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kristopher

(29,798 posts)
Mon Jul 11, 2016, 03:16 PM Jul 2016

UK Hinkley nuclear plant estimate skyrockets $30 billion in past year.

Estimated cost of Hinkley Point C nuclear plant rises to £37bn
Critics point to volatility of scheme but energy department says price ‘will not affect bill payers’

Terry Macalister Energy editor Thursday 7 July 2016 15.57 EDT


The total lifetime cost of the planned Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant could be as high as £37bn, according to an assessment published by the UK government. The figure was described as shocking by critics of the scheme, who said it showed just how volatile and uncertain the project had become, given that the same energy department’s estimate 12 months earlier had been £14bn.

The latest prediction comes amid increasing speculation about the future of the controversial project in Somerset, whose existence has been put in further doubt by post-Brexit financial jitters.

Hinkley has been a flagship energy project for the British government and in particular for the chancellor, George Osborne, who lobbied hard and successfully for China to take a stake in the scheme.

<snip>

... experts said the extra money, if the cost did remain at £37bn, would have to come from somewhere – probably the taxpayer – or be shaved off other DECC budgets available for different energy projects, such as windfarms and solar arrays. “This whole-life cost of £37bn is a truly shocking figure. It is an extraordinary ramp-up from last year’s figure, and just underlines how hard it is to get a real handle on the long-term cost of Hinkley,” said Paul Dorfman, senior research fellow at the Energy Institute, University College London...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/07/hinkley-point-c-nuclear-plant-costs-up-to-37bn
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kristopher

(29,798 posts)
1. Estimate of government support for Hinkley nuclear plant rises five times
Fri Jul 15, 2016, 03:21 AM
Jul 2016
Subsidy for Hinkley nuclear power station quintuples to £30bn
Estimate of government support rises five times


JULY 13, 2016 by: Andrew Ward, Energy Editor

Consumers will pay a £30bn subsidy for electricity from the proposed Hinkley Point nuclear power station — almost five times the original estimate — according to the latest projections from the National Audit Office.

The increase reflects a reduction in long-term forecasts for the wholesale cost of electricity — widening the gap between market prices and the amount promised by the UK government to EDF, the French company planning to build the plant.

Under a deal agreed in 2013, EDF will be guaranteed a price of £92.50 per megawatt hour of electricity — rising in line with inflation — as an incentive to shoulder the £18bn construction cost.

This represents a premium over the current wholesale price of about £45 per MWh and forecasts for the future size of these “top-up payments” has increased as falling fossil fuel prices has lowered long-term expectations for the cost of electricity...

https://next.ft.com/content/b8e24306-48e5-11e6-8d68-72e9211e86ab

hunter

(38,264 posts)
2. Too bad coal's nasty little sibling "natural" gas doesn't face similar hurdles.
Fri Jul 15, 2016, 03:39 PM
Jul 2016

Anti-nuclear activism is simply another flavor of climate change denial.


cprise

(8,445 posts)
4. Its an odd thing to say, given the OP
Sat Jul 16, 2016, 08:21 PM
Jul 2016

Are management, shareholders and engineers "anti-nuclear"? One could wonder...

hunter

(38,264 posts)
5. What are you implying? That I'm not a member of the anti-nuclear cult?
Sun Jul 17, 2016, 03:33 PM
Jul 2016

No, I am not a member of the anti-nuclear cult. Once upon a time... I was.

And sometimes I eat GMO foods.

I made certain my children were vaccinated too. The autistic spectrum crap I carry in my own genes predates vaccines.

I am, however, some kind of Luddite. I boycott most everything. There's a dirty $800 mid 'eighties car parked in my driveway but I don't drive much. I fill the gas tank a couple times a year, whether it needs it or not. My own garden is mostly organic. Except I do put Frontline Plus on the dogs. Yep, I am an affluent person who lives with dogs. The animal shelter was going to kill these dogs because there are always too many dogs. My wife has a soft spot in her heart for difficult dogs. Our home is sanctuary for difficult people and dogs.

Whenever there are too many people stewing in a toxic fog of ignorance, these people often start killing one another; by famine, war... that sort of thing. My own city has a problem with gangs. Young people need a place of belonging. If gentle society doesn't provide, less gentle society will.

