Critics slam British government’s Hinkley Point c nuclear boondoggle

Nuclear critics condemn government for pushing through Hinkley Point C
Green MP Caroline Lucas and host of experts strongly criticise project while pro-nuclear experts welcome EDF go-ahead, Guardian, John Vidal 28 July 16, Nuclear critics are rounding on the government for pushing through the giantHinkley nuclear project they say had been negotiated in secret, could be unbuildable, is technically flawed and will condemn Britain to centuries of massive, unnecessary costs.

“It beggars belief that this government, which prides itself on pinching the pennies, plans to spend tens of billions on Hinkley Point – the most expensive white elephant in British history. It seems its commitment to inflexible, outdated, unaffordable power production knows no bounds,” said the Green MP Caroline Lucas on Thursday.

“At a total cost to consumers of nearly £30bn, Hinkley now represents appalling value for money. If built, it will force cheaper renewables off the system for much of its subsidised life,” said Paul Ekins, professor of resources at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources.

Greenpeace’s chief scientist, Doug Parr, questioned the competence of French energy firms EDF and Areva to build and implement the project. “This is a one-off project which can barely be afforded and which will lead nowhere. There are serious questions over the competence and capacity of a company to build a project which will have safety liabilities that stretch centuries into the future,” he said.

UK nuclear power generation is £27.5 more expensive per MWh than that generated by gas power plants.

Parr said that Hinkley would increase the chances of nuclear proliferation and greatly increase Britain’s high-level nuclear waste. “Over its lifetime Hinkley will produce waste equivalent to 80% of all the waste so far produced in the UK in terms of radioactivity. Protecting, guarding and maintaining this highly dangerous spent fuel on site for up to 200 years will be a massive challenge. The government has no plans for what it will do with it,” he said.

Jonathon Porritt, the former head of the government’s sustainable development commission, said there were serious flaws in a similar reactor being built at Flamanville in France. “There is the increasingly likely possibility that the steel reactor vessel EDF has constructed for the EPR at Flamanville may be so seriously flawed as to require it to be broken out of the reactor building for repairs. This would be an unbelievably expensive and time-consuming process,” he said.

Legal experts warned that the government would still have to overcome court challenges. Karla Hill, Client Earth’s director of programmes, said: “This deal is less than visionary and centralises the UK’s power production even more when the government should be creating a decentralised energy system for the future. What is more, state support for this project is the subject of two ongoing legal cases.”

“UK taxpayers and electricity consumers will be locked into paying for the coming Hinkley debacle long after the current EDF board and UK government decision-makers are dead and buried,” said Paul Dorfman, a senior researcher at UCL’sEnergy Institute.

“There is no way that Hinkley can deliver power by 2025, which is already eight years later than originally promised. And it is costing many more billions in subsidies than initially thought,” he added.

“This deal has been done in secret, with no transparency. It’s a barking mad decision. At a time when renewable costs are tumbling and the costs of EDF’s other projects are soaring, we are tying our hands to a contract that runs far into the future at well over the odds”, said Mike Childs, Friends of the Earth’s head of research and science…….https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/28/nuclear-critics-condemn-government-for-pushing-through-hinkley-point-c