Uncertainty on costs of UK’s new nuclear power project
UK nuclear power plant contract: £80bn deal or no deal? Fiona Harvey and Patrick WintourThe Guardian, Monday 21 October 2013 Political parties and industry groups welcome low-carbon project as academics and campaigners question cost and waste. The British energy secretary, Ed Davey, has signed the first new nuclear contract with French state-backed utility firm EDF, admitting only a clairvoyant could know the true cost to the taxpayer of the 35-year contract because of the uncertainty of future energy prices.
Energy academics said on Monday that the deal was a gamble, but estimated the cost would be at least £80bn over the life of the two new reactors to be built in Somerset, or roughly £3.5m a day for each reactor at current rates. The cost will depend on how energy prices move over the next 30 years.
Ministers made it clear that future governments would be locked into the contract, set to run until 2058, or face large penalties to compensate EDF. The Treasury has also been forced to offer loan guarantees to underwrite the finance for the investment, which is being undertaken by a consortium of French and Chinese investors.
The contract – which was signed as npower became the third major energy supplier to announce inflation-busting price rises – attracted strong criticism from some environmental groups, who said the price was excessive and the issue of waste unresolved….
The coaliton agreement signed in 2010 opposed providing nuclear industry with any public subsidy, a position reaffirmed by the Liberal Democrats at their conference this autumn. The conference also ended the party’s opposition in principle to nuclear power……
David Boyle, a Lib Dem adviser to Nick Clegg, said: “Everyone knows that nuclear energy would be impossible without some kind of guarantee, and I seriously doubt whether EDF will ever make money even on that one. But that was not what we promised ourselves, let alone anyone else. The party’s embarrassing new policy repeats the same glib non-position – no nuclear subsidies – when that is precisely what is now being agreed.”…..
Antony Froggatt, from the Chatham House thinktank, said EDF’s costs projection had already increased markedly. “In 2006, its submission to the government’s energy review stated [the type of reactor to be used, a European pressurised water reactor] would cost £28.80 per megawatt-hour in 2013 values,” he said. “This more than threefold increase [to £92.50], over eight years, puts the cost of nuclear electricity at about double the current market rate – higher than that produced by both gas and coal-fired power stations, and more costly than many renewable energy options.”
Projects to build new reactors in France, Finland and elsewhere have run into delays and cost increases………. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/21/uk-nuclear-power-plant-contract-deal-no-deal
Conspiracy theorists working hard against United Nations
“Here’s the simple truth. The U.N. does not do anything that its member countries don’t want to do. Period. There is no such thing as the U.N. being a super-national authority imposing anything on governments. It just doesn’t exist…..All the U.N. does is provide a platform for conversations and an exchange of views.… But there’s no such thing as the U.N. imposing any regulation.”
Debunking the U.N. Climate-Change Conspiracy, http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/debunking-the-u-n-climate-change-conspiracy-20131021 By Coral Davenport
The United Nations Climate-Change Conspiracy Theory—the idea that human-caused global warming is a false construct invented by the U.N. to justify government control of economies and people’s daily lives—is alive and well in the United States.
The flames of the theory were freshly fanned last month after the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a landmark report concluding with 95 percent scientific certainty that burning fossil fuels are warming the planet, with dangerous consequences.
The report “proves that the U.N. is more interested in advancing a political agenda than scientific integrity,” said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., author of the book The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future. Inhofe is far from alone. Around the country, Republican lawmakers, bloggers, and even some local TV weathercasters panned the report as further evidence of the U.N.’s plans to use allegedly false climate data to justify a global takeover.
So what do the U.N.’s top officials make of this?….. Continue reading
Slowly developing radiation disaster in the Pacific Ocean
Washington Post: It’s an environmental disaster, radioactivity levels in ocean hundreds of times above normal — NHK: Countries around Pacific worried about ongoing Fukushima leaks, gov’t wants testing up to 3,000 km offshore (VIDEO)http://enenews.com/washington-post-its-an-environmental-disaster-radioactivity-levels-hundreds-of-times-above-normal-in-pacific-nhk-countries-worried-about-fukushima-leaks-govt-wants-testing-up-to-3000-km-of
NHK WORLD, Oct. 22, 2013: […] Japan’s effort to clean up what remains of the complex is turning into another kind of disaster. […] 400 tons of toxic groundwater is flowing daily into the Pacific Ocean […] the flow of radioactive water amounts to a slow-burning environmental disaster with implications for Japan’s wildlife and its food chain. […] The coastal Fukushima plant is on an old riverbed […] rainfall from across the region would funnel toward the plant […] Both the government and Tepco say the ocean contamination is confined mostly to a man-made harbor around the plant. But some scientists say that assurance plays down significant long-term concerns about marine life and the food chain. Cesium levels are still hundreds of times the pre-accident norm in areas beyond the harbor, said Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who has monitored waters around the nuclear plant, most recently last month. […] “It’s a serious concern for internal doses. (Radionuclides) are now on the seafloor and could stay in the food chain for years, if not decades.” […]
NHK WORLD, Oct. 21, 2013: [Tepco] has announced plans to monitor offshore radiation around the clock […] many experts have been calling for 24-hour monitoring to allow faster responses to unexpected leaks and provide a clearer idea of how much water has escaped. […] The nuclear regulators have proposed expanding the offshore monitoring from the current 300 kilometers to between 1,000 and 3,000 kilometers. […] the agency will ask the operators of oceangoing vessels to collect data for northern Pacific Rim countries that are worried about radioactive leaks.
