Hinkley C – the shock of faith in the wrong technology

The British Government's decision to back Hinkley C nuclear power station is another success for the snake oil salesmen of a defunct technology that sends completely the wrong message.

I once wrote a novella about nuclear power that satirised the ease with which politicians fell for its sales pitch, seduced by that strong subtext of sexual potency, the Promethean glamour of seeming to commission the ultimate power source.

Except the reality was and remains a lengthy catalogue of dangerous failures, ineptitude, accidents and catastrophes – of which Chernobyl is the most famous.

A recent scientific study shows that "accidents on the scale of the 1979 meltdown at Three Mile Island in the USA (a damage cost of about 10 Billion USD) are more likely than not to occur every 10-20 years".

The same study highlights the "'flawed and woefully incomplete' public data from the nuclear industry" that is "leading to an over-confident attitude to risk".

Once nuclear power was sold to us as electricity supply that would be "too cheap to meter". Now, even though the British Tory government knows it's amongst the most expensive power sources on the planet...

... they're still keen to sell Hinkley C to a British public that doesn't want it [original data here].

They know, too, that the specific technology to be deployed at Hinkley C already has "a lengthy catalogue of dangerous failures, ineptitude, accidents and catastrophes" at the previous attempts to deploy it – Flammanville, Taishan and Olkiluoto – but they still want to commission another one like it.

They know that the nuclear industry was forced to become so secretive that its secrets – usually cover-ups of the lengthy catalogues of dangerous failures, ineptitude, accidents and catastrophes – were kept from governments and the public for years (and who knows what has yet to come to light) – and yet the fact that the Chinese government might have access to the secrets of the British nuclear industry and national grid is only offered as a bogus concern, not a serious obstacle to the much more important aim – remaining in the Chinese and French governments' good books.

If I didn't think that it was unlikely that members of the Tory government have read my novella, I'd think it was a case of life imitating or parodying art. (Although I wouldn't put it past the potential of civil servants to be consciously doing so – twisted, devious creatures capable of not just double-think, but triple-, quadruple-, and even octople-think that they are.)

I have observed the British government's grotesque and contorted dance of death with EDF and Hinkley C since it was begun by Tony Blair, with a mixture of fascination, horror and contempt, of the sort I normally reserve for watching the calculated relapse of an ex-alcoholic drawing themselves into a terminal vortex, the culmination of which is starkly obvious to all powerless onlookers.

When Theresa May hit the pause button on approving the Hinkley C decision when everyone expected her to rubber stamp it, she was like the pantomime villain horsing around with the expectations of the audience, just so that when they finally commit the Terrible Deed, they can reap even more opprobrium from the audience than they would have received had they dealt the blow straight away.

There has been so much coverage in the press that everyone can see what a terrible decision this is. The tail has wagged the dog, but it's the taxpayer who will foot the bill if the thing ever does get built. Here's 5 reasons why it shouldn't be built.

There is still a chance it might not. There is still a chance that May could be playing a double bluff: in her wish not to offend the Chinese she has greenlighted the project even though she knows it is an awful bet (she can't be so blinkered that she doesn't know this, can she?) hoping that some other factor – technical, financial, legal – there are a few in the pipeline – will prevent it ever being built, thereby exonerating her from possible future blame by the Chinese.

There's a chance, but it's a slim one. I wouldn't bet on it if I were a gambler.

The whole thing is a farce, but it's more than that, it's a parody of a farce that is still a farce. A post-post-modern farce. Grotesque, and embittered with the self-hypnotised reflection of irony in love with itself.

Meanwhile, if you have a spare hour, watch the video below which shows how, by the time Hinkley C is built, technological disruptions in the fields of energy storage, electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, solar power and computing will mean there will be absolutely no market for its over-expensive electricity.

It will be old. Out of date. Unnecessary. But still producing nuclear waste we cannot yet render safe.


David Thorpe is the author of:

• Best Practices and Case Studies for Industrial Energy Efficiency Improvement (with Oung, K. and Fawkes, S. UNEP, 2016)
• A London Conversation: Business Briefing on Green Bonds (The Fifth Estate, 2015)
• The One Planet Life (Introduction: Jane Davidson. Routledge, 2015)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Buildings (Earthscan, 2013)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Industry (Earthscan, 2013)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Solar Technology (Earthscan, 2011)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Sustainable Home Refurbishment (Earthscan, 2010)

It's 30 years since Chernobyl. Let's have a party!

It's 30 years since the world's worst nuclear accident. Something worth celebrating? Only if you have the darkest sense of humour.

But that is precisely what Doc Chaos has.

With such a dire subject – an accident that was the product of farcical behaviour within a maniacal industry – gallows humour is a perfectly legitimate response.

That's what I thought at the time and I still do. My response was to write my satirical novella: Doc Chaos: The Chernobyl Effect. Published by Hooligan Press in 1988 and illustrated by the finest of comics artists at the time, it was a great success in the independent publishing world.

Front cover

Back cover

I donated the proceeds to the World Information Service on Energy, which campaigned then, and still does now, against nuclear power. They provided an afterword to that edition.

Four years ago the story was published in a new e-book edition together with a new Doc Chaos short story, The Last Laugh.

I continue to campaign against nuclear power and was recently invited to join the Nuclear Consulting Group.

One of its members has published an article to coincide with today's anniversary, assessing the death toll of the accident, in which he reaches the not very surprising conclusion: "[Chernobyl] raises the vexed question of trust in governments and international agencies, which, for many people, does not exist or has been eroded after Chernobyl and Fukushima."

No kidding.

Who is Doc Chaos? He's the radioactive peddler. As he says in The Last Laugh:

"The first time around, I gave them the promise of cheap energy and a Cold War that must have saved millions of lives. The second time, I gave them low carbon energy, and prolonged their illusions by a couple of decades. I play the long game. Don't worry I'll be back."

How can you trust them when they are so gullible to the peddlers of nuclear technology like EDF, who promise the world and either fail to deliver or spike your drink with caesium. Then try to pretend that everything is fine.

