Positives about the new nuclear plant

cells

I've read so much negativity in the press so I thought I'd post some positives

This plant will likely have a life of 100 years with the first 35 years potentially subsidised and the other 65 years not subsidised.

This £15 billion or so investment is not a cheque to France or China. We are not buying a car which is going to be shipped to the uk with all the cost jobs and money added in those countries. Most that £15B will be spent in the uk. Most the cost is the cost of building the buildings which will be done in the UK and pay uk taxes.

This plant will employ 900 permanent staff for its entire very long life. The only realistic alternative of equivlant CCGT plants would employ closer to 150 staff. So its an additional 750 jobs and the wages and taxes they will pay

The strike price at 92.50 is high but.... energy proces are likely to rise faster thab cpi inflation simply as the rest of the world industrialise and wealth equalises. So the subsidy will most likely fall every year as cpi goes up less than wholesale prices.

The wholesale price. These two reactors sre likely to marginally decrease the wholesale price as they displace the least efficient marginal coal or gas plant. Even if wholesale prices fall just 2 percent the strike price effectively costs us 80 not 92.50

Around 20,000 jobs for a decade of construction followed by 900 permanent wellppaid jobs.

Less pollution and more lives saved. Nuclear per TWh is safer than coal solar and gas. The displaced coal plant mean less co2 but more importantly it means less of the other more dangerous crap in coal.

Saves about £400 million a year in coal/gas imports helping our balance of trade for its entire possibly 100 year life

They will generate over 27TWh annually. That is nearly enough to meet the energy needs of 9 million homes.

If they are built on time and in budget they may lead to more nuclear power stations built cheaper and quicker

So there are positives. Its certainly not as bad or simple as the press are spinning

sillygoose

By the time they are built and online (will be late and over budget of course) the population here will have soared by millions so instead of adding to capacity it will be more of an essential standing still exercise.

The money thrown at baling out some of the banks could have built our own stations without foreign involvement.

This station and many more should have been started 20 years ago. Its likely its going to be too little, too late. Candles anyone?

cells

sillygoose wrote: »

By the time they are built and online (will be late and over budget of course) the population here will have soared by millions so instead of adding to capacity it will be more of an essential standing still exercise.

The money thrown at baling out some of the banks could have built our own stations without foreign involvement.

This station and many more should have been started 20 years ago. Its likely its going to be too little, too late. Candles anyone?

There is no risk of power outages due to not enough peak generation. Plenty of CCGTs have been built over the last decade. In fact one of Europe's biggest ccgts is locsted in teesside and it is being closed becuase there is no demand for it.

The argument of 'Britain should build its own nukes' is somewhat bonkers. We are too small an eletricity consumer to be able to install many reactors. And if we are to only build 5-10 purely uk designed and uk built reactors it will be extremely expensive becuase we would not have the volume. The french and Americans built a successful industry on the back of 60+ and 110+ reactors respectively. They had the grid volume to produce and absorb lots of reactors we don't in the UK.


Also why not male the arguments for...smartphones, laptops, computer chips, TVs, cloths, everything. .....why don't we push for everything to be manufactured here?

alleycat`

I was under the distinct impression most gas turbine plants are shutting down as they are costing more to run and are making zero profit.

The issue with that is windmills, solar, et al. can't do "peak demand".

Without those plants we'll be somewhere horrible come 2020.

cells

alleycat` wrote: »

I was under the distinct impression most gas turbine plants are shutting down as they are costing more to run and are making zero profit.

The issue with that is windmills, solar, et al. can't do "peak demand".

Without those plants we'll be somewhere horrible come 2020.

Supposidly that is what is happening in Germany. Also not most gas turbines, some gas turbines

In the uk coal and old nukes have been or are going to be closed plus some older gas CCGTs

This had lead to news reports of blackout Britain but its tosh

The uk has built and commissioned plenty of new large CCGTs over the last decade. Even more importantly CCGTs are very quick to build it takes less than 3 years so even if we were in a situation where dekand picked up massively (not at all likely) power stations would be quickly deployed.

However what we have seen over the last decades or so is that peak demand has not risen but in fact fallen. One big reason is energy efficient light bulbs. Replace 100 million x 100 watt tungsten bulbs with 10 watt cfcs or leds and peak winter demand falls by 10GW.

DragonQ

alleycat` wrote: »

I was under the distinct impression most gas turbine plants are shutting down as they are costing more to run and are making zero profit.

The issue with that is windmills, solar, et al. can't do "peak demand".

Without those plants we'll be somewhere horrible come 2020.

Well it does seem a bit silly to use gas to power electricity-generating stations when we could use it to heat homes! There's only so much of it, you know...