NHK Newsline,, Oct. 21, 2013: “Nuclear regulators proposed increasing the distance they’re monitoring from 300 kilometers to up to 3,000 kilometers”
See also: Official Gov’t Documents: Fukushima to endanger NorthPacific marine ecosystem and health of human beings? “Very important to monitor radiation exposure level and assess effects of radioactive substances”
Uranium Film Festival coming to the birthplace of the nuclear age.
ATOMIC FILMS TRAVELING FROM RIO DE JANEIRO TO THE SOUTHWEST UNITED STATESUK government heavily subsidises new nuclear power project
Critics say the new plant in Somerset will be heavily subsidised and cushioned from financial reality
- The signing of a nuclear deal between EDF and the government is a landmark event for power generation. Today’s go-ahead for the Hinkley Point C plant shows ministers are prepared to commit Britain to provide decades of guaranteed financial returns (paid for by you and me as energy users) to companies in return for winning huge slugs of investment for new power stations…..
- Ministers insist that the commitment to provide Hinkley Point with a guaranteed price of around double the market rate is not a subsidy. The final figure of £92.50 is a considerable step up from the £80 per MWhr said to be on the table when negotiations began in earnest, and that figure is said by some calculations to be worth around £80bn in guaranteed revenues, the cost of nine Olympics.
- Critics will accuse the government of providing subsidies to an old technology that should not need handouts, while pointing out the safety dangers and the unsolved waste disposal problems raised by new nuclear. Questions will also be asked about the wisdom of providing a country alleged to be involved in cyber-spying, access to sensitive energy infrastructure via the involvement of a state-owned firm……..
- Supporters of nuclear in Britain were keen to ensure that an existing industry – that arguably first started here and had operated largely trouble free since the 1950s – could gain a new lease of life. The expectations of Blair and others in the early days have been fulfilled then, even after the Fukushima accident in Japan – but only in principle. In practice, new nuclear was meant to be built by the private sector, without subsidy and only after a solution was found about where to store high-level nuclear waste.
- A decision on which community would be willing to host a deep-level waste repository is as far away as ever after plans for the north west were scotched by Cumbria County Council. The new plant in Somerset will be owned, built and operated by EDF – 85% owned by the French state – with the help of China General Nuclear Power Group, which is 100% owned by the Beijing government. It will be capable of generating 3,200 MW, around one seventh of UK needs, compared to say the London Array off the coast of Kent, the world’s biggest wind farm, which has a maximum capacity of 1,000 MW.
- The subsidy levels for onshore wind (£100 per MWhr) is close to that for the new Hinkley Point plant and much higher for offshore wind (£150). But these figures are set to fall. Craig Bennett, director of policy at Friends of the Earth, said it was astonishing that the government was planning such a long-term subsidy for foreign nuclear operators. “This is just another big bailout. Its an unbelievable wasted opportunity to spend this money in this way when the UK itself is an acknowledged leader in energy efficiency. Why give subsidies to an industry where we are not the leader any more?” he said.
Other supporters of renewable energy point out that public support is needed because these are new technologies which are coming down in price all the time. Nuclear cannot claim either, they say, and there are still questions on whether the European Commission will accept these payments.
The government has also already committed itself to providing financial guarantees of £10bn to cover the building of Hinkley Point, something not available to builders of solar or wind arrays.
Even Nick Butler, a former energy adviser to No 10 and a supporter of nuclear, believes the price is far too high. In a recent blog he warned: “Lower sources of power are available and have been rejected. When deals do not match the interests of both sides – producers and consumers – at a point of mutual advantage, they tend to unravel.”…..http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/21/china-nuclear-power-britain-outdated-technology
Hinkley nuclear power plant irrelevant to UK’s energy problems
UK nuclear power plant contract: £80bn deal or no deal? Fiona Harvey and Patrick WintourThe Guardian, Monday 21 October 2013 “……..John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: “Hinkley C fails every test – economic, consumer and environmental. It will lock a generation of consumers into higher energy bills via a strike price that’s nearly double the current price of electricity, and it will distort energy policy by displacing newer, cleaner technologies that are dropping dramatically in price.”