Later, the good doctor muses:

"I am the smiling conman, the artful bodger, the devil spawn of Prometheus, the quantum Quixote, the quixotic salesman with the quack cure, the fast-talking, fusion-pushing fantassin of plenty, peddling the fantasy of foison forever. And they bought it.
"'Do you remember,' I reminisce wistfully, 'How I persuaded them that despite Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, and terrorists running around with truckloads of depleted uranium, that I could save them from global warming?'
We share a gentle chuckle as the shadows lengthen.
'Those were the best of days... Feted at high level conferences, brokering billion-dollar deals, shafting the anti-nuclear do-gooders, sweet-talking the politicians.'"

The last laugh – you've got to have it.

You can buy Doc Chaos: The Chernobyl Effect here

Why the Labour Party needs a new policy on Hinkley C nuclear power station

Hinkley B nuclear power station. C doesn't necessarily follow B.

The resignation of Electricite de France's Chief Financial Officer Thomas Piquemal – after opposing the announcement next month of an investment decision on the building of a new nuclear reactor at Hinkley Point C in the UK – is the latest in a long line of expert denunciations of this project.

The Labour Party has always supported this project. It has been championed by the British government since the days of Tony Blair, despite expert criticism over the years.

The mystery is not just why the Conservative Party stubbornly remains so wedded to it, but why the Labour Party does too. It should distance itself and come up with a new strategy – and below I outline why.

Hinkley C would be the first new nuclear power station to be built in the UK in two decades. Originally planned for completion in 2017, it is now unlikely to be built until at least 2025 – if ever.

Bloomberg quoted sources close to EDF as observing that the finance officer was forced to quit because he believed that proceeding with construction would be disastrous for the company, while the French and British governments are putting pressure on EDF to proceed anyway. EDF is 85% owned by the French state.

The French company is at the heart of electricity generation in Britain and been the most committed supporter of new nuclear build here.

If EDF and the French and British governments do announce next month that construction will proceed, it will be at a massive cost to the British taxpayer [see below for how much].

The British government faces serious questions as to why it is persisting with Hinkley C. To understand the seriousness of these questions we need to look at the history of Britain's enthusiasm for this particular plant and technology.

The proposal

NNB GenCo, a subsidiary created by EDF Energy to build and operate two new nuclear power stations at Hinkley Point C and Sizewell, proposes to build a twin reactor power station at Hinkley Point C using an EDF / Areva UK European Pressurised Water Reactor (EPR) design.

Each of the EPR reactors would generate 1600MW of electricity, enough to power about five million homes together. Regulatory and planning hurdles were surmounted in 2013, and yet the project still has not been given the go-ahead. Hinckley Point B was supposed to come to the end of its life cycle this year, but is likely to be extended for another four years.

It began with Tony Blair

In 2010, Hinkley Point was one of eight sites identified by the Government for new nuclear power stations. This followed a new enthusiasm by Tony Blair's Labour government for new nuclear power following almost two decades of disinterest in the subject following the Chernobyl disaster. Commentators at the time credited Tony Blair's conversion to lobbying by the nuclear industry using the argument that nuclear power could help to fight global warming.

David Kennedy, the watchdog Climate Change Commission's chief executive, went on to talk of the country's carbon emission reduction target of a 90% cut in power sector emissions being delivered by 40GW of new nuclear, wind and clean coal and gas power – equivalent to 25 large power stations.

At the same time, the government put its faith in carbon capture and storage (CCS), technology. CCS from the start was condemned by environmentalists as being too expensive to work and was also dubbed a white elephant. It was finally abandoned late last year by the Chancellor George Osborne when he withdrew £1 billion of public support for this technology.

In July of the following year EDF received permission from West Somerset district council to carry out new preparatory groundwork for Hinckley C, and the company lent its support to the local Bridgwater College’s new Energy Skills Centre in order to develop the skills necessary to build the power station.

The government received surprising support from a group of environmentalists led by Mark Lynas and George Monbiot, who broke ranks to back nuclear power. This shocked many other environmentalists such as Jonathan Porritt  and Jeremy Leggett. But even these supporters later came out and said that the Hinkley C deal with EDF was a disaster for the taxpayer and should be scrapped.

Targeting women

In 2012 EDF began a publicity campaign in the UK to soften up the public, which was predominantly anti-nuclear, including paying for editorial in women's magazines because its market research found that women were more like to oppose nuclear power than men.

A complaint I made to the Advertising Standards Authority was upheld, about the use of advertising from EDF that was not labelled as advertising and looked like editorial, in Marie Claire, the "magazine for women who want to think smart and look amazing". The articles were provided by EDF, under the headline “Nuclear power: the facts" but contained inaccuracies.

Even after the ASA ruled in my favour, EDF still continued making dubious claims in the pages of the magazine, such as that in the 2030s “nuclear reactors in Somerset and Suffolk could supply around 40% of the country's energy needs".

In its dreams, maybe. because even while this was going on the French National Audit Office had recommended abandonment of the EPR as too complex and expensive. As Tom Burke, founder director of E3G, commented at the time: "The French National Audit Office recently recommended dropping the EPR as too expensive. This repeated a recommendation made to (French President) Sarkozy two years ago by the former head of EDF, François Roussely, who saw no future for it."

So: as long ago as 2010 the French government was told by EDF's own chief that they shouldn't go ahead with Hinkley C.

"The decision to extend the life of EDF’s existing fleet of reactors in France will put huge pressure on its capital budget over the next decade," the NAO went on to say, and it could support no further expenditure on its balance sheets. This budget, to repair existing nuclear power stations, is now estimated at 50 billion euros, and that work clearly takes precedence over new build.

Six years after Roussely, Piquemal came to the same conclusion, and realised that EDF could not afford to build Hinkley C and repair its old reactors. Now he's gone too.

Anyway, back then, heedless of this 2012 report, British Prime Minister David Cameron made an agreement with the then French President Nicolas Sarkozy to boost nuclear co-operation, which Charles Secrett, co-founder of The Robertsbridge Group and ex-leader of Friends of the Earth  labelled "a massive rip-off for the the British taxpayer". In that letter, he and many other environmentalists warned the government that "EDF will have us over a barrel".

Last month Cameron made the same commitment he made to President Sarkozy to his successor, François Hollande.

