nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

  • Home
  • 1.This Month
  • ACTION !
  • Disclaimer
  • Links
  • PAGES on NUCLEAR ISSUES

Cover-up! how consumers will be forced to pay for cost-overruns for Sizewell C nuclear construction

Cover-up! how consumers will be forced to pay for cost-overruns for Sizewell C construction, https://100percentrenewableuk.org/cover-up-how-consumers-will-be-forced-to-pay-for-cost-overruns-for-sizewell-c-construction–by David Toke, 30 Dec 20, In a historic change of policy the Conservatives have  announced that consumers, not EDF, will pay for cost overruns in building Sizewell C. The crucial phrase in the Government’s document on the so-called ‘Regulated Asset Base’ (RAB) model is ‘Cost overruns that were not excluded from the RAB would be shared between investors and consumers through suppliers’ (para 47 page 14). Note: ‘consumers’ means electricity consumers who will have to pay twice for Sizewell C; extra on their bills long before any power is generated and for many years after generation begins.

The RAB document was produced alongside the Government’s new Energy White Paper.

This should be compared to the Government position in the 2011 White Paper which stated that ‘new nuclear stations should receive no public support unless similar support is available to other low-carbon technologies’. (page 8)

Under the Government’s RAB proposals it is claimed that clear criteria are going to be set for what cost overruns will be payable by the consumer and what by the developer, with the outcomes carefully monitored by a ‘Regulator’. But of course once the construction juggernaut for Sizewell C starts rolling where information, not to mention armies of lawyers and hired consultants of various sorts, will be controlled by EDF, I do not seriously believe that EDF will be stopped from passing on virtually whatever costs it wants to pass on to the consumer. It is not even certain that the  ‘Regulator’ will be able to stop costs of building (the still uncompleted) Hinkley C being passed onto the consumer through the books assigned to Sizewell C- that is given that workers are likely to be switched from one operation to the other.

In other words, it is a blank cheque for EDF for a power plant that is not only unnecessary but which will actually cause large quantities of renewable energy to be wasted because of nuclear power’s inflexible operation (see our report on this). In effect not just consumers but renewable energy operators will be paying for the cost-overruns of building Sizewell C. Laughingly, in a world where no (at least western) nuclear power plant has been attempted this century without massive construction cost overruns being generated, the RAB document talks about ‘low probability risks such as cost overruns above a certain threshold’ (page 12). In the case of Hinkley C the cost overruns are mounting already.

The most charitable explanation for the RAB document is that Treasury officials are allowing themselves to be engaged in an exercise of self-deception in order to launder a policy that if stated plainly would be deemed politically unacceptable. Reading between the lines of the RAB document and the Energy White Paper itself, the only substantial barrier stopping EDF being handed a blank cheque contract is the payment that EDF would receive for electricity generated. The White Paper says ‘We expect the sector to deliver the goal it set for itself in our Nuclear Sector Deal, published in 2018, to reduce the cost of nuclear new build projects by 30 per cent by 2030’ (page 49).

So in other words the Treasury wants EDF to accept less than £65 per MWh in 2012 prices. (2012 prices, the year in which Hinkley C’s contract was priced is the funny money basis for electricity contracts these days!). Obviously EDF wants more, but with the RAB mechanism it may not need more.

This is because RAB mechanism is a piece of political jelly that will allow any nuclear developer to offer to complete Sizewell C for a low sum when in reality British electricity consumers will pay for what will be called ‘cost overruns’ over and above such a figure.

The RAB mechanism is a flexible political device that allows Sizewell C to be built regardless of cost realities. It is an act of public manipulation and mystification worthy of the best traditions of ‘Yes Minister’. 

But even so these plans are likely to cause mounting opposition when consumers realise they are likely to have to start paying extra on their bills without getting any electricity in return. Then they will have to pay extra again for the power when (evenutally) it does start being generated.

Professor Tom Burke, the founding Director of E3G commented: ‘Constructing Sizewell will cost just over £20 billion. If EDF borrow this money it will double the cost to over £40 billion. EDF is negotiating with the government to make consumers pay the construction cost in advance by a levy on everyone’s energy bills. They will then have to pay again for the electricity which will still be more expensive than that from renewables.’

In effect consumers will have to pay twice for the project – first for several years before the plant has generated anything, and then again for up 40 years afterwards.

 

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

December 31, 2020 - Posted by Christina MacPherson | business and costs, politics, secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK

No comments yet.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

« Previous | Next »

1.This Month

 
You can find names and items of interest by using our SEARCH button. Scroll down the right hand sidebar to find it
*******
 
 
 
Petition:  Protect Our Coast –
 
 
 
 
UK – Book Launch: ‘Nuclear Power in Stagnation – A cultural approach to failed expansion’
 

 

Bill Gates, while motivated to help fight climate change, has also long been trying to make a success of his nuclear technology company  Terra Power.   The climate emergency presents him with the perfect opportunity  to promote this, and especially, to get tax–payer funding to do it, as he suggests in his new book.