I have to eat, I have to wear clothing. I think automobiles and guns and airlines were created by the devil.

Our modern oil-and-gas powered economy blows chunks, even when supplemented by a greenwash of solar and wind. I can see one of the world's great gas power plant complexes from my house. Solar and wind power won't make it go away. I suspect it will grow even larger as electric cars and desalinization plants increase in popularity.



The German power model is complete bullshit. Their high energy industrial economy is powered entirely by cheap, dirty coal, while smaller ratepayers subsidize the solar-and-wind greenwash. An Amory Lovins fucking paradise, right? (I remember Lovins, he was always looking for fresh new interns, interns not yet spoiled having done the math by themselves. Rather like Solar City salesmen looking for new customers. I was spoiled goods, did the math, burned through several thesis advisers, brighter stars than Lovins...)

The British powers-that-be are seeking a similar dirty system, one that substitutes fracked gas for dirty coal. Pro-nuclear forces face an uphill battle there. France has looked with greater honestly at the problem. So now has Sweden.

I don't really care one way or another. Fossil fueled climate change and increasing human populations are turning our entire world civilization into a horrible farce, an environment in which all sorts of fundamentalist anti-intellectual cults can flourish.

If I was Emperor of the Earth I'd ban fossil fuels, make sure everyone was fed, sheltered, literate, numerate, and a skilled advocate of birth control and appropriate medical care.

In such a society nuclear power might be the only option for those seeking a high energy industrial society. 24/7 power is essential for things like aluminum, copper, steel, and semi-conductor production. The furnaces semi-conductors are grown in are extremely intolerant of power fluctuations.

I'm not enthusiastic about high energy industrial economic systems. If I'm denied playing with my computers I can watch birds. Or ants. I don't care if I have a car, I don't care if I can get airline tickets, I live in a place where I don't have to heat or cool my house. Food at the farmer's markets is cheap.

One of my own knacks is computers, but I'm a terrible computer consumer because I haven't bought a new mainstream computer since Montgomery Wards was closing and I picked up a shop-worn 386 for almost nothing. (I'm not sure the $35 Raspberry Pi counts, I've used it more as an art supply, like a tube of paint...) My desktop and my laptop are both diversions from the electronic waste stream.

Please tell me why I should care about nuclear power when so many things are worse?





cprise

(8,445 posts)
6. No one pushing nuclear is aiming for lower-energy societies
Sun Jul 17, 2016, 09:58 PM
Jul 2016

No one. The political economy of creating demand goes right along with it.

Here's what also comes with nuclear:

* Paranoid police states (think 'Richard Nixon' and his successors, or the 'surprise' that France already had its population under total surveillance)
* Assumptions of endless political and environmental stability (hence, W. Europe is reducing nuclear)
* Ambitions to increase reactors to forty-fold over c.2001 levels "to meet future demand"
* Endless economic growth (now there is cult for you)
* Endless demonization of pariah countries that reach for nuclear (nuclear is "for me, not for thee&quot
* A tradition of scapegoating environmentalists for the nuclear industry's own failures
* Literally putting power and wealth into a smaller number of hands than ever; Fewer stakeholders and increased dependency

The mindset behind the promotion of highly-concentrated sources of power is not sustainable and its effects are already severe, IMO.

As for Germany's development, you may think its BS but its still driving an overall downward emissions trend in the EU. So criticisms of renewables that afford only a tiny fraction of the support and devotion that nuclear has had, and which conveniently treat European countries like island-grids, are bullshit. The rejection of pioneering development as soon as they look a little odd are bullshit--that is the Consumer (deprived or otherwise) coming out.

But I digress....

The implicit lesson in the OP is that nuclear cannot surmount problems of its own making... cannot even conceive of assigning blame within their own Too Important To Fail circle until a disaster occurs. So we have come to a juncture where the vanguard of the "nuclear renaissance" are authoritarian states--the more explicit the better. It should be no surprise.

Conversely, a western culture that has regressed to Victorian-era exploitation, corruption, oligarchy and revanchism is the exact opposite of the societal template that was supposed to shepherd the expansion of nuclear power. Technical details and potential by themselves cannot make something benign.