Centrica jumps ship

Originally, Centrica, owner of British Gas, was part of a consortium with EDF and Areva to build the plant, but in 2013 it pulled out, citing "uncertainty about overall costs and the construction schedule". Centrica wrote off £200 million and launched a share buy-back scheme to return another £500 million of unused capital to its investors.

Other energy companies such as RWE and E.ON had already decided not to get involved with new nuclear build.

At the time the MP Martin Horwood, said, "like any sane investor in my view, Centrica has decided that it is not going to touch these new nuclear plans with a bargepole".

The British Government would have been wise to heed this comment, but instead continued to persist, opening negotiations with China over financing of Hinkley C which handed the 20% stake formally taken by Centrica to the state-owned Chinese group China Guangdong Nuclear Power Corp., along with access to state secrets concerned with nuclear power, which raised a few eyebrows connected to national security.

The government also awarded Hinkley C a Government Infrastructure Loan Guarantee, a type of financial support that is available to a large infrastructure project.

The plant was then expected to cost around £14 billion. Latest estimates are £18 billion. The Treasury agreed to guarantee some of the cost, reducing the impacts on EDF's balance sheet and allowing a low strike price for the electricity generated – despite a Coalition Government commitment at the time not to subsidise nuclear power.

The wrong technology

Part of the problem is that the UK government backed the wrong technology: the European Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR). Not a single one of these has been completed.

The first, the 1,600 megawatt Olkiluoto 3 plant in Finland, was begun in 2005 and should have gone on line in 2009. It is still not generating power. The initial cost estimate was €3.7 billion; this has now risen to €8 billion.

A prominent factor in Centrica's decision to pull out was EDF's progress in construction a second plant at Flamanville, France. When construction began in 2007 it was to have cost €3.3 billion, according to Le Monde. The price tag is now €10.5 billion and it is seven years late.
Martin Horwood, a British MP, in a debate in the UK Parliament [Hansards 7 Feb 2013 : Column 471] about subsidies for nuclear power in 2013 said: "The Energy Fair group of energy consultants and academics has stripped out all subsidies and says that the real cost of nuclear power is at least £200 per MWh, which is much more than the cost of offshore wind power at £140 per MWh or that of onshore wind power at less than £90 MWh."

British taxpayers will pay the French £45 billion for Hinkley C

The strike price was eventually settled at £92.5/MWh over 35 years.

Professor Tom Burke, who was an adviser to a previous Government, commented that: "this would require a subsidy of £1 billion/year above today’s wholesale price for electricity. This would lead to a transfer of £30 billion to EDF”. He's recently upgraded this estimate to £45 billion.

In order to continue to back the project EDF's costs will be underwritten by the French government as well, which announced last month that it would take this dividend in shares to help conserve cash for the company. [See link at the top of the article.]

EDF's stake in Britain

EDF has a key role to play in keeping the lights on in Britain with low carbon electricity. It already manages eight existing nuclear power stations at sites across the country.

It is also coming to the end, on March 31, of what is believed to be the UK’s largest ever electricity supply contract by annual volume ever awarded by the Government Procurement Service, to supply an annual electricity consumption of about 7.6TWh over four-years to a "a vast range" of public buildings across England and Wales, from inner city academies to museums, from central Government departments to major hospitals, from defence sites, courts, to the British Museum, equivalent to powering 2.3 million typical households. 

Because it was supplied from nuclear power, this contract helped the Government meet its Greening Government Commitments of a 25 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2015 from a September 2010 baseline. Even so, the government failed to meet its own targets for cutting the environmental impact of the state’s operations, according to its last annual report.

What to do with the waste?

Meanwhile, there remains the problem of the storage of nuclear waste. The UK doesn't know what to do with its existing nuclear waste, let alone any future waste. The UK's Public Accounts Committee has published a damning report on the subject. Its Chair, Margaret Hodge, noted that: "a solution to the problem of long-term storage of the waste is as far away as ever. Taxpayers will have to foot the bill" and they "are not getting a good deal".

Questions to answer

Given all of this, the British and French governments have two questions to answer.

Firstly: why do they persist in pursuing EPR technology when, for as long as they have been doing so, they have been warned against it on cost and technical grounds?

This is hugely important, especially in the context of the UK government's widely criticised energy policy, which includes many government U-turns on support for renewable energy in the last six months, an increase in support for fossil fuels, persistent backing of shale gas, leading to criticism by many investors, such as asset manger Schroders, that confidence in the UK energy plans has “evaporated”. As a result of policy inconsistency and unpredictability Schroders said last week it would no longer recommend clients invest in the energy sector.

At least the British government realised the folly of continuing to pursue unproven and over-expensive carbon capture and storage. With this precedent it should now abandon EPR.

The second question is: why does the British government instead not aggressively pursue energy efficiency, when it is proven to be far more cost-effective than investing in new generating plant, especially nuclear power?

Only last week the government's own National Infrastructure Commission issued a report, Smart Power, arguing that a smarter use of power built around three innovations, interconnection, storage, and demand flexibility, could save consumers up to £8 billion a year by 2030, help the UK meet its 2050 carbon targets, and secure the UK’s energy supply for generations.

In the same week, a report from UNEP shows that the potential for energy policy to increase energy efficiency in industry alone is massive. [Disclosure: I am one of the authors.]

In a webinar to promote the report's release, co-author Kit Oung made the overwhelming case, based on research: "A report from the University of Cambridge has said that 73% of energy used in industry can be saved using currently available technical know-how and technology. This could result in 22 power stations not needing to be built in 2020 if just between 21 and 47% of those savings were to be achieved in the UK. And yet, according to the International Energy Agency less than 1% of global average energy savings are achieved by industrial energy efficiency around the world," he said.

The above statistics, taken together, point to a complete failure to use economic and scientific evidence in the design and implementation of a sensible UK energy policy that would put security, efficiency, emission reductions and value for money at its heart.

It's unlikely that we will get a proper answer to either of these questions from the British Government. So we must supply our own. As another of the report's authors, Stephen Fawkes, puts it: "The problem is, politicians like big projects. By contrast, energy efficiency, although much more beneficial, is almost invisible, and is certainly lots of small projects."

