nuclear-news

UK government and its crazy economics of a plutonium Mox nuclear plant

“This is crazynomics – the reality is that the nuclear fairytale is a nuclear nightmare. Having announced the closure of a Mox plant because it was colossally inefficient and because there was no market for its service, the government now wants to build another one that will fast become a hugely expensive white elephant.

Mox plant U-turn by coalition stuns anti-nuclear campaigners, Guardian UK, Terry Macalister, 2 Dec 11 Having closed down a massively loss-making mixed-oxide fuel
reprocessing plant at Sellafield, the government amazes Greenpeace by proposing to build a new one

The government has astonished the anti-nuclear lobby by outlining plans to spend £3bn of public money building a new mixed-oxide fuel (Mox) plant – months after announcing the closure of a similar facility that lost taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds…..

The statement angered green campaigners, who noted that the first Mox plant at Sellafield in Cumbria had been plagued by financial and operating problems. Its original cost was £250m but by 2004 it had cost £600m.

But the Department of Energy and Climate Change brushed aside the poor track record in its new policy document published on Thursday….

Douglas Parr, policy director at Greenpeace UK, said the government’s plans made no sense at a time of squeezed public spending and worries about funding solar and wind plants.

He said: “This is crazynomics – the reality is that the nuclear fairytale is a nuclear nightmare. Having announced the closure of a Mox plant because it was colossally inefficient and because there was no market for its service, the government now wants to build another one that will fast become a hugely expensive white elephant.

“This proposal will lead to a subsidised plant creating subsidised fuel so that subsidised operators can produce subsidised electricity and then receive subsidised waste disposal. The only winners in this are the nuclear operators, already rich with their 18% domestic fuel
price rises this year.”

The government has been cutting budgets for solar power, triggering a warning from builder Carillion that it expected to lay off 4,500 staff.

The Environment Agency’s former chief scientist, Jan Pentreath, said in October 1998 that the agency would never have sanctioned the original Mox plant’s construction had officials been asked for a licence in advance.

He said he would ask for a change in the law so that in future theagency could prevent “taxpayers’ money being spent on speculative ventures
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/01/mox-u-turn-stuns-nuclear-campaigners?newsfeed=true

December 3, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | - plutonium, politics, UK