Reuters: No new nuclear plants likely before 2020 in Britain

[bananas]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20070820/tuk-uk-britain-nuclear-report-fa6b408_1.html

No new nuclear plants likely before 2020

Reuters - Monday, August 20 06:26 pm
By Daniel Fineren Reuters - Monday, August 20 06:26 pm

LONDON (Reuters) - No nuclear power plants are likely to be built in Britain before 2020, if they are built at all, which will be too late to fill the country's looming power generation gap, according to a report published on Monday.

The government wants the private sector to build new nuclear power plants to replace the country's ageing reactors and plug a generation shortfall left by the closure of coal-fired power plants under European environment laws.

But the report by Poyry Energy Consulting says the commercial case for building new nuclear plants is shaky and that none will be built without a higher long-term carbon price than that set by the current European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

"Despite the rhetoric, it is difficult to see much new nuclear capacity coming into the market before 2020," Poyry director Andrew Nind said.

<snip>

[bananas]

1. The deputy chairman of British Energy said the same thing last year

http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectionCode=132&storyCode=2040766

No new nukes for UK
07 December 2006

Clare Spottiswoode, deputy chairman of British Energy, has said that no new nuclear generation capacity can be expected in the UK or much of the the rest of Europe before 2020.

The comments came at a Platts energy security forum in New York where Spottiswoode was quoted as saying that, apart from France and Finland, it is "highly unlikely" that any plants will be built in the rest of Europe before 2020.

Spottiswoode added that the reason was that the rest of Europe would not undertake any new nuclear development until the UK does and it will take until at least 2020 for the UK government to put in place a proper planning regime and regulations for new construction.

With the UK’s current fleet of nuclear stations due to be all but decommissioned by then, a significant capacity crunch is looming.

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This was discussed here in January, where jpak responded with a very informative post:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=77100&mesg_id=77178
"10. Nuclear obviously cannot do the job - but renewables can and rapidly in the UK"
<snip>

[phantom power]

2. If their "logic" stems from pricing on carbon trading markets...

does that also imply that they don't plan any renewables either? I mean, there is no business case, right?

[bananas]

3. The business case for renewables is much better than for nuclear

Don't have links handy - it's all been posted before:
IPCC's last report: renewables much more economic than nuclear
CBO and independant financial analysts: risk of financial default on new plants is 50%
etc etc
This has also been pointed out by Al Gore in his policy address at NYU and during his appearance before Congress.

[hunter]

4. Undersea HVDC power links are a mature technology.

The equivalent of 3 million British homes use nuclear power supplied by France.

Let's see how far Britain can push their NIMBY...