George Monbiot is Right/Wrong

EricMears

The points that ought to be on this page seem to have been misplaced on the news page !

Martyn1981

Well Xmas came early for George, and under the tree was the very thing he'd been nagging his parents for, for years.

He unwrapped it, looked at the plans for two new reactors at Hinckley ......... and ......... threw a great big strop because it wasn't what he wanted:

The farce of the Hinkley C nuclear reactor will haunt Britain for decades
We need nuclear power. But the government has plumped for outdated technology at the worst price imaginable

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/21/farce-hinckley-nuclear-reactor-haunt-britain

Now, I've been saying for nearly two years that GM is being hypercritical with his anti-PV / pro-nuclear stance. He has stated that PV subsidies are too high. But at the same time argued that AGW is such a serious problem we should use nuclear, even if we don't like it since it brings a large amount of baseload generation to the table (an argument I actually agree with). I've claimed this is hypercritical given the similarities between nuclear and PV subsidies (and wind also).

So what went wrong?

Well, he apparantly was working on nuclear costing a couple of pence per kWh, and the deployment of GenIV reactors that have yet to be built successfully and/or licensed.

I was working on the roll-out of GenIII reactors at a subsidy cost of between 13p for 20 years and 6p for 40 years. The 6p equating to a CfD of £100/MWh with an assumed £40 average grid price. The proposed £93/MWh CfD for 35 years, with a grid price closer to £45, is actually quite a bit less than I expected.

So why the difference, where did I get my inside info from? Well just between you and me (and don't tell anyone else) it was from numerous articles printed in the Guardian, a paper which GM apparently writes for, but doesn't read!

Perhaps this explains his odd attitude towards PV.

For background, and to compare, the nuclear CfD is to be index linked so will rise as we near 2023/2025 when the reactors may come on line.

The wind and PV CfD's (paid for 15 years) are:-
Offshore wind £155 2014 falling to £135 in 2019
Onshore wind £100 2014 falling to £95 in 2019
PV £125 2014 falling to £110 in 2019

Hydro £95 and biomass £105 2014 to 2019.

PV FiTs much harder to calculate as many things could happen, but if we just see the minimum degression of 3.5% every 9 months, and an export price of perhaps 7p/2 in 2023 then it works out at about 12.5p.

So all pretty much the same.

But I'm sure it's far more complex than this, and I'm bound to have missed a lot of things.

Mart.

JamesMc69

George is wrong on nuclear issue - nuclear is the most costly technology we have when you consider waste management and the insurance issues with it.

Much better that we invest heavily in renewables and gas as well as carbon capture and storage.

We can roll these technologies out relatively quickly and cut our carbon emission much more efficiently this way.