And energy projects don't come much bigger than nuclear power. As Jimmy Cliff might have put it: "the bigger they come, the harder they fall."

Labour must now choose

All of this shows why Labour finally see the folly of its continuing support for Hinkley C.

It must condemn the deal. It must use this stance to attack the folly of Tory policy.

And it must come up with a clean, green, nucelar-free low carbon energy policy based on demand reduction and demand management, renewable energy, community energy and energy storage – as Germany is doing – which would save everyone money: industry, consumers and the taxpayer.

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Further Reading: Books by David Thorpe

• Best Practices and Case Studies for Industrial Energy Efficiency Improvement (with Oung, K. and Fawkes, S. UNEP, 2016)
• Passive Solar Architecture Pocket Reference (ISES/Routledge, DUE LATER IN 2016)
• Solar Energy Pocket Reference (ISES/Routledge, DUE LATER IN 2016)
• A London Conversation: Business Briefing on Green Bonds (Fifth Estate, 2015) [FREE DOWNLOAD]
• The 'One Planet' Life (Routledge, 2015)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Buildings (Earthscan, 2013)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Industry (Earthscan, 2013)
• Investors’ Guide to Photovoltaics (Do Sustainability e-short, 2012)
• Investors’ Guide to Low Carbon Vehicle Fuels (Do Sustainability e-short, 2012)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Solar Technology (Earthscan, 2011)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Sustainable Home Refurbishment (Earthscan, 2010)

The UK Government's new nuclear dreams & the reality of EPR delays and costs

Last week the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, was in China. Despite the economic woes facing that country he still thinks that is possible to obtain further inward investment into the UK and he went carrying a £2 billion sweetener: a guarantee underwritten by public funds for investment in a new nuclear power station Hinkley Point C in Somerset, England.

Osborne is hoping to do a deal with the China General Nuclear Corporation and China National Nuclear Corporation. China is building half of the 60 new nuclear power stations being constructed in the world. Its expertise would be invaluable were the project ever to go ahead... but this is still a remote prospect. The persistence of the government in pursuing this is perplexing.

While Vincent de Rivaz, chief executive of EDF Energy, welcomed the announcement of the infrastructure guarantee as a “clear sign” of the government’s commitment to Hinkley Point C, everybody but the UK government has doubts about it.

This even applies to the leading environmentalists George Monbiot, Mark Lynas and Chris Goodall, who had previously argued the case for nuclear power, earning the wrath of many of the colleagues in the green movement. They have now committed another U-turn and are saying that because the project will be so expensive and so late in delivery, it is better to spend the estimated £24.5bn investment on other low-carbon technologies.

Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist, Dr Doug Parr, issued a statement calling the announcement “a PR smokescreen to give the impression that this project is moving forward when it’s actually bogged down in a swamp of troubles. Hinkley hasn’t got funding or safety clearance, and everyone outside the nuclear industry and our blinkered government thinks it’s absurd, yet the Chancellor is ignoring them all to plough ahead with this overpriced, overrated, and overtime project.”

The proposals have passed all the regulatory hurdles so far set by the Office for Nuclear Regulation.

Amber Rudd, the Secretary of State for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (or should that be Nuclear Waste? See my prrevious article) went on the radio to make the point that since the future has to be low carbon and nuclear power provides that reliably, although expensive the plant is worth the money.

Part of the problem is that the government is backing the wrong technology.

European Pressurised Reactor delays and costs

Hinkley Point C is a European Pressurised Reactor. There are no completed examples of this model and the four under construction have suffered huge delays and cost overruns:

Name	Start of work	Original completion date	Currently expected completion date	Initial cost	Current estimated cost	Budget over-run
Olkiluoto 3 in Finland	2005	2009	2018	€3.7bn	€8.5bn	230%*
Flamanville 3 in France	2007	2013	End 2018	€3.3bn	€10.5bn	318%
Taishan 1 in China	2009	2013	2016	€7bn	unknown
Taishan 2 in China	2010	2014	2016	€7bn	unknown

* Since Areva guaranteed a price at the start of €3 billion and is now locked in legal dispute with operator TVO, the actual costs to both companies are secret and likely to be above €8.5bn if we consider that the plant was the first of its kind to be attempted and the extent of the budget overrun for Flamanville 3.

How this compares to Hinkley C: Hinkley C was granted planning permission in 2013. The estimated cost has risen from €7.71bn to €33.75 billion in 2015 (450% increase) – over three times the final estimated cost of Flamanville 3. And building hasn't begun yet.

Originally planned to start generating electricity by the end of 2017 it looks likely as though, if it ever does start generating, it will be after 2024 (7 year delay – & building hasn't begun yet.

An investigation into Hinkley Point C by HSBC bank saw “ample reason for the UK Government to delay or cancel the project”. Austria has launched a legal challenge to the European Commission’s ruling that the guaranteed price for the new Hinkley reactors amounts to legal state aid and the case is expected to last over two years.

But none of this seems to bother the British government.

It is significant that France itself does not plan to build another EPR, but it is quite happy to build them elsewhere, and this is why it welcomes Osborne's announcement of the investment guarantee: EPRs are built by two French state-owned companies, Areva and EDF.

The French government owns 86.52% of Areva and needs foreign cash to bail out the company, which is in deep financial trouble; it posted a €4.8 billion loss for 2014. A rescue plan is under consideration, which may include some form of bailout from EDF, itself owned 85% by the state.

Part of the rationale of the Blair Labour government, which began the Hinkley C project, was that it should replace coal and other power stations that will be ending their life in the next two years in the UK. This rationale no longer holds water.

What's a better design for a modern nuclear power plant than the EPR? Well, a Japanese company, Hitachi, is interested in building a new nuclear power station of a different type on an island off the north-west coast of Wales in the UK: Anglesey. A previous old nuclear power station on the site is being decommissioned. The new plant would be an Advanced Boiling Water Reactor: ABWR, said to be safer and cheaper.

Even so, a telephone survey of local residents being conducted by Natural Resources Wales, the Welsh Environment Agency, is uncovering significant local opposition to the nuclear new-build despite the project being favoured by the local MP and council.