Elon Musk and Bill Gates: beware of gurus toting solutions to climate change

Elon Musk  has grand plans to save the world. Bill Gates has just published his book  ”How To Avoid a Climate Disaster”.   They both envisage tax-payer funding for their solutions.  But beware of gurus toting the solution to the planet’s crisis.

If you don’t think that our home planet is in an ecocidal crisis, then you’ve been blissfully unaware of global heating, over-population, biodiversity loss, waste crises, plastic pollution, overconsumption of energy , water shortages, deforestation, nuclear danger,  space junk danger,  perpetual nuclear war risk…….

Visionaries like Bill Gates and Elon Musk have brought extraordinary, and beneficial advances to our human society. On the way, they have become billionaires. And good luck to them. But their wealth and fame has made them all too ready to be seen as world leaders, and to see themselves as having the solutions to world problems.   This can be problematic, as in effect, some of their solutions exacerbate the problems.


The future envisioned by both Bill Gates and Elon Musk has one huge blind spot.  They both foresee ever-expanding energy use, and they plan for that – problems can be fixed with technology.

On a finite planet, endless energy use just cannot work.  But the concept of enough is just not in their plans.  If the human species does not take up the concept of enough, we could just become an extinct species. Technology could be used to reduce energy use, but that idea fades away as Gates, Musk, and other technocratic leaders see progress as being to have ever more exciting and energy-guzzling gimmicks and activities.The digital revolution. It should be a benefit, enhancing our lives, and in many ways, it IS.  But an energy price is paid in our unbridled use of digital technology.  Every email, emoji, Facebook post, tweet, blogpost, Youtube,   uses electricity.  It’s not as if these actions  just disappear ”into the cloud”.  What a dishonest term that is!   There is no such cloud. What there actually IS –  is a host of vast areas of dirty great data” farms”. There’s another dishonest term.  They’re not farms. They are soulless collections of great metal servers, using  ever growing amounts of electricity, and of water, to keep them cool.

Then there’s the price at the end.  It’s very hard to find out the details and the extent of toxic materials from digital technology, that are dumped in poor countries.
And, to be fair, companies like Apple, have made some efforts to reduce their ewaste. https://www.ewaste-expo.com/is-apple-delivering-on-its-environmental-claims/

However, planned obsolescence is rampant in the high tech world, resulting in the utter tragedy of  ewaste pollution, – from discarded smartphones, laptops, computers, printers, TVs, fidbits, smart fridges, robots etc, the tragedy of the thousands of children working as waste-pickers in India and Africa, in slum conditions. E-waste includes many toxic materials such as lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury, that release dioxins. .  ”With no health or environmental protections in the slum, the toxins contaminate the air, water, and the food consumed in the slum…….. The area is constantly covered in thick, toxic smoke from the burning of electrical cables that goes on all day and night,” – High-tech hell: new documentary brings Africa’s e-waste slum to life https://news.mongabay.com/2012/04/high-tech-hell-new-documentary-brings-africas-e-waste-slum-to-life/

Both Gates and Musk are enthusiasts for renewable energy, and in the climate crisis, they are to be applauded for their work in this direction. Yet, as with all kinds of digital technology, renewables should not be unlimited, and do have their downsides, both in the production (pollution from rare earths mining/processing), and in the final disposal, with toxic wastes, and components that are difficult to recycle.  .  The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimates that solar panels produced 250,000 metric tonnes of waste in 2018 alone.

Bill Gates  and Elon Musk do show their awareness of the planet’s grave environmental problems, but we don’t hear from them about energy conservation, or about moving away from the consumer society.   Both talk quite enthusiastically about the great increase in energy use that we can expect. They complacently predict endless energy use, just as the nuclear lobby did in its glossy advertising film ”Pandora’s Promise”

Elon Musk now  plans to put 24,000 satellites into space, and is well known for his dream of colonising Mars, and This idea has, of course, been taken up by many others, and there’s a sort of general public delight in space travel and interstellar rocketry.  People seem oblivious to the fact that this will require huge amounts of energy, and that  the space scientists already are turning away  from clean solar power, to the far more dangerous source of nuclear fission.   They’re also oblivious of the state of affairs in near space, where the trillions of bits of space debris pose dangers, floating about just like the plastic pollution in the oceans.  Meanwhile the military planners in USA, Russia, China are already planning for nuclear weapons and war in space.

No surprise then that Elon Musk sees nuclear power as necessary – not just for his predicted need for much more electricity on Earth, but for this obsession with satellites and rockets.

