nuclear-news

UK’s supposedly ‘private sector’ nuclear power plan is falling apart

Meanwhile, those still interested in financing, building and operating the proposed new reactors are falling like nine pins.

So much of the risk is being transferred to the customer and the taxpayer that you begin to wonder what the point of a private sector solution is in the first place…..

UK is haring off down the wrong path on new nuclear power plants Telegraph, 3 Oct 12 In a recent blog, Sir Bernard Ingham, former press secretary to Margaret Thatcher, posed an important question: do we want nuclear at any price? By Jeremy Warner,
Sir Bernard is an avid supporter of new nuclear build, so the answer he invites – no – is all the more significant. Much of Britain’s existing stock of nuclear generating capacity is due
to be de-commissioned over the next decade, and as things stand, we still don’t really know what’s going to replace it. The moment of truth gets ever closer…

.. the subsidy demanded by potential operators via guaranteed charges is heading for the stratosphere, threatening to lock-in high energy prices for generations to come. You
can argue the toss about whether a guaranteed price amounts to a “public subsidy”, but most consumers, faced with a nuclear surcharge, would certainly think it does. For them, the quarterly utility bill is tantamount to a tax; you have little alternative but to pay it.

Meanwhile, those still interested in financing, building and operating the proposed new reactors are falling like nine pins. This week alone we’ve seen another two once interested parties effectively throw in the towel. The Franco Chinese consortium of Areva and China Guangdong
Nuclear Power confirmed yesterday that it has ditched its bid to build
reactors in Anglesey and Gloucestershire, while retrenchment at
Iberdrola, badly hit by the gathering financial crisis in Spain, may
well have scuppered plans for new reactors in Cumbria……
The upshot is that a once crowded line up of interested foreign
investors has shrunk down to just one fully committed participant –
EDF – and even in this case, the French utility giant’s British
partner, Centrica, has said that it can’t take part unless satisfied
that all financial risks have been removed.
This is not surprising when you see what’s happened to the cost of
nuclear power stations. Rewind to where all this began some four or
five years ago under the last government and you find a nuclear lobby
which in its pomp did indeed believe that it could finance and build
new nuclear power stations at predicable and reasonable cost. All that
was needed, Vincent de Rivaz, head of EDF’s UK operation, once
confidently told me, was a floor price for carbon, and nuclear could
be competitive with any other source of power generation. It could
therefore be easily financed.
Since then, the bar has been raised steadily higher, so that today,
nobody would be willing to go ahead unless there is a guaranteed price
per se for nuclear output at least comparable with other forms of
carbon free generation such as offshore wind……
EDF is looking for cast iron and irreversible guarantees before so
much as laying the first slab of concrete. Future governments would be
equally bound, whatever happened in the meantime.
Just recently, there has also been talk of the Government being asked
to underwrite the risk of cost over-runs in construction too. So much of the risk is being transferred to the customer and the taxpayer that you begin to wonder what the point of a private sector solution is in the first place…..

October 4, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general