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Hinkley Point: the ‘dreadful deal’ behind the world’s most expensive power plant
- isostatic 9y agoThe UK needs more power, however between off shore wind (half the price of Hinckley even now), and mass energy storage - not just dedicated batteries but also 10 million electric cars plugged in to sockets, I don't see this being financially suitable.
- AstroJetson 9y agoWow, just wow. From the cost overruns, to the deal to pay almost twice the going rate for power, to learning that France has 50+ nuclear plants that need to be replaced in the next 10 years, the article is just a fountain of bad news. It's a great lesson in things that have a long lead and a long tail can be hugely derailed by technology.
- epistasis 9y agoTh nuclear industry in the West has failed spectacularly since the 70s. In the US, rank managerial incompetence has completely tanked the "nuclear renaissance" started in the last Bush years and throughout the Obama years. Despite large local support, huge regulatory support, and loan guarantees, building nuclear in the US in this century is an even worse deal than Hinkley! Meanwhile, the nuclear industry falls back on blaming environmentalists and has vague complaints about regulations, but no suggestions on what to change. They refuse to acknowledge their own incompetence and massive failures, preferring to fight lost and old political battles, reliving the past. There's way too much old, dead, stupid weight in the industry. If any of the new nuclear startups succeed they will need to make sure to avoid falling into the same traps and have a lot more self awareness than the current batch of decision makers and proponents.
- Spooky23 9y agoPrivate industry can’t manage big capital projects like this. The current management framework for these kinds of companies doesn’t allow corporate managers to take risks, and the culture of excessive compensation for executives leads them to price too much risk.
- nerdponx 9y agolarge local support There's been a long campaign to close the Indian Point plant in Westchester County, NY that's only gained traction over the last seveal years. The main concerns are: evacuation in case of emergency, waste storage, terrorism, and environmental impact on the Hudson River due to hot-water discharge. It also doesn't supply that much of the area's total demand and one of the reactors is inactive. Not saying that means there's no local support elsewhere, but it's definitely not universal. Maybe if it were a new plant things would be different.
- epistasis 9y agoThe new "nuclear renaissance" plants, Vogtle and VC Summer, were welcomed with open arms. Older reactors like Indian Point were built before all the risks were fully disclosed to the surrounding population, or at least before the first disasters, resulting in a lot of people dead set against them. Nuclear has also allied itself with fossil fuel allies, which have of course abandoned nuclear as soon as they were the least bit uneconomic. At least in the US there hasn't seemed to be much emphasis at all on the low carbon aspect of nuclear from proponents, and they are all too happy to rag on renewables with bullshit arguments like land usage. Natural low-carbon allies are still seen as suspect or the enemy. Any reasonable carbon tax would mean that (existing) nuclear could compete economically, but I've never seen a nuclear proponent advocate for that.
- shaqbert 9y agoFlamanville - cost overrun. Olkiluoto - cost overrun. Hinkeley Point C - cost overrun. You see the pattern? The bane of the nuclear industry is not safety, but cost. Too expensive and risky to build and decomission.
- littlestymaar 9y agoThe bane of nuclear energy is management: everybody working at EDF knew Flamanville was going to be more costly than budgeted, and everybody[1] know HPC is a bad idea, yet the management (especially the CEO, Jean-Bernard Lévy, who never worked in the energy industry beforehand and became CEO because of its political acquaintance) decided to go all-in on this. I guess it's easier when you can't lose anything if things go bad: the former Areva CEO, Anne Lauvergeon didn't have any problem becoming board member in many big corporation[2] after her terrible management lead Areva to bankruptcy ... [1] : the CFO resigned to protest against the deal, and the trade unions were strongly against [2] : Suez, Total, Vodaphone, EADS ... https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Lauvergeon#Mandats_sociaux https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Lauvergeon#Mandats_sociau...
- Neil44 9y agoBear in mind that The Guardian is a very strongly Labour biased paper and the Hinkley deal is seen as a Conservative baby.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- danw1979 9y agoThere wasn’t a hint of party political bias in this article. The financial facts of the funding of this power station speak for themselves, no matter what colour your tie.
- Neil44 9y agoThe headline of the article is '...how could the government strike such a bad deal'. I actually don't agree that facts always speak for themselves. I think it's very easy to pick naked facts to lead the reader where you want them to go without explanation of the decision making process or what the alternatives were.
- littlestymaar 9y agoI don't understand how you could get downvoted on this, it's not like you called it fake news or anything ...
- dang 9y agoPlease don't post unsubstantive comments here.
- ChrisSD 9y agoThe Guardian is left leaning but it doesn't strongly support any party. And as a matter of fact this plan was initially proposed by a Lib Dem MP[0] (he was also a Guardian columist after that). That reference also notes that nuclear expansion was favoured by most Labour MPs at the time. [0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11564152 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11564152
- danmaz74 9y agoI don't know if Hinkley Point will work or not, but the article is very light on numbers and facts, and very full of opinion.
- trebligdivad 9y agoIt's a mess of a deal, but what was the alternative? On a nice windy day we're getting away with no coal, relying on a mix of ~8GW wind, ~25GW gas and ~7.5GW of existing nukes, but on a cold still day we're pretty much flat out on 10G of coal, 25G of gas and 7.5GW of nukes, so until someone can find an alternative for ~17GW (coal+nuke) or a way to store ~30GWh worth to get us over the evening peak without coal+nuke then we need to keep nukes going. Of course it's going to be a cost overrun, but I am glad that Flamanville etc are being used as the debug points first.
- epistasis 9y agoLots of options, but here's one: $20B buys massive amounts of HVDC to interconnect and trade with distant parts of the continent and enable trade in both directions for intermittent renewables. HVDC has shorter lead times and lower cost overruns too. Multiple lines are important too, because those massive inverters don't work 100% of the time.
- kalleboo 9y agoSo, replace the political instability of the middle east with the political instability of northern africa? Usually when there's a cold snap it affects large swaths of Europe.
- trebligdivad 9y agoFortunately we've already got ~5GW+; but cold still winter days are tending to affect large areas at the same time for extended periods of time; those are the days when everyone is at peak usage and has ~no solar. The last time the UK power grid had to raise a warning (a few years back) was a cold still February when the whole continent was low on wind generation, and you could see that a couple of weeks back where we were running coal generation and exporting to France (well the EU grid) at the same time.
- martinald 9y agoWe have a significant amount of HVDC already. Not sure how that helps as there is still many many days when there is 0 wind across the whole of the EU. Not to mention as the article states the closest big nation, France, is on the verge of an energy crisis itself....
- littlestymaar 9y ago> How could the government strike such a bad deal If the project has some amount of delay (which is likely when you see Flamanville or Olkiluoto) it's going to end up as a really good deal for the British Government because there are high penalty fees in that deal. For EDF, not so much, that's why the project met that much resistance inside EDF.
- ryanmarsh 9y agoThis is the quintessential example of “bike shedding”[0] is it not? Only this time reason failed and we bike shedded the nuclear power plant instead? [0]: http://bikeshed.com http://bikeshed.com
- donmatito 9y agoWhereas government policy papers could massage figures and make optimistic projections, the prospectus, which provided financial information for potential investors, could not bend the truth. “A government paper was one thing,” said the former civil servant, “but if the figures were misleading in the prospectus, it was a criminal offence. That was not at all like a government paper, to be honest. It was quite a moment for us all.” :-D :-D :-D
- GlennS 9y agoWhile it's clear that nuclear is uneconomical now and in the near future, it's still not quite clear to me if we can do without it. Solar and wind are great, cheap options right now, and they've really outperformed what people expected over the past few years. Is there enough potential capacity of solar + wind + hydro to meet total future demand though? Are we going to run out of land and coast first? If we're going to reduce our carbon emissions enough by 2050, we need to electrify heating, industry and transport. That's going to increase electricity demand by a lot. Carbon capture and storage is pretty clearly dead. Tidal lagoons seem like they're also just too expensive. Neither fusion nor alternative fission technologies will be up and running in time to make much difference to the 2050 target for 80% reduction from 1990 levels (UK specific).
- hanbura 9y agoWe could provide the world's total energy needs by covering a small portion of the Sahara desert with solar. We are not running out of land anytime soon. There is also a practical limit where wind energy takes too much energy out of weather systems, affecting climate, but that point is also far beyond the current world energy usage. We're not running out of renewable energy anytime soon.
- isostatic 9y agoA single hurricane produces about 200 times the global energy use per year. We're not able to extract power from the atmosphere to make a dent.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- smitherfield 9y ago>We could provide the world's total energy needs by covering a small portion of the Sahara desert with solar. The Sahara desert is extremely sandy, and extremely windy, which makes it a pretty terrible, or at least prohibitively-expensive place to build a solar farm. It is also extremely complicated and extremely expensive to transmit large amounts of power over long distances, particularly across national borders (everyone's on a different AC standard), particularly across many national borders.
- adventured 9y agoI was astounded at the cost of the new Belarus nuclear power plant being built by Russia near the Lithuania border. 2,400 MW of power, for $11 billion to build it. Based on the size of the Belarus economy (GDP per capita), that'd be like the US spending $120 billion to build a new nuclear power plant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarusian_nuclear_power_plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarusian_nuclear_power_plant https://gizmodo.com/the-first-nuclear-power-plant-in-belarus-is-a-dangerous-1785024428 https://gizmodo.com/the-first-nuclear-power-plant-in-belarus... https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-nuclear-plant-stokes-europes-fears-of-a-power-play-1514116800 https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-nuclear-plant-stokes-eu...
- foobarian 9y agoIt's counterintuitive to me why the plants need to be so enormous, with the incredible amount of concrete and enclosure when there are nuclear subs running around at a tiny fraction of that size. (And yet with humans in even closer proximity than the nuclear power plant staff).
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoI wonder about this too. Perhaps there is some combination of regulations and economies of scale that push nuclear power build projects in this direction. I'd be interested to know why we don't see more smaller reactors, or fewer even bigger ones.
- bsder 9y ago> there are nuclear subs running around at a tiny fraction of that size. That never have to make a profit. And that's the key. The US Navy is INSANE about keeping the reactors properly tuned and serviced. The number of staff they throw at assembling, servicing, and decommissioning their nuclear vessels is astounding.
- adrianN 9y agoI would guess that one of the hardest parts of building a nuclear reactor is compliance with all relevant regulations. That effort probably doesn't scale linearly with reactor size, so building the biggest plant you can afford is the best investment.
- nraynaud 9y agoI am French and I am sorry that a state owned company go put a mess in other countries electrical markets.
- DrNuke 9y agoBig nuclear projects are too slow to start nowadays and need stability over the long term (40-60 years). This is probably unsustainable economically and unwise technologically in liberalised markets. That said, Generation IV reactors in a small modular format will be equally expensive as first of a kind and difficult to assess by the national regulators that give the go ahead. So what for nuclear? Bear in mind that if transport goes fully electric in the next 15-20 years, then the world will need almost double the baseload electricity it needs today, irrespective of improved efficiency of existing sources and similar reasoning. China and Russia are going long with new nuclear while the liberalised West is shutting down its plants or extends their life at a loss while thinking of phasing out. Another big dependency in sight then?