Nuclear @ Hinckley!

jrawle

I wonder how many of the people complaining about the construction of a new nuclear power station are on one of the EDF Blue+Price Promise tariffs?

Perhaps they should introduce special tariffs that will be cheaper as they are guaranteed not to pay towards the subsidy to meet the strike price, and are guaranteed not to use any electricity from nuclear generation. However, there would be a mechanism whereby, in the event of the grid reaching capacity, anyone on such as tariff would have their electricity cut off, enabling everyone else's supply to continue without interruption. That would be fair.

I'll certainly be sticking with my EDF Blue tariff.

Richie-from-the-Boro

lstar337 wrote: »

a.k.a PollySouthend's plan.

It's all well and good talking about pipedream technology that brings us cheap, safe energy, but we have a problem now, and all we can do is fix it with the technology we have right now.

Things already on PollySouthend's hit list:

1. Smart meters - So no way to help using load management.
2. Fracking - So we can't cheaply and securely fuel our gas fired stations.
3. Nuclear - So we can't add to our stock of ageing power stations.

So we can't have Nuclear power stations, we can't use our coal stations, and we can't supply fuel for our gas stations. What does that leave us?

Power when the wind blows (as long as it isn't too little or too much), and power during 3 summer months when the sun is in the right place.

Sounds a bit bleak to me. Since our flat is all electric, I guess we'll just die.:(

PollySouthend's muffled cry of .. .. no .. ..don't build any non-carbon generation, or even don't build any new generation of any kind completely misses the startlingly obvious. We have no [economic] power generation now and will have no [economic] power in the future unless we do something about it.

The only way to solve the problem is to build more [economic] supply (1) fracking, (2) gas and (3) nuclear (4) create a wholesale 'pool firewall' between generation and retail, and cut the costs where possible, starting with the green levy which is one of the few instant levers the GOV can pull to instantly reduce costs to the householder. Little windy-mills are useless and merely environmental bling. They spend more than half a year generating nothing while a back up of 100% using gas turbines are needed so its not free energy at all and by definition if its not free and need gas turbines whirring in the background to back it up, its not green either. The ConDems have added 50% to the green levy costs in only 2 years since coming to power, and it was the same ConDems that set the carbon floor price for the UK at 4 times higher than other European countries - this again in 2010. The CON side of the GOV are coming to grasp the ridiculousness of the situation and do something while the DEMS and Labour opposition are still Verdona on the reality of the return to a 3 day week.

The original strike price agreed by Labour was £28 billion but like all other governments they chose not to build at that time. The current strike price as others have said simply reflects reality, but at least this time someone has walked the walk - rather than just spouting from the mouth. Alcan a couple of years ago the 'fly ash' plant earlier this year and Grangemeouth just today, we can buy carbon energy stock from America at a fraction of the green generating costs, but PollySouthend does not want carbon burning power stations built either. I'm sure PollySouthend would like more subsidised solar, here you can't build a garage for your car, but you can get planning for a 300 acre solar farm by claiming 300 acres of solar will attract insect diversity - hence no planning needed.

We have no economic generation, no security of supply and no reserves of base stock. The Green Deal was a farce from the start and has all but completely collapsed and base stock world market costs are increasing month on month. The GOV / Ofgen / CMA, and the OFT are in each others pockets fleecing both the tax payers and the bill payers [should be general taxation] and all the time millions of quiet people are more and more entering the 'food or fuel this week' area. Many many people are genuinely getting into debt as a direct result of price inreases much of which is energy cost related.

Nuclear & fracking is just a start, long overdue, but a start that will improve economic generation, security of supply reserves of base stock. 125% rises to energy costs in past 6 years, energy bills will rise by 50% this decade so fracking as bad as it might become is an imperative, providing safeguards start with the protection of domestic dwellings - no drilling within 'x' of anyone's home and certainly under any one persons house I am prepared to accept that fracking, provided it brings benefits to our real economy and is not just used as a ruse for manipulating the share price of small specialist drilling companies, through the deliberate over-estimation of the available reserves of oil and gas should be explored.


It is clearly the case that if you a million tons of volume from anywhere it will collapse down into that million ton hole. The GOV's fuel poor classification is .. .. vulnerable because they include the elderly, the disabled or children, these current 4.8 million households fit GOV's definition of 'fuel poor' and the figure is set to soar. Poor people are hurting, they are disproportionately punished with the green levy [regressive] on bills rather than taxation. The poor can't afford to green their home and make it more energy efficient, 'green deal' or any deal. This cruel greedy, nasty GOV have ended free insulation. That free easy to access scheme was the only kind of help accessible to the poor of the nation that would give instant help in both cutting emissions and reducing poverty caused by the UK's leaky low standard homes. The green levy & social costs paid not by general taxation [progressive] but by a levy on each leccy bill [regressive] hurts the poorest most.

Its about time a bit of common sense was applied,we have a problem folks and no GOV has done anything for 30 years. Today, bonfire night, in addition to the Hinkley site announcement the Hartlepool power station 8 miles from me and due to close in 2 years was given a 10 year extension and a new-build nuclear station on that site by the current owners EDF after the end of the 10 year period. Hartlepool is still :

- capable
- safe
- economic

We desperately need at the very least to maintain what little generating power we have



Looking at the map, the predictions from Lord Howell of Guilford [George Osborne's father-in-law] that fracking should be carried out in the North East of England, where there are large, "desolate" areas appears to be true. Conveniently the CON's backbenchers will be relieved to know that the majority of fracking is now urban and not within their own southern leafy boundaries.

cells

ka7e wrote: »

The strike price may seem reasonable given the time scale at it will be reviewed in 7.5 and 15 years and at completion. Plenty of time to tweak the price to ensure EDF and their Chinese backers make optimum profit.

The other problem is that by the time the reactor is operational, it's technology will be outdated. The latest EPR design doesn't have an operational reactor yet, but has already been superceded by developing integral fast reactors that are actually fuelled by nuclear waste.

This is tosh

There are only 4 proven large scale techs everything else is at this stage fantasy

The LWR the Candu (HWR) the BWR amd the AGR

The AGR is the British design and it was by most accounts a commercial failure. Technically it has some merits over other designs but realistically the world...plis Britain has abandoned the design.

The world has chosen the LWR and the two prominent designs are the EPR and the APR1000. Hinckley will be an EPR design. Importantly the actual fission tech is the same as the LWR of decades ago but why fix something which isn't broken? Of coirse all the other bits of the plant will be new

DragonQ

When it takes a decade to build a reactor, they're always going to look "out of date" when complete if you're looking at the latest "on the table" technologies. That doesn't actually make them out of date though.

All of our current reactors (bar one) are Generation II. The new one will be Generation III+. Yes there are plans for Generation IV reactors but they're not expected to be ready to start building until 2030.