You want a world that can get by on a dab of renewables here, a dab of nuclear there. But without realizing it, you may be projecting your personal habits of social responsibility onto this issue. You and I both have small, old cars... So what? The culture breeds contempt of non-consumer role models as surely as it does for states not selling themselves to Wall St. People may put off buying computers and then are shamed (Intel) and bullied (Microsoft) into buying. One step forward, two steps back--and you should know that car and PC sales *are* rebounding.

Anyone with an acute sense of self-deprivation which never ceases to be re-told is, I think, not going to work as a role model. It is obviously painful and a little extreme. I'm just waiting for the punchline ('I regret voting for Jimmy Carter...').

hunter

(38,264 posts)
7. I enthusiastically supported Jimmy Carter.
Mon Jul 18, 2016, 12:51 AM
Jul 2016


Burning ANY amount of fossil fuels in an expanding economy is a death warrant for this civilization and most of the ecosystems we humans evolved in.

What we now call "economic productivity" is a direct measure of the damage we are doing to the earth's natural environment and our own human spirit.

Compare every bad nuclear powered thing, from Nagasaki to Chernobyl, to every bad fossil fuel thing and note there is no comparison. Fossil fuels are more destructive in EVERY WAY.

Day in, day out, hungry humans with guns and chainsaws and motor vehicles are more destructive than any exploding nuclear power plant.

Even if we follow the German model of economic development, expanding it to all the world, "first world" affluence for all, this world civilization still ends in flame, the oceans rising faster than we can cope, and areas inhabited by humans for many thousands of years becoming uninhabitable.

We already live in an authoritarian hell. The unemployed and the unemployable are severely punished. The angry destructive unemployable people are imprisoned, and in a very racially biased manner. The vast majority of us suffer work that's destroying us and this planet we share with so many other sentient species, the elephants, the apes, the cetaceans, the birds...

So explain to me again, why should I worry about nuclear power?

If I were to worry about any source of energy today, it would be the huge gas projects, things like the Gorgon project in Australia, or some of the horrors China is cooking up to solve their air pollution problems.

I'm not a complete pessimist, ready to pull up an easy chair and have a few beers as I watch the world burn. As DU'er Recursion has observed, the future human will live in a mega-city, and their individual environmental footprint will be smaller than yours or mine.

The details of success will be mundane. Toilets draining to modern sewage treatment plants that recycle the water and reclaim the nutrients. People walking or using electric public transportation in their daily lives, having no reason to own an automobile. Free healthcare, birth control, and education. Many ways to live a very satisfying life, even with a minimal income.

We'll figure it out, or we'll die. We're not special. The earth has witnessed many innovative species grow exponentially and then collapse, often to extinction. In a hundred thousand years this civilization will be a weird layer of trash in the geologic record.

I'm an evolutionary biologist by inclination and much formal training. I take the long view. I also have serious mental health issues, major depression accompanied by godawful nightmares, nightmares that sometimes follow me into wakefulness as hallucinations. Migraines are more tolerable, and I get those too. When my meds are not right I'm a mess, and they are not right now. I spent the other day in the hospital and I'm just now looking at the monster bruise on my arm where they stuck the needle in.



Of course I believe this gives me the ability to unflinchingly observe the world as it actually is. The world is not well, and I can't pretend wind turbines and solar panels will solve our problems.

The trouble is, and always has been, humans and our magical thinking. We live in oceans of toxins of our own making, many of them with half-lives of forever yet somehow radioactive toxins are magically worse. Too many of us believe we are the exceptional children of some crazy ass god who will take care of us if only we follow his crazy ass rules, and punish us if we don't. The earth itself doesn't hear those voices in our heads. We all live and die by the math. It's chemistry, physics, and biology. Doing the math on human population, on fossil fuels, on all the natural resources diverted for human use, leaves little room for optimism.

But it also gives us a few clues on how we might prevent our own extinction. That's the light I live in. I don't need any greenwash.

cprise

(8,445 posts)
8. So Australia, a country with major nuclear fuel export industry
Mon Jul 18, 2016, 02:36 AM
Jul 2016

...is turning to a huge natural gas project.

What a surprise, from a country where 70% of the news is from Uncle Rupert... who went to war with Labor over their carbon tax, and won. The new government's *first* order of business was repeal of the tax, then shutting down government support of climate science.

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