Nina Skorupska, chief executive of the Renewable Energy Association, said the nuclear deal would not solve the short-term problem of keeping the lights on as current nuclear and many coal-fired power stations were expected to shut down in the next few years, long before Hinkley C started operating.
“[It] is a major development for the UK energy mix, but does nothing to address the looming capacity crunch. Hinkley will still be a construction site when old coal and nuclear capacity is shut down,” she said…..http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/21/uk-nuclear-power-plant-contract-deal-no-deal
UNSCEAR報告「健康影響ゼロ」は非科学的〜市民ら声明
Video here;
http://www.ourplanet-tv.org/?q=node/1662
投稿者： ourplanet 投稿日時： 木, 10/24/2013 – 07:46
国際人権NGO「ヒューマンライツ・ナウ」や国際環境NGO「FoE Japan」など国内の63団体は24日、国連科学委員会（ＵＮＳＣＥＡＲ）が明日、国連総会に提出する「福島調査報告」について、抜本的な見直しを求め る緊急声明を発表した。福島原発事故の健康影響について、子どもの甲状腺がん以外はないとする同報告書について、客観性や独立性が乏しく、被曝を過小評価 していると指摘。内容を見直すように求めている。
問題となっているのは、明日25日に国連の第４委員会に提出される国連科学委員会の「福島報告書」。同報告書は、福島県の成人の平均生涯実効被曝線量を 10ミリシーベルト以下と推定。乳幼児の甲状腺がんは増加すると言及しているものの、「被ばくした一般市民やその子孫において、放射線由来の健康影響の発 症の識別し得る増加は予期されない。」と結論づけている。
＜付属文書＞成人の推定実効線量（事故後１年間）福島県避難区域外および近県
＜付属文書＞１歳幼児の平均実効線量（ 事故後１年間）福島県避難区域外および近県
＜付属文書＞推定実効線量 福島市在住者（2011年に成人、10歳子ども、1歳幼児）
これに対し、声明では、国連科学委員会は、原発事故後、独自の調査を実施しておらず、
日本政府や福島県から提供されたデータのみに基づいていると批判。中立性や生活性に疑問があるとしている。
また、低線量被曝については、放射線影響調査研究所による広島・長崎の原爆被害者のLSS(
寿命調査）報告（2012年）をはじめ、ここ数年、新たな論文が次々に発表されているが、こうした最近の疫学研究を踏まえていないと指摘している。
ヒューマンライツ・ナウ事務局長の伊藤和子さんは、記者会見で「安易に健康影響を過小評価している」と。また、FoEジャパン理事の満田夏花さんは「報告 書がドラフトの段階で、一度も一般公開されず、被災当事者や市民、第三者の専門家によるパブリック・レビューを得ていないことのは、大きな問題」と指摘。 科学というものは、第三者が検証できてはじめて科学と言えるが、この報告書は、第三者の検証ができない、極めて非科学的なもの」と断じた。
また、昨年11月に福島原発事故後の人権状況について現地調査をした国連「健康に対する権利」に関する特別報告者のアナンド・グローバー氏が、今年5月に 国連人権理事会に調査報告書を提出した報告書に言及。グローバー氏は、日本政府に対し、年間１ミリシーベルトという明確な基準を示して、健康管理調査や支 援措置などの政策改善を勧告しているが、満田さんは「国連総会の議論にも、グローバー氏の勧告が十分に反映されるべき」と強調した。
国連科学委員会の「福島報告」は、国連総会第４委員会での審議を経て、通常ならば、１２月に国連総会で採択される。ただ、汚染水問題や原発作業員の被ばく線量など、報告書のもととなるデータを網羅した付属文書がまだまとまっていないため、見通しは未知数だ。
ヒューマンライツウオッチらは、このあと、日本時間２２時３０分から、国連総会が開催されるニューヨークでサイドイベントを開催し、その場で、アナンド・グローバー氏が同報告書にコメントをする見込み。
【共同声明】日本の市民社会は、国連科学委員会の福島報告の見直しを求める。
http://hrn.or.jp/activity/topic/post-235/
国連科学委員会が25日に国連総会に提出する「福島報告書」
Report of UNSCEAR to the 68th General Assembly: To be presented in New York on 25 October 2013
http://www.un.org/Docs/journal/asp/ws.asp?m=A/68/46
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