Less well understood than his push for electric cars and Tesla technologies, is Elon Musk’s investment in the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin.  Running Bitcoin demands enormous amounts of electricity, as Timothy Rooks explained recently https://www.dw.com/en/why-does-bitcoin-need-more-energy-than-whole-countries/a-56573390

Bill Gates, while motivated to help fight climate change, has also long been trying to make a success of his nuclear technology company  Terra Power.   The climate emergency presents him with the perfect opportunity  to promote this, and especially, to get tax–payer funding to do it, as he suggests in his new book.


Wake up people!     These two gurus have done some good stuff.  But don’t let them manipulate us into  dangerous territory –   with nuclear technology, so connected with weaponry, and with its dangers, and the unsolved problem of radioactive trash.  Sure, technology has got to be part of solving the planet’s crises. But we need much more imaginative leadership to steer our species away from infinite consumption and infinite energy use.

  • Categories

    • 1
      • Arclight's Vision
    • 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
      • business and costs
        • employment
        • marketing
      • climate change
      • culture and arts
      • ENERGY
        • renewable
          • decentralised
          • energy storage
      • environment
        • oceans
        • water
      • health
        • children
        • psychology – mental health
        • radiation
        • social effects
        • women
      • history
      • indigenous issues
      • Legal
        • deaths by radiation
        • legal
      • marketing of nuclear
      • media
        • investigative journalism
        • Wikileaks
      • opposition to nuclear
      • PERSONAL STORIES
      • politics
        • psychology and culture
          • Trump – personality
        • public opinion
        • USA elections 2016
      • politics international
      • Religion and ethics
      • safety
        • incidents
      • secrets,lies and civil liberties
        • civil liberties
      • spinbuster
        • Education
      • technology
        • reprocessing
        • Small Modular Nuclear Reactors
        • space travel
      • Uranium
      • wastes
        • – plutonium
        • decommission reactor
      • weapons and war
        • depleted uranium
      • Women
    • 2 WORLD
      • ANTARCTICA
      • ARCTIC
      • ASIA
        • Burma
        • China
        • India
        • Indonesia
        • Japan
          • – Fukushima 2011
          • Fukushima 2012
          • Fukushima 2013
          • Fukushima 2014
          • Fukushima 2015
          • Fukushima 2016
          • Fukushima continuing
        • Malaysia
        • Mongolia
        • North Korea
        • Pakistan
        • South Korea
        • Taiwan
        • Turkey
        • Vietnam
      • EUROPE
        • Belarus
        • Bulgaria
        • Denmark
        • Finland
        • France
        • Germany
        • Greece
        • Ireland
        • Italy
        • Kazakhstan
        • Kyrgyzstan
        • Russia
        • Spain
        • Sweden
        • Switzerland
        • UK
        • Ukraine
      • MIDDLE EAST
        • Afghanistan
        • Egypt
        • Gaza
        • Iran
        • Iraq
        • Israel
        • Jordan
        • Libya
        • Saudi Arabia
        • Syria
        • Turkey
        • United Arab Emirates
      • NORTH AMERICA
        • Canada
        • USA
          • election USA 2020
      • OCEANIA
        • New Zealand
        • Philippines
      • SOUTH AMERICA
        • Brazil
    • ACTION
    • AFRICA
      • Kenya
      • Malawi
      • Mali
      • Namibia
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • Somalia
      • South Africa
    • AUSTRALIA
    • Christina's notes
    • Christina's themes
    • culture and arts
    • Fukushima 2017
    • Fukushima 2018
    • fukushima 2019
    • Fukushima 2020
    • Fukushima 2021
    • general
    • global warming
    • Humour (God we need it)
    • Nuclear
    • RARE EARTHS
      • thorium
    • Reference
    • resources – print
    • Resources -audiovicual
    • World
    • World Nuclear
    • YouTube
  • Pages

