 of power generated by gas would help weaken Russian influence and power. You can also reduce the reliance on gas for heating with improved insulation and even by moving the heating to electricity powered by Nuclear.

Of course it won't happen overnight, but it will happen.

Judgement Day wrote: »

I thought that nuclear power was too cheap to meter. :rolleyes:

France gets more then 80% of it's power from Nuclear:

- France has the cheapest electricity costs in Europe
- France has the lowest CO2 emissions of any developed country in the world
- France is the largest exporter of electricity in the world. It earns France 3 billion a year and it is Frances 4th largest export.

Meanwhile Germany has:

- The second most expensive electricity in Europe
- One of the highest CO2 emission rates in Europe
- Germanys CO2 emissions have been increasing every year for the past three years!!

It is very clear to me that politically, economically and most importantly environmentally France has gotten it's energy policy very right and Germany has gotten it very wrong.

Macha

bk wrote: »

Sure it won't help with the immediate crisis. But the current crisis has proven that you can't be relying on energy imported from outside, in particular from Russia. Europe desperately needs to be energy independent, just as the US currently is.

Yep.

bk wrote: »

It will be a long term political change, but the signs are already clear with this decision.

Even getting that 1/4 of power generated by gas would help weaken Russian influence and power. You can also reduce the reliance on gas for heating with improved insulation and even by moving the heating to electricity powered by Nuclear.

Of course it won't happen overnight, but it will happen.

Overnight? We're talking 2030+ to feasibly achieve replacing 1/4 gas-generated power with nuclear. Why would we waste time and money on doing it through nuclear power when you can do it faster and more cheaply through efficiency and renewables?

bk wrote: »

France gets more then 80% of it's power from Nuclear:

- France has the cheapest electricity costs in Europe

Nope, France's probably has some of the highest electricity costs in Europe when all costs, including externalities, are included. France has low electricity prices but that's because they regulate their prices to keep them artificially low. EDF is in debt to the tune of billions and Areva's debt stands at E4.415 billion. S&P is about to decide whether they will downgrade Areva debt to junk status. Moreover, the fact that EDF continues to old onto the transmission and distribution assets in France allows it to borrow at much lower rates than it otherwise would do - another indirect subsidy. EDF also enjoys huge market concentration which acts as a barrier to new entrants. The French power market is almost entirely controlled and dominated by EDF, the prices have almost no relation to the actual costs of generating that power. You can see how closely EDF's value depends on prices by what happens when the French government allows EDF to increase them (as they always want to do):

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/06/19/edf-tariffs-idUKL6N0P04RB20140619

bk wrote: »

- France has the lowest CO2 emissions of any developed country in the world

True but what about the amount of water used by nuclear and the waste issue? What about the carbon emissions involved in decommissioning and years of waste processing and disposal?

bk wrote: »

- France is the largest exporter of electricity in the world. It earns France 3 billion a year and it is Frances 4th largest export.

Yes, France has huge baseload plants that cannot be turned on or off very easily and so they continue to run regardless of French domestic electricity demand, forcing them to export or dump it. I'm not sure why you consider this a positive.

bk wrote: »

Meanwhile Germany has:

- The second most expensive electricity in Europe

In which band? Exemptions on taxes and levies for industrial consumers mean residential customers have to pay almost all of these themselves, skewing the numbers.

bk wrote: »

- One of the highest CO2 emission rates in Europe

Higher than who? And why?

bk wrote: »

- Germanys CO2 emissions have been increasing every year for the past three years!!

Yes as explained in my previous post around the role of cheap coal imports and the failure of the ETS. This is something happening across Europe, including Ireland. That's a failure of European policy, not German policy.