Pull the other one!
The Government has given provisional approval to the building of at least 10 new nuclear reactors, costing around £50 billion each,
That\’s £50 billion in total dear.
Blimey, don\’t journalists have editors? People with at least a rough idea of relative sizes and costs?
As to this:
The Lib Dems had long opposed nuclear power but agreed in Coalition negotiations last year that existing power stations could be renewed as long as no public funds were involved. They demanded that energy firms no longer benefit from generous public subsidies and be self-funding.
They\’re lying, of course. For they\’re entirely happy for renewables to be subsidised massively: £6 billion a year coming on the Renewables Obligation alone.
What they\’ve done is a piece of politician doublespeak. Nuclear cannot have direct taxpayer subsidy: OK. But nuclear also isn\’t allowed to have the indirect, from customer bills or from obligations or from carbon prices, subsidy either. Indeed, nuclear still has to pay the climate change levy.
This only works because they can, hand on heart, say that renewables aren\’t getting direct taxpayer subsidy. The subsidy is built into energy bills.
So they\’re lying cunts the politicians. But then I repeat myself.
In Turkey, the government has learned from the renewables system in the West.
The reactors are to be built by the Russians (great choice) who have been promised prices that would make a solar developer jealous. But its OK, because there is no subsidy 😉
The estimated cost of four reactors is $20 Billion. So even though this is probably an under estimate £50 billion per reactor would only be possible if it were built by a state run company.
The Australian version of indirect subsidy is called MRET, which stands for the slightly strangely worded Mandatory Renewable Energy Target.
Nice use of the word ‘target’ there. It is most certainly mandatory. There’s no talk of dropping it if the carbon tax gets introduced either, which will be a nice double-whammy.
No nuclear allowed here sadly.
The answer is Thorium. Safe, cheap, achievable.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8393984/Safe-nuclear-does-exist-and-China-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium.html#disqus_thread
The Westinghouse AP1000 is available off the shelf for about £700 million ($1200). The £5,000 million price tag shows how much of nuclear cost is not the cost of nuclear but of government regulatory parasitism. Nonetheless it remains equal cheapest with coal.
If we were mainly nuclear and nuclear only cost what nuclear costs our bills could be 1/10th of what they are & our economy growing faster than China’s.
The political dishonesty over indirect subsidies for renewables matches the dishonesty about the costs of nuclear.
Both are born of ideology and both will do enormous damage to the UK.
The current indirect subsidy for renewables is particularly nasty as it derives from increased energy prices. It is a stealth regressive tax.
“If we were mainly nuclear and nuclear only cost what nuclear costs our bills could be 1/10th of what they are” … yes indeed, though perhaps only half rather than 10th.
” & our economy growing faster than China’s.” … nope, at what we charge the world its difficult indeed to see how we can grow at comparable rates to low wage economies.