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The others are already over budget and behind schedule, the private companies meant to be heading them are dropping like flies. This won't end well... https://

• rbg246 6y ago
  It's a job stimulus package, creating 10000 jobs and advertising this(whether or not it eventuates) is the reason for giving this project the green light.
  • LatteLazy 6y ago
    I think you're right. Though for 2mil quid a job, we could have done better just picking people and sending them cheques imho...
    • credit_guy 6y ago
      It's a 10 year project. 2 mil becomes 200k per year. Still a lot, but then it's not really a purely job project. If you send 10000 people 200k per year you will end up with the same hole in your pockets of 20 billion after 10 years, but with a nuclear power plant less. And 10000 people with zero work experience.
      • renewiltord 6y ago
        Chances are that 10 years from now you're still going to be money in the hole with no nuclear power plant. Both scenarios have no plant after 10 years.
        • Reason077 6y ago
          Sizewell C will be a "carbon copy" of Hinkley Point C, with construction equipment and personnel moving over to Sizewell as Hinkley is finished. This should significantly reduce construction risk, as you have an experienced team who already understand how to build the thing.
      • adrianN 6y ago
        With 2 million in the bank you can easily retire to a low cost of living area. That's 50k for forty years.
        • GlennS 6y ago
          That's assuming no returns on investment. With £2 million you could spend £75,000 a year and reasonably expect to preserve your $2 million (and grow it by inflation) forever. (Going with 3.75% rule instead of usual 4% rule so you have a safety margin.)
          • adrianN 6y ago
            I'm very conservative and don't assume that I can't beat inflation after taxes.
    • rbg246 6y ago
      True but equally they might end up with a nuclear power plant at the end of it which means while they paid £200k peer year for each job they get an asset at the end albeit unknown how useful it will be or whether it gets finished
  • deleted 6y ago
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• Gwypaas 6y ago
  Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy due to failed nuclear construction in the U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/business/westinghouse-toshiba-nuclear-bankruptcy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/business/westinghouse-tos... Areva, responsible for the construction of Olkiluoto-3 in Finland on a fixed price contract. Restructured and sold all of it's reactor business except Olkiluoto-3, which it still is liable for, to EDF. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areva
  • sudosysgen 6y ago
    It's always astonishing how hydro and nuclear are so much better handled by SoEs like EDF or HydroQuebec that manage to turn a profit too, while private companies can never do it well.
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • Reason077 6y ago
      EDF is the "private company" which is building Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C. For Hinkley, EDF have assumed the construction risk in return for an exceptionally high, guaranteed "strike price" for the electricity it produces. But for Sizewell, it sounds like a different finance arrangement will be in place, likely where the UK government/public assumes more of the risk in return for a cheaper per-MWh price.
      • digianarchist 6y ago
        Private company mostly owned by the French Government. https://www.edf.fr/en/the-edf-group/dedicated-sections/investors-shareholders/the-edf-share/capital-structure https://www.edf.fr/en/the-edf-group/dedicated-sections/inves...
      • sudosysgen 6y ago
        The main advantage that EDF has that allows it to work well isn't that effective out of France. They still do good work, but they act much more like a private company than an SoE, which is why it's so much more successful in France.
• belorn 6y ago
  Regardless how expensive it get, it won't burn tons of fossil fuels. Government should just set the conditions for new power and heating infrastructure. No fossil fuels. Zero carbon. A minimum and peak capacity based on current and projected demands. Private companies can bid, but they can't change the conditions. If a private company can more cheaply and faster build massive amount of battery and use exclusively wind farm to charge them, and have enough capacity to carry through any weather, then cheaper is better. If someone can more cheaply drill into the earth core and use thermal heat (an other promising technology) then great! If the whole UK energy grid could become fossil free, and the only cost would be a 2x increase in costs, then that would be to me a fair price to pay. It is costly, and by the look from the private companies involved a bit financially risky, but continuing burning fossil fuels is bad enough that all alternatives should be used until the last fossil fueled power plant get demolished.
  • rllearneratwork 6y ago
    If only countries could work together to institute a global carbon tax. Pollute too much - pay the tax. Don't pollute - great and, if you are poor/developing, here is help (funded by polluters) to stay that way while still being able to develop.
    • withinboredom 6y ago
      It’s amazing they could all come together to make sure people couldn’t pirate movies and music and video games. But save the planet? Nah.
    • bryanlarsen 6y ago
      We don't need anywhere near global consensus, a small group of nations can start. The idea is called a "climate club", and it won William Nordhaus a Nobel Prize. https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding/ https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding/
    • AlchemistCamp 6y ago
      The problem is the largest CO2 polluting country is unwilling to join any such agreements. This is true now and it was true 30 years ago.
• roenxi 6y ago
  > The others are already over budget and behind schedule The reason why is important though. Is it because of: 1) Political issues, where the government has set up incentives for the builder to lie? 2) Social issues, where environmentalists attack the project to drive up costs? It seems unbelievable to me that nuclear plant planners are unable to plan because ... dunno, maybe they hear nuclear and lose the ability to add numbers. There has to be something else going on. Planning is relatively easy once there are 1-2 historical projects to look at. My experience with energy markets is governments proactively screw them up for reasons I cannot discern. For some reason guaranteed profits is a common standard in Australia which for the life of me I do not understand. Which idiot thinks that is clever? The UK might be doing something similarly stupid.
  • pasabagi 6y ago
    Construction projects are inherently unpredictable, because it's building something large, bespoke, and in constantly varying conditions. Nuclear plants are very complex, so that obviously raises the level of unpredictability. Every manufactured object has an insanely long and convoluted dependency chain, where each link is subject to disappearance due to factors completely out of your control. Especially objects that require special or unusual parts. Then there's actually building the thing, which can go wrong for a million reasons before you've even reached the grand and rolling lands of human error.
    • roenxi 6y ago
      Article says: "However, the BBC understands that the fact Sizewell C is a carbon copy of Hinkley - which has seen work on a second reactor there completed 30% more quickly than the first - is thought to have substantially mitigated that risk." It sounds like it should be pretty easy to budget for this plant. Plans are allowed to include a 20% "we don't know what this is going to be spent on but something will come up" for surprises.
    • pfdietz 6y ago
      > Construction projects are inherently unpredictable And yet, renewable projects typically come in within 10% of the contracted price.
• eunos 6y ago
  At this point probably only the Chinese, Korean and Russian that can build Nuclear Power Plant properly.
  • tedk-42 6y ago
    This. It's quite sad to see the lack of innovation in western countries around the build and development of nuclear power plants. Red tape, regulation and lack of political will (due to unfavourable views on nuclear technology) will continue to see most countries fall behind on this. It's really quite sad. Nuclear has a negative connotation to most but it's the future. Interstellar space travel will rely on the nuclear technology that should be worked on today. I reason that we should be building and developing these technologies now rather than continuing to rely on burning carbon based fuels to power our homes. The technology is there. The will is not. Sadly, too many dummies keep on pandering on about how it's dangerous which in turn, drives up cost - then other dummies come along and say "Oh it is too expensive", without understanding the first group of people that drove the cost up to begin with.
    • rbg246 6y ago
      And we would be keeping interstellar carbon emissions at a manageable level too!
    • DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
      > lack of innovation in western countries [...], Red tape, regulation Red tape is invariably written in innocent victims' blood. And "regulation" is not a bogeyman. But for a complex problem like this, I assure you there are no simple explanations - but people always seem to want simple explanations. That disappoints me.
  • 14u2c 6y ago
    The US has built many nuclear plants in modern times and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, they are all in naval warships. I wish the same political will could be applied to civilian nuclear research at least.
  • 6y ago
• dane-pgp 6y ago
  > One of the reasons that the electricity that Hinkley will one day produce is so expensive (£92.50 per megawatt hour, compared with gas and wind at about £40) is that the constructors were required to shoulder the risk of any cost overruns themselves. EDF estimates that the cost of electricity produced at Sizewell will be somewhere between £40 and £60. So even the company with a financial incentive to under-estimate the cost is saying that the electricity it produces will be at best as expensive as wind energy already is. Of course nuclear power plants can still generate electricity on a windless day, but if they're only used on such days, then the cost per Joule is even worse. Perhaps the (estimated) £20 billion could be spent on energy storage projects like Vehicle-to-Grid distribution or hydrogen generation, which should be even more competitive 10 years from now when this power plant is supposed to start operating.
  • florimondmanca 6y ago
    > So even the company with a financial incentive to under-estimate the cost is saying that the electricity it produces will be at best as expensive as wind energy already is. ... And be low-carbon (~10gCO2/kWh). Whereas the £40/MWh estimate for wind included gas power generation, which is at 400gCO2/kWh. Given how wind has a typical load factor of 20-30% max in Western Europe, you’d be using gas at best 70% of the time, meaning an average carbon intensity perhaps around 300gCO2/kWh. So for the same price (or