    • 1.This Month
    • ACTION !
    • Disclaimer
    • Links
    • PAGES on NUCLEAR ISSUES
      • audio-visual news
      • Anti Nuclear, Clean Energy Movement
        • Anti Nuclear movement – a success story
          • – 2013 – the struggle for a nuclear-free, liveable world
          • – 2013: the battle to expose nuclear lies about ionising radiation
            • Speakers at Fukushima Symposium March 2013
            • Symposium 2013 Ian Fairlie
      • Civil Liberties
        • – Civil liberties – China and USA
      • Climate change
      • Climate Change
      • Economics
        • – Employment
        • – Marketing nuclear power
        • – Marketing Nuclear Power Internationally
        • nuclear ‘renaissance’?
        • Nuclear energy – the sick man of the corporate world
      • Energy
        • – Solar energy
      • Environment
        • – Nuclear Power and the Tragedy of the Commons
        • – Water
      • Health
        • Birth Defects in the Chernobyl Radiation Affected Region
      • History
        • Nuclear History – the forgotten disasters
      • Indigenous issues
      • Ionising radiation
        • – Ionising radiation – medical
        • Fukushima FACT SHEET
      • Media
        • Nuclear Power and Media 2012
      • Nuclear Power and the Consumer Society – theme for December 2012
      • Peace and nuclear disarmament
        • Peace on a Nuclear Free Earth
      • Politics
        • – Politics USA
      • Public opinion
      • Religion and ethics
        • -Ethics of nuclear power
      • Resources – print
      • Safety
      • Secrets and lies
        • – NUCLEAR LIES – theme for January 2012
        • – Nuclear Secrets and Lies
      • Spinbuster
        • 2013 nuclear spin – all about FEAR -theme for June
        • Spinbuster 1
      • Technology
        • TECHNOLOGY Challenges
      • Wastes
        • NUCLEAR WASTES – theme for October 2012
        • – Plutonium
      • Weapons and war
      • Women
  • Recommended websites

    • Antinuclear
    • Beyond nuclear
    • Exposing the truth about thorium nuclear propaganda
    • Mining Awareness Plus
    • Nuclear Information and Resource Service
    • NUCLEAR NFORMATION
  • Archives

    • April 2021 (82)
    • March 2021 (282)
    • February 2021 (271)
    • January 2021 (278)
    • December 2020 (230)
    • November 2020 (297)
    • October 2020 (392)
    • September 2020 (349)
    • August 2020 (351)
    • July 2020 (280)
    • June 2020 (293)
    • May 2020 (251)
  • Categories

    • 1
      • Arclight's Vision
    • 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
      • business and costs
        • employment
        • marketing
      • climate change
      • culture and arts
      • ENERGY
        • renewable
          • decentralised
          • energy storage
      • environment
        • oceans
        • water
      • health
        • children
        • psychology – mental health
        • radiation
        • social effects
        • women
      • history
      • indigenous issues
      • Legal
        • deaths by radiation
        • legal
      • marketing of nuclear
      • media
        • investigative journalism
        • Wikileaks
      • opposition to nuclear
      • PERSONAL STORIES
      • politics
        • psychology and culture
          • Trump – personality
        • public opinion
        • USA elections 2016
      • politics international
      • Religion and ethics
      • safety
        • incidents
      • secrets,lies and civil liberties
        • civil liberties
      • spinbuster
        • Education
      • technology
        • reprocessing
        • Small Modular Nuclear Reactors
        • space travel
      • Uranium
      • wastes
        • – plutonium
        • decommission reactor
      • weapons and war
        • depleted uranium
      • Women
    • 2 WORLD
      • ANTARCTICA
      • ARCTIC
      • ASIA
        • Burma
        • China
        • India
        • Indonesia
        • Japan
          • – Fukushima 2011
          • Fukushima 2012
          • Fukushima 2013
          • Fukushima 2014
          • Fukushima 2015
          • Fukushima 2016
          • Fukushima continuing
        • Malaysia
        • Mongolia
        • North Korea
        • Pakistan
        • South Korea
        • Taiwan
        • Turkey
        • Vietnam
      • EUROPE
        • Belarus
        • Bulgaria
        • Denmark
        • Finland
        • France
        • Germany
        • Greece
        • Ireland
        • Italy
        • Kazakhstan
        • Kyrgyzstan
        • Russia
        • Spain
        • Sweden
        • Switzerland
        • UK
        • Ukraine
      • MIDDLE EAST
        • Afghanistan
        • Egypt
        • Gaza
        • Iran
        • Iraq
        • Israel
        • Jordan
        • Libya
        • Saudi Arabia
        • Syria
        • Turkey
        • United Arab Emirates
      • NORTH AMERICA
        • Canada
        • USA
          • election USA 2020
      • OCEANIA
        • New Zealand
        • Philippines
      • SOUTH AMERICA
        • Brazil
    • ACTION
    • AFRICA
      • Kenya
      • Malawi
      • Mali
      • Namibia
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • Somalia
      • South Africa
    • AUSTRALIA
    • Christina's notes
    • Christina's themes
    • culture and arts
    • Fukushima 2017
    • Fukushima 2018
    • fukushima 2019
    • Fukushima 2020
    • Fukushima 2021
    • general
    • global warming
    • Humour (God we need it)
    • Nuclear
    • RARE EARTHS
      • thorium
    • Reference
    • resources – print
    • Resources -audiovicual
    • World
    • World Nuclear
    • YouTube
  • RSS

    Entries RSS
    Comments RSS

Site info

nuclear-news
Blog at WordPress.com.
Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×
    Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
    To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
    %d bloggers like this: