nuclear-news

I’m scratching my head as to how the IEA could have come to the conclusion it did. The French EPR is now several years behind schedule in its construction and is said to now cost three times more than its original estimate (already!). As for the Finnish EPR, well, that cost just goes off the scale.

Even if you look at other reactors being built in the West, the high costs are also much in evidence. The AP1000 reactors being buult in the USA are as expensive as the EPR. See my earlier analysis at:
http://realfeed-intariffs.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/is-toshibas-nuclear-project-really.html

And the claims circulating about how the proposed Hitachi project will go better than Hinkley C are more exercises in fantasy. I commented about this earlier as well. See:
http://realfeed-intariffs.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/hitachi-bid-more-fantasy-nuclear-power.html

There’s a lot of stories about how much cheaper nuclear power is in China. Well, I don’t know whether anybody has noticed this, but easily analysable information on costs of nuclear construction in China is about as scarce as it was from the old British CEGB on a bad day (and it was, apart from the occasional leak, usually a very bad day).

But recent commentary of the Chinese nuclear programme is not especially encouraging: Take for example from the Global Times, whose news items seem to run in parallel with the priorities of the Chinese Government:

Construction of these projects has not been smooth. Sanmen Nuclear Power Station in Zhejiang Province was expected to be the first nuclear power plant in the world that uses AP1000 technology. The first of the two reactors was scheduled to finish construction and start operation in November 2013, but construction is now over 18 months behind schedule. The plant won’t start operation until 2016 at the earliest, an official from China’s State Nuclear Power Technology, the company building the power plant, said in January.’

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/927146.shtml

So where is the British flight into ‘nuclear power is cheap somewhere’ fantasy leading us? Well, to nationalisation, of course, a charge led by the IPPR, a centre-left think tank, which I suppose, is a more plausible vehicle for this than, say, a right leaning think tank such as Policy Exchange (who, incidentally, have recently discovered that onshore wind power is reasonable cheap after all and should be offered some contracts).

Nationalisation won’t make nuclear power any cheaper. The claims that somehow the ‘cheaper’ money from the state will make the technology less expensive ignore some relevant facts. First, the Hinkley C deal already has access to state backed finance through the agency of the state owned (French and Chinese) companies that are building the plant and the state guaranteed loan offered by the UK Treasury. Setting up a state body to compete with others in the electricity market will also generate a further (interesting) EU state aid application. But really the talk of cheap state money, is not the key point that the nuclear people are aiming at.

What the pro-nuclear lobby now wants is for limitless sums of money to be siphoned off from public spending on education, health and whatever else and spent on building nuclear power stations. The money will be notionally borrowed, a contract that will be concocted that will claim that the electricity consumer will pay the money back at a later date, and the balance will be paid for by, well, less schools, hospitals etc. Meanwhile a story will be manufactured about how all of this is cheap. Cognitive dissonance will prevent people asking why if it is ok to fund nuclear power this way, then why isn’t it ok to fund offshore windfarms and other things.