Safety

The Chinese EPR reactors may not be subject to the same degree of safety scrutiny as those in Europe.

Safety tests at the Flamanville EPR nuclear power plant were only carried out in 2014 after France tightened its nuclear safety regulations, France’s Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) told the South China Morning Post in April this year, adding that no such tests were conducted on the two Taishan reactors before French nuclear manufacturer Areva shipped them to China.

Since shipping, the Chinese authorities have been alerted and Areva has said that the Taishan reactors meet Chinese nuclear standards.

“The reactor vessel heads for the Taishan reactors were evaluated as being in compliance with the Chinese regulations. The French and Chinese safety authorities are in contact following the information provided by the French watchdog,” the company told the South China Morning Post.

Nuclear waste

One thing that Amber Rudd has not quizzed about by the media today was what to do with the nuclear waste that would be generated by any new nuclear power stations.

I mentioned last week the problems the UK persists in having with its existing high-level nuclear waste stockpile, which nobody wants to have buried in their backyard.

The French have the same problem, having been struggling to overcome public opposition and legislative obstacles to a plan to bury hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of high-level, long-lived nuclear waste 500 metres below the rural village of Bure.

The CIGEO project, managed by l’Agence nationale pour la gestion des déchets radioactifs (ANDRA), was estimated to cost €16.5bn in 2005, but an estimate in 2009 set the figure at €36bn. The final cost is unknowable, and work has not yet begun.

Of course, China, not being a democracy, can bury nuclear waste wherever it wants.

Perhaps we should ship all of Britain and France's to China, as part of the deal.

The UK’s energy policy has descended into dangerous farce

The UK Conservative Government is pursuing a dangerous path on energy, which could lead to lights going out next year.

The UK's Conservative Government is preoccupied with what it calls an "over-allocation of renewable energy subsidies". Lest you think this signifies a surplus of renewable energy in the UK, it simply means that the amount of money permitted to be spent on building renewable energy capacity by the Treasury, known as the Levy Control Framework (LCF), has been exceeded. This ideological policy is not based on any scientific or independent economic evidence but on a willingness to please a certain sector of Tory supporters.

The cuts are being made under the cloak of pretending to be keeping costs down for energy consumers. Yet other energy subsidies the Government is doling out include £26 billion to the oil and gas industry this year (this figure is from an IMF report). Coal, the most climate-unfriendly fossil fuel, will receive nearly £18 billion of this subsidy. And most of the producers are overseas.

It is also promising £40 billion of subsidies for one new nuclear power station (see below for more information).

This compares to £9.1 billion due to support renewable energy.

The latest cuts to the (domestic) renewable industry , announced at the end of last week, prevent renewable energy suppliers from "locking in" the level of subsidies they will receive for the energy they supply in the future from the moment they register as suppliers.

This might seem fair enough, except when you look at the government's other actions on energy, and you see it in the context of wider attacks on the renewable energy industry. These include plans to reduce the tariff for small scale installations (as used on schools and community buildings) from 12.47p per kilowatt hour to 1.63p per kilowatt hour from January, and the announcement at the end of last week of the refusal of planning permission for another offshore windfarm (did you think that the Tories just opposed onshore wind farms on the grounds of visual intrusion? Think again).

You'd think that the Government would want to support a successful industry. According to its own latest figures, renewables’ share of electricity generation increased from 19.6% to a record 22.3% between the first quarters of 2014 and 2015, due to increased capacity, mostly of solar PV and onshore and offshore wind.

But no. These developments are causing chaos in the industry. They have prompted 13 investors, from the  UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association (UKSIF) to write to Chancellor George Osborne asking them to reverse these cuts. 

The Trillion Fund, a crowdsourcing funding project launched in 2011 with the aim of driving forward of $1 trillion of annual global investment into renewable energy, with 7,000 members, announced on September 10 it would no longer be making any more loans to the industry for the foreseeable future because of the uncertainty generated by the government, and its CEO, Julia Groves has quit.  

EDF Energy as also announced plans to scrap wind farms it was going to build.

Not all Tories agree with the way things are going. There are green Tories, such as Zac Goldsmith, the MP for Richmond Park and North Kingston, who is campaigning to be the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London, who said this weekend that the government should "accelerate not reduce incentives" for clean technology.

The irony is that Britain needs more energy to replace coal plants that are closing. Amongst the recent closures or announcements of closures are the 2GW Eggborough plant, in Yorkshire, which will close in March "because carbon taxes and low wholesale power prices have made it financially unsustainable"; and the 2.5GW Longannet power station in Fife, Scotland, closing because it lost a contract bid. Together, the two plants supply about 8% of the UK's electricity and employee about 520 people.

Meanwhile, the government pursues its obsession with fracking, which is unlikely to produce any new power for many years.

To any impartial outsider, its policies appear to be reckless in the extreme.

Never mind. Having less to do with generating energy supply means that the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) can concentrate most of its effort on what at least two thirds of its budget is actually directed towards: finding somewhere to store high-level nuclear waste. 

Yes, last financial year it cost £3.31 billion a year to manage the nuclear waste mountain, of which £2.09 billion comes from taxpayers [source : NDA], and DECC's total annual budget last year (2014-15) was £3.4 billion. But this figure is not the same every year. In 2013/14, 95.8% of the roughly £7.9 billion DECC budget (£7.5 billion) went towards cleaning up the UK's nuclear legacy. [Source:  Cabinet Office and  DECC annual report and accounts.] 

They've only been looking for a place to store this nuclear waste for 30 years, but the problem is nobody wants it buried in their backyard. A new programme of work also announced last week involves setting up another committee – which will deliberate for another two years. That will give them something to do.

Just as well that plans for a new nuclear power station at Hinckley Point C (the first in 20 years, and which will generate even more waste) have been put back again by French company EDF – despite the fact that DECC would love it to happen.  It's also been delayed because Austria has filed a legal complaint at the European Court of Justic

Of course the exorbitant cost of these subsidies – put at a staggering £40 billion by a nuclear expert – would put up energy prices for consumers by far more than the cost of renewable energy.

The agreed strike price for electricity from Hinkley Point C, were it to be ever built, is set at £92.50/MWh, about double the current price.

EON doesn't like nuclear power either, now that the Germans have seen sense and refused to let their energy consumers for the bill for cleaning up nuclear power. Pity that the UK government won't do the same thing. But of course, looking after the nuclear industry is what DECC mostly does.

It all goes to show that perhaps energy policy shouldn't be left to politicians but, just as the setting of the bank lending rate is outsourced to the Bank of England in the UK, energy policy could be outsourced to an independent body of experts. As David Porter, a former Chief Executive of the UK’s Association of Electricity Producers and Chief Executive of Energy UK, recently pointed out, there is "an awkward mis-match between the investment horizon of a steady, long-term, capital-intensive industry and the capricious nature of politics in a five-year election cycle".

No kidding.

In 2013-14 every UK taxpayer spent £252.53 on looking after nuclear waste. Why make more?

We don't know what to do with nuclear waste, which is toxic for thousands of years and is extremely expensive to look after. In 2013-14 every UK taxpayer spent a staggering £252.53 on looking after this waste. Why make more?

How much is there? 

4.5 million cubic metres (4.9 million tonnes), enough to fill Wembley Stadium four times over. 1,100 cubic metres is very dangerous high level waste and 290,000 cubic metres is intermediate level waste. It's managed by a government body called the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).

4% more will be produced in the future from the UK's continuing nuclear defence capability (waste estimated up to 2060) and its continuing nuclear-powered submarine programme (waste estimated up to 2100). [Source: NDA]

How much does it cost?

It costs £3.31 billion a year to manage the nuclear waste mountain, of which £2.09 billion comes from taxpayers. [Source: NDA]

The government funding comes from the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC). Its total annual budget last year (2014-15) was £3.4 billion, so two thirds of this is for looking after Britain's nuclear waste mountain.

So on this basis, every one of the 29.7 million taxpayers in the UK spends £114.48 a year on looking after nuclear waste.

But this figure is not the same every year. In 2013/14, 95.8% of the roughly £7.9 billion DECC budget (£7.5 billion) went towards cleaning up the UK's nuclear legacy

Above: pie chart of the DEL budget. Chart by Carbon Brief.

On this basis, every UK taxpayer spends £252.53 a year on looking after nuclear waste.

Whatever the average in the future will be, it will continue for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Perhaps as long into the future as the building of Stonehenge is in the past. And we have no idea why that was built, so will people in the future know what our relics are?

The above chart of DECC's budget during 2013/14 shows what government calls "annually managed expenditure" (AME). Most of this relates to nuclear decommissioning. Most went towards cleaning up the UK's nuclear legacy. Source: Cabinet Office and DECC annual report and accounts. Chart by Carbon Brief.

The costs are rising.

The estimated costs of cleaning up the Sellafield nuclear site rose an estimated £5 billion to £53 billion in February this year, according to a March statement from Public Accounts Committee chair Margaret Hodge. She says: "It has taken far too long for the Authority to deal with management incompetence at Sellafield".

A private consortium, Nuclear Management Partners (NMP), that had been running the clean-up at Sellafield was stripped of its contract in January for reasons of incompetence.

Until the recent cuts DECC's budget was just 1.2% of the total government budget. Since then it's been told by George Osborne to save a further £70 million. The nuclear waste amount can't be changed for safety reasons.

Since most of DECC's budget is for managing nuclear waste, shouldn't the department be renamed The Department for Nuclear Waste?

Where should the waste go?

It's now held in temporary storage ponds on the north west coast of England, in Sellafield. These ponds are deteriorating, and leaks occur. So for 50 years the government and the industry has been looking for a permanent storage place underground.

It has not found one, because nobody wants it beneath their feet, not even the good people of Sellafield themselves.

So, since April the government can override local councils and force nuclear waste dumps on a community, under a law that was rushed through in the final hours of the last parliament. This is like the recent announcement that would allow fracking anywhere that the onshore oil and gas industry wants, against local wishes, if the government says so.

Is this what you want?

None of the above gives me any reason to be confident about Britain building a new generation of nuclear power stations.

Renewable energy can give much better value for money and provide baseload power in the cases of hydroelectric and marine power, and renewable gas, while electricity storage solutions are fast-tracked for Research and Development to store intermittently generated electricity from wind and solar, without leaving a toxic and expensive legacy.

Community bribes to host nuclear are one fifth those for wind farms

Ecotricity founder Dale Vince said: “This is a further move by the Government to rig the energy market against renewables in favour of nuclear and gas". 

The Government is rigging the energy market after its announced nuclear power would pay five times less than wind energy in community benefit.

Ministers announced yesterday that communities around eight sites (Hinkley Point, Sizewell, Wylfa, Oldbury, Sellafield, Bradwell, Heysham, and Hartlepool) in England and Wales could be in line to receive benefits - otherwise known as bribes - worth up to £1000/MW over 40 years from when and if nuclear power stations sited there begin operating. 

The founder of leading renewable energy supplier Ecotricity, Dale Vince, said: “This is a further move by the Government to rig the energy market against renewables in favour of nuclear and gas. Nuclear power is already being fast-tracked through the planning system and today they’ve announced nuclear will pay a fraction of the community benefit paid by wind power.”

On July 6 the Government announced that onshore wind farms should pay £5,000/MW in community benefit – an increase of five fold. At that time Mr Vince said: “Will we see the same logic being applied to the new generation of gas plants and nuclear power stations? This is a slippery slope.”

Dr Doug Parr, Chief Scientist at Greenpeace UK, commented: “Whilst wind farms and even shale gas developers have to pay community benefits, only nuclear stations will get a fat taxpayer subsidy to fund them. 

"Our entire energy policy is now absurdly distorted by the desperation to prop up EDF’s faltering Hinkley C project, with the government piling the costs onto the taxpayer to avoid the embarrassment of admitting they backed the wrong technology. We can’t go on like this.”

Dale Vince added: “This shows the Government’s approach to energy policy. Firstly, to fast-track planning for nuclear and gas; secondly, allowing nuclear to pay community benefit that’s one fifth the cost burden of wind power; and thirdly, the new mechanism of financial support (Contracts for Difference), which it’s widely believed will be two to three times higher for nuclear when compared to onshore wind.

