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Britain’s clean energy cut, as nuclear costs spiral out of control

will see it reduce spending on support for genuinely clean energy projects.

Nuclear costs spiral as clean energy budgets face axe,  Left Foot Forward, 2 June 2010, Once again, evidence is mounting that the cost to Britain of nuclear power is spiralling. The new energy secretary, Chris Huhne, has briefed The Guardian this morning that he has inherited a “£4 billion black hole in unavoidable nuclear decommissioning and waste costs”.

The newspaper reports that the black hole is “equivalent to wiping out one sixth of the overall cuts in public spending identified by the Treasury with such fanfare last week”.
The extravagant costs to the taxpayer of supporting the nuclear industry are particularly shocking given the cuts that the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is about to embark upon, which will see it reduce spending on support for genuinely clean energy projects.

Despite a recent YouGov poll showing two thirds of people want investment in clean energy to increase, an unfair and disproportionate bulk of DECC’s anticipated cuts are expected to come from funds dedicated to supporting green technologies and the new clean energy industry, such as the Environmental Transformation Fund.

Meanwhile, whilst of course there will be some unavoidable expenditure associated with safely dealing with Britain’s nuclear plant legacy, right now the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is spending profligately and is expected to face only negligible cuts of less than 1 per cent of its budget.

Nuclear costs spiral as clean energy budgets face axe | Left Foot Forward

June 3, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | renewable, UK | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear spin, nuclear wastes, radioactive, reactors, renewable energy, uranium