Exactly half a century after the world’s first commercial nuclear plant began operation in 1956, British politicians decided to reverse the decline of the industry their predecessors had pioneered. Back in the ‘50s, it took just five years to plan, commission and build Calder Hall, which began producing energy in October 1956. But it has taken two governments seven years to draft energy bills, planning bills, design assessments, and much more besides to get to the point where we are now. French and Chinese state-owned companies will invest $16 billion on the new reactors at Hinkley Point. I’m delighted that at last we’re building new nuclear. But is the financial package a good deal for the energy consumer?
The short answer is No. The operators of Hinkley will receive a strike price £92.50 /MWh fully indexed to the Consumer Price Index (with a small discount if they proceed with a…
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Tallbloke's Talkshop 
How much better things could have been but for political ineptitude in the 1990s and 2000s.
Sizewell B took about five and a half years to build, and during that stage there were plans to build 5 or 6 replica stations. The Hinkley C public inquiry was being prepared and there were (as I recall) plans for Wylfa, Hartlepool and Hunterston; all at much lower costs than Sizewell B.
So if the plans had gone ahead we would have enjoyed a reliable nuclear energy supply into the future and an experienced workforce. However, Nulabour with its anti-nuclear MPs (“over my dead body” Margaret Beckett, the CND woman and a host of others) scuppered any plans and Gordon Brown sold off westinghouse for a song to the Japanese. Had plans gone ahead we would now be building a fleet of Westinghouse AP1000 reactors, which are much cheaper, much safer and much simpler than the French EPR (which is a very expensive, upgraded copy of the Westinghouse 4-loop design of the 60s, and in some ways no better than Sizewell B).
We could have been selling reactors to the world (the Chinese are building the AP1000), not being blackmailed by the French Areva/EdF combination into paying through the noise for a very iunnecessarily expensive design which has not been succesfully built anywhere yet, and not carpeting our countryside with useless, unreliable and expensive wind turbines and solar panels.
Do these new nuclear plants generate as much poisonous waste as the old ones that then has to be looked after for thousands of years ? or are they super efficient and leave us with only a small amount of waste that need only be looked after for tens of years ?
Or do they burn the existing store of waste instead of new fuel ?
Can anyone here cast light on any of these questions ?
Also, we should take the opportunity to rebuild are nuclear design and build capability after its negligent destruction by previous administrations.
Roger Helmer says: ‘The two reactors at Hinkley Point will cost £8 billion each, which, as Peter Atherton of Liberum Capital points out in a damning analysis, makes our shiny new toy “the most expensive power station in the world (excluding hydropower)”.’
According to Wikipedia the French and Finnish versions of this reactor, which are still under construction due to long delays, will cost similar amounts e.g. 8.5 bn. Euros.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Pressurized_Reactor
J Martin says:
November 30, 2013 at 11:18 am
Look up liquid thorium reactors.
Do have a look at this youtube video by Kirk Sorrensen on thorium technology. 10 minutes but worth it.
Just post the link without any html formatting
Actually I did! No formatting! Maybe I should have left off the http bit?
Please edit to how you would like it.
Odd. Oh well. Cut’n’pasting this works.
youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw
That might work, not that I can see anything except a black rectangle, normal.
Instructions:- literally paste the full URL with http:\\www don’t try and shorthand.
Reason, the WordPress guesser on what the human wants has to think it is a YouTube item and do the inline display otherwise it disables inline.
Phew! Felt like I’d been a bad boy in school again. 🙂
Anyway, there is some very detailed explanation in that video on standard nuclear power that quite shocked me. Never new water was used at such high pressures!
Thorium gets my vote.
The strike prices for worthless windturbines happen to be twice and three times the going rate for electricity as well. Impeccable reference follows:
Nigel Farage on the construction by China of a nuclear power plant at Hinkley:
“I am not concerned about Chinese money coming into this country – I welcome it. But what I think is bonkers is that we’ve gone for this plant at Hinkley, and we’ve guaranteed the Chinese investors a “strike price” as its called, over the course of the next 35 years, which is exactly double what the current cost of electricity is. It’s a dam*ed good deal for China, but I think it’s a rotten deal for the British tax payer. But it’s based on the idea I mentioned earlier on this show – they assume that energy prices will go up, and I think actually, if we get frakking, and start to use a lot more genuine new technology, the price can come down.”
Could be ‘no deal’ if/when the EU sticks its oar in.
‘The European Commission is close to concluding that Britain’s nuclear programme at Hinkley Point breaches EU state aid rules and may have to be revised, a move that could lead to long delays and even cause the complex deal to unravel.’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/10487375/Hinkley-Point-deal-under-threat-from-EU-ruling.html
Initial ‘ruling’ from the EU competition police due next month.