“When you put those three parts together it shows an energy market being rigged. The Government shouldn’t be picking winners in the energy industry, they should be providing a level playing field for competition. Are they really saying the impact of nuclear power in one fifth that of wind power?

“After 25 years, windmills are removed and the land returned to nature. The impact of nuclear power remains for hundreds of years and those sites will stay radioactive and never be safe."

The Government is clearly only thinking short term. What happens after 40 years is up and the site is radioactive?

Its motivation is the expected creation of employment, which it estimates as "up to 40,000 jobs in the sector" but crucially "at its peak", ie during the construction phase.  

Its nuclear industrial strategy sets out the basis for a long-term partnership between government and industry to exploit those opportunities.

But communities hosting nuclear sites will be left with the toxic legacy long after these benefits have been forgotten.

Strike prices for renewable energy revealed

Viridor's waste-to-energy plant in Cardiff, to be completed next year: it will receive a £90 per megawatt hour strike price.

The prices to be paid over and above the estimated market price for energy from waste, offshore and onshore wind, PV and other renewables were laid out yesterday as part of the government's electricity market reforms, designed to let renewable supply 30% of Britain's electricity by 2020.

The figures cover each year from 2014 until 2019. Some technologies will receive the same price for the whole period, while others will see the price reduce, as their costs are expected to fall.

For projects with a potential deployment capacity over 1 GW:

• Offshore wind will receive £155/MWh, falling to £135 in 2019
• Onshore wind will receive £100, dropping to £95 in 2019
• Large solar PV will receive £125, falling to £110 in 2019
• Hydro will receive £95 throughout
• Biomass conversion will receive £105 throughout.

There are also prices for:

• gasification and pyrolysis (£155-£135)
• anaerobic digestion (£145-£135)
• waste to energy (£90)
• dedicated biomass with CHP (£120)
• geothermal (£125-£120)
• landfill gas (£65)
• sewage gas (£85), and 
• marine energy technologies (£305).

These prices are broadly comparable to the support levels available under the Renewables Obligation, with a number of adjustments to account for the benefits of Contracts-for-Difference (CfDs).

Under the Levy Control Framework there will be a cap, starting in 2015/16 at £4.3 billion in real terms, to limit the costs passed on to consumers.

The application process is now open for developers of renewable electricity projects to apply for Investment Contracts ahead of when the long-term EMR contracts (CfDs) are finalised.

DECC also confirmed that the Government will allow renewable electricity to be imported and exported from the UK to elsewhere to help meet renewable energy targets, boost energy security and investment.

Renewable energy projects on the Scottish islands will receive additional support to connect them to the mainland.

Energy Secretary Ed Davey said the strike prices would “make the UK market one of the most attractive for developers of wind, wave, tidal, solar and other renewables technologies. This will help boost home-grown sources of clean secure energy and enable us to decarbonise the power sector."

He predicted that renewables would contribute "more than 30% to our mix by the end of this decade".

The Government also revealed details of the capacity market, which will be launched next year, in which participants will include existing generators and investors in new plant. They will bid at auctions to offer to provide the total amount of electricity that the UK is expected to need for 2018-2019.

Bidders who are successful will receive a steady price from the year in which they agree to make the capacity available. In return they must deliver electricity as required, or face financial penalties.

The announcements coincided with a report from watchdog Ofgem warning that “without action" electricity margins could tighten in 2015-2016 to 2%-5% depending on demand.

Ofgem’s chief executive Andrew Wright said this “highlights the need for reform to encourage investment in generation”.

£75 million of capital for investment in innovative energy projects was also announced, with the aim of lowering the cost of deployment of offshore wind, renewable heat, carbon capture and storage.

Reactions to the strike prices have been mixed.

Gaynor Hartnell, chief executive of the UK’s Renewable Energy Association, said she was struck by what was left out. “The notable omission is dedicated biomass. We will be pushing for clarification of these as soon as possible.”

She observed that there are “hundreds of megawatts of biomass projects looking to commission under the new support regime and their contribution of clean, baseload electricity will help keep the lights on when the capacity crunch comes”.

The Solar Trade Association's Head of External Affairs, Leonie Greene, criticised the contracts for difference model for mitigating against independent renewable energy suppliers because it depends on generators securing a market 'reference' price for their power, which is then topped up by Government to meet the 'strike price'.

She said that there is then a relatively high risk for independent generators of failing to meet this price, meaning that purchasers of renewable power are likely to offer less attractive terms to independent generators in their long-term Power Purchase Agreements for their output.

“Because of the additional risk the CfD model presents to independent generators like solar power, we would expect to see the additional cost of risk factored into the strike price," she said.

Maria McCaffery, CEO of RenewableUK, representing marine and wind energy sectors, was more enthusiastic: "The levels of the strike prices are challenging but possible considering the reduced time periods that renewables will be supported for under the contract for difference system compared to the Renewable Obligation”.

She did call for more details to be set out for the sake of investors’ confidence. "The secret is consistent, long-term support and investors seeing that Government is behind renewables and low carbon generation for the long term.”

Utility firm RWE's CEO Paul Massara also called for more detail. “This, along with the overall complexity of the proposals and the need to gain EU state aid approval, means significant uncertainty remains. Only once the final detail on contract terms and conditions is clear will a full understanding of the impact these proposals will have on potential investment into the UK and on Britain’s energy consumers be possible,” he said.

The CBI's chief policy director, Katja Hall also welcomed the figures but added: “The Energy Bill’s passage has dragged on long enough — the big task now is to get it on the statute book as soon as possible.”

She added: "giving the Green Investment Bank borrowing powers will give it real teeth to support investments in low-carbon technologies”.

The Government also announced plans to support nuclear power and shale gas.

This includes £100,000 for communities situated near each exploratory (hydraulically fracked) well, and 1% of revenues from every production site.

The Treasury will pre-qualify EDF’s Hinkley Point C new nuclear power project for a Government Infrastructure Loan Guarantee, which is available to any large infrastructure project. Negotiations remain ongoing between Government and NNB Genco (a subsidiary of EDF) on the potential terms.

This support was lamented as being bad for Scotland by Lang Banks, director of WWF Scotland, who commented that: "the negative impacts of the UK Government's obsession with supporting nuclear and fossil fuels appear to outweigh the positive moves made on renewables.

“It would be a great shame indeed if Scotland's sensible ambition to create jobs and cut climate emissions through increased use of renewable energy was undermined by these measures," she continued.

"In environmental terms, plans to offer tax breaks and compensation for communities for shale gas extraction, and billions of pounds to underwrite new nuclear power is just plain foolish," she added. "Worse still, every pound wasted on polluting gas or nuclear means a pound less on encouraging energy saving and supporting more clean renewables."

Will Straw, the IPPR’s associate director, warned that shale gas "won’t do anything to keep energy bills down in the short term. We must ramp up our ambition on energy efficiency through innovative funding mechanisms like the UK guarantee scheme and the Green Investment Bank".

Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton and Hove, said in Parliament yesterday that ministers should be "spending more time working out how to keep fossil fuels in the ground and less time squandering taxpayers’ money on tax breaks for shale gas that scientists say we simply cannot afford to burn if the Government are to keep to their commitment to limit global warming to below 2°".

This was a reference to a report from watchdog the Committee on Climate Change published this week which warned that the country risked missing its carbon emission reduction targets.

David Kennedy, Chief Executive of the CCC, cautioned: “There remains a very significant challenge delivering the 3% annual emissions reduction required to meet the third and fourth carbon budgets, particularly as the economy returns to growth.

"Government action is required over the next two years to develop and implement new policies. A failure to do this would raise the costs and risks associated with moving to a low-carbon economy,” he said.

Now we know: £155bn: the cost of new nuclear power to consumers

It has been a bad week for nuclear power and the prospects of building new power stations.

Last week, Cumbria County Council voted against the area being used as a deep geological dump for existing nuclear waste, sending the whole process of looking for something to do with the country's stockpile back to the drawing board.

Looking after this existing waste takes up more than half of the annual budget of the Department for Energy and Climate Change. That's £1.6bn of public money every year.

On Monday, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee published a damning report on the management of this waste, which said that "deadlines for cleaning up Sellafield have been missed, while total lifetime costs for decommissioning the site continue to rise and now stand at £67.5bn".

Margaret Hodge, its Chair, noted that: "taxpayers will have to foot the bill" and they "are not getting a good deal". Last year the consortium tasked with sorting out the mess, was rewarded with £54m in fees, despite only two out of 14 major projects being on track.

Also on Monday, Centrica announced it was ending its partnership with EDF, writing off a massive £200m and launching a share buy-back scheme to return another £500m of unused capital to its investors. As with RWE and E.ON last year, and, as Martin Horwood, MP, put it, "like any sane investor in my view, it has decided that it is not going to touch these new nuclear plans with a bargepole".

Finally, yesterday, MPs on the House of Commons Backbench Business Committee debated the question of the subsidy-by-another-name for new nuclear build in this country, contracts for difference, floated in the Energy Bill, but lacking detail of any sort.

The energy chief executive of Electricité de France, Vincent de Rivaz, told the Financial Times that the last thing stopping them going ahead with building a new nuclear plant at Hinckley and Sizewell “is the contract for difference. Once we have that, we’ll have a compelling investment case to attract partners into the project”.

In other words, as Martin Horwood told MPs, “If you don’t subsidise us, there is no business case.”

How much is EDF asking for? The negotiations have so far been shrouded in secrecy, but for the first time, some figures came out in yesterday's debate.

According to the Energy Fair group of energy consultants and academics, the real cost of nuclear power is at least £200 per MWh. This is much more than the cost of offshore wind power (140 per MWh) or that of onshore wind power (£90 MWh).

Based on this, EDF might be asking for something as high as £165 per MWh for the strike price. A similar figure comes from Steve Thomas of Greenwich University and Peter Atherton of Citi: a strike cost price of £161 per megawatt.

This compares to today’s wholesale price for electricity of around £51 per megawatt.

The government would have to enter into a 30-year contract life for the two proposed plants at Hinkley and Sizewell.

Over this period, then, the total cost to householders and businesses or taxpayers would be £155bn by 2050. That is without any of the additional costs, such as insurance and accident protection, dealing with waste, etc.

As Mike Weatherley MP said yesterday: "Imagine the renewable energy industry if we had invested over £155bn in it".

Much of this cash would leave the country as EDF is based in France.

We are talking about not some new technology like tidal power, but a mature and not very competitive industry started in 1956.

MPs were asking for the Public Accounts Committee to scrutinise the economic case for nuclear new build and contracts for difference. Unfortunately, its chair, Margaret Hodge told them that, much as she would like to do this, she couldn't, because the committee can only examine contracts after they have been signed. In this case, that would be too late.

MPs bewailed the lack of information that Parliament had been given about the negotiations with the EDF. Joan Walley said: "It is impossible to understand how Government policy is being taken forward in this area, because of the complete lack of transparency and of an evidence base."

This led Ed Davey to come before MPs and pledge that the House would be told the nature of any contract agreed with EDF before it were signed. Then why haven't they done that already?

Let's be clear, the Treasury’s levy control framework, which caps the costs that can be added to consumers’ bills, currently specifies a figure of £2.6bn a year. There are estimates that the cap would have to rise to £12.5bn or more to provide 16 GW of nuclear power by 2025.

I don't think the Treasury is going to agree to this.

EDF's Olkiluoto plant in Finland was begun in 2005 and should have gone on line in 2009. It is six years overdue and €4.3bn over budget. Its Flamanville facility is now four years late and and €4.8bn over budget.

Clearly, new nuclear cannot be built without a subsidy. Therefore, it should not go ahead at all. Instead, it should yield to other forms of energy, particularly renewable energy.

Ed Davey promised yesterday that "each contract will need to deliver value for money for the consumer and be compatible with state-aid rules". On present evidence, EDF is a not going to deliver this.

Waiting in the wings are Chinese companies. And do we really want state-owned Chinese companies entering into the British energy market and being privy to our nuclear secrets?