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Hinkley Point Nuclear – a Pointless Project

Hinkley Pointless, Britain should cancel its nuclear white elephant and spend the billions on making renewables work , The Economist, Aug 6th 2016 THE “golden decade” of co-operation between Britain and China, launched last year as Xi Jinping banqueted at Buckingham Palace, seems to have lasted all of nine months. The centrepiece of the new partnership was a deal in which China would invest £6 billion ($8 billion) in a new French-built nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in south-west England, before building one of its own in the south-east (see page 21). Yet on July 28th, as the Hinkley project was due to receive final approval, Britain’s new government announced ominously that it was under review……

EDF, the firm building Hinkley, has yet to finish two similar reactors in France and Finland that, based on a design plagued by problems, are overdue and over-budget. The British government has nonetheless promised to pay about £92.50 per megawatt hour for Hinkley’s output, compared with wholesale prices of around £40 today. By 2025, when Hinkley is due to open, that may look even pricier; by the time the guarantee runs out, 35 years on, it could look otherworldly. Other technologies are galloping ahead, upsetting all kinds of pricing assumptions. In the past six years Britain’s government has reduced the projected cost of producing electricity from onshore wind in 2025 by one-third, and of solar power by nearly two-thirds (see chart). Because nobody knows how the next few decades will unfold, now is not the time to lock in a price

One of the few certainties is that Hinkley is not the sort of power station that any rich country will want for much longer……..http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21703367-britain-should-cancel-its-nuclear-white-elephant-and-spend-billions-making-renewables

August 5, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general