Nuclear insanity

Costing the earth

Gordon Brown calls for a major expansion of nuclear power today.  Not the best day to do it as we heard a fresh estimate of the cost of clearing up the mess from our last nuclear power disaster.

The first estimate in January was that it would cost £12 billion. Then the estimate leapt to the unbelievable sum of  £73bn. Today a senior official at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said the bill would rise by even more billions of pounds.

That’s £4,000 per family.  In the sixties the promise was that nuclear electricity would be too cheap to meter. It’s proved to be the most expensive energy ever.

Nineteen sites across the country, some dating from the 1950s, are due to be dismantled in the coming decades. A spokesman for the Department for Business said it was ready for an adjustment in the clean-up costs.

Finland's new nuclear station is already two years late and £1billion over budget. Then there’s the safety issue.

Nuclear power could cost us the earth.

Bullsh*t? .....You Bet!

I worry for the future of education. Teachers need a lesson in elementary comprehension.

NUT Cymru sent out a Press Release today headed a tad provocativley “Hypocrisy? You Bet!” It was sent to all Welsh MPs,” They claim “ Members of Parliament are demanding an increase in their annual pay from £62000 to just under £100,000"

I e-mailed them back and asked which MPs?  When did they ask?  and Who told you? Their laugh-out-loud reply is that they read it in today’s Daily Mail. This must be a first. NUT Cymru (NUTS), an apparently  intelligent organisation believe what they read in the Daily Mail? Astonishing.

In the responsible media there are truthful reports. The BBC say  "MPs could seek to avoid future expenses criticism by awarding themselves an automatic lump sum of £23,000 a year for second homes A Commons Committee review of MPs' is looking at the plan. A spokesman for the committee said it was too early to specify its findings."

Sit up straight, NUT and PAY ATTENTION.  Fold your arms and LISTEN.

COULD does not mean WILL
LOOKING does not mean DEMANDING

Now  write that down 100 times before you issue any more press releases.

Tidal sanity.

There was hidden good news on renewable power today. Not that you would have noticed from the nuclear fixation.

Tidal power has been harnessed to generate electricity for Britain’s National Grid for the first time off Orkney. The European Marine Energy Centre’s turbine will power 150 homes

The move has been hailed, as a milestone in the development of marine energy, which could provide up to a fifth of Britain’s electricity needs.

It came when a single turbine on the Atlantic seabed off Orkney was connected to the National Grid on Monday morning. The area off the north of Scotland is regarded as potentially one of the best in the world for tidal power and has been described as the "Saudi Arabia of marine energy".
This is a great leap forward with clean carbon free energy. There are huge areas where the tides can be exploited from the Alderney Race to the Severn estuary.

Scotland are leading the way with pioneering tidal and wave units. Many devices can harness the immense power of the tides that are Britain’s equivalent of Arabian oil.

Dr Mark Williamson, director of innovations for the Carbon Trust, said: "In the UK, marine energy has the potential to deliver up to 20 per cent of our electricity needs. “

Compared with, the new nuclear project is a puny expensive pipe dream

Comments

[Jon Worth]

Spot on - as ever - on the nuclear issue. Compounded also with the blackouts due to Sizewell B's problems today. Keep up your efforts to oppose Brown on nuclear!

[paulflynn]

Thanks Jon. About this time last year, Gordon Brown announced that he was in favour of continuing to pour £billions into Trident and nuclear power. It was the end for me. I was one of only 30 MPs who did not nominate him.

I cannot understand why he has been bewitched by the Pied Piper allure of the nuclear deception.

[Derek Wall]

Scary I seem to have stumbled on labour MPS I agree with (other than John McDonnell who I think I always agree with!)...cost is one issue and I think a resurgent non violent direct action movement is another...but the Brown lack of vision is astonishing...ok I am biased as I am in another political party but the cost of all this is mad.

Britain's oil was squandered when it could have funded renewables and an investment in low carbon public transport..

like the cartoon as well

[Paul Flynn]

Thank you Derek. It is baffling. Gordon is highly intelligent and perceptive. how can he be blind to the perpetual failures of nuclear power that dwarf any possible losses from Northern Rock? After all, this is money lost on an oceanic scale.

[dotcommentator]

It is very worrying that those charged with teaching our youngsters take the Daily (Hate) Mail's shriekings as gospel truth.

Incidentally, if you were not already aware, there's an honourable mention of you in the latest Private Eye about your questions to Richard Caborn and his involvement with Amec.

[rwendland]

On the blackout topic, rather predictably the press didn't pick up the point that nuclear power caused that outage. Sizewell B is the UKs largest generation "source of intermittence" (1188 MWatts), largely defining the UK grids spinning reserve reqt. Other power plants are larger overall, but configured so they don't all drop out from a single point of failure (having multiple boilers etc).

If we didn't have Sizewell B, quite possibly the grid would have coped with any other double failure without an outage.

With an EPR the spinning reserve etc will have to be enlarged to cope with 1600 MW generation dropout.

BTW on EPR this week, the French regulator ordered concrete pouring to stop at Flamanville because of cracks and "lack of rigour in the execution of the works":

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssIndustryMaterialsUtilitiesNews/idUSL2762459720080527

[Pau Flynn]

Thanks dotcommentator. The NUT 's press release repeated a tabloid lie. MPs are in enough trouble anyway, without people accusuing us of new outrages that we have not committed. If any scheme like this is approved, it will not be inflationary. It will get through is the total sum is less that what MPs now get.

I have now seen Private Eye. Thanks for letting me. It balances out the embarrassment because I was praised by the Daily Mail for my questioning of Richard Caborn

[Pau Flynn]

Thanks rwendland again. Nuclear bad news is rarely reported. I'm thinking of putting down a few EDMS next week on the deceptions of the nuclear industry from ZETA, 'too cheap to meter' reprocessing and £73Billion plus clean-up costs, Finland delays. Any ideas?

[rwendland]

The topicality of the week's power outage must be tempting for an EDM. There is something fishy about the whole episode, the Grid should have coped with it quite easily but didn't:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4021079.ece

and more interesting comments from a blogger inside the financial side of the energy industry:

http://cityunslicker.blogspot.com/2008/05/power-cuts-its-bad.html

I wonder if it is something MPs should look into. I suspect there are strange financial interests involved - wholesale prices reached their highest ever levels apparently following the outage, so I suspect some might have done well from the episode.

How about an EDM pointing out that the Grid couldn't cope with 1188 MWatt Sizewell B dropping out without some outage, so what assurance do we have that the Grid could cope from new larger 1600 MWatt EPRs "source of intermittence" when they drop out, as they will do on occasion?

Large new PWRs bring something new for the Grid to cope with. Our AGR nuclear power plants may be clapped out and expensive, but they did have two reactors per unit so the "source of intermittence" was under half half the MW of the new proposed PWRs.

[rwendland]

NB Flagging the largest "source of intermittence" could help the green agenda a bit. Much is made of the unpredictability of wind-power, but that is overstated and gradual in effect. The largest nuclear power station is in fact the largest source of intermittence largely defining the amount of (expensive) spinning reserve the Grid needs. I wonder if this extra spinning reserve cost is properly factored into the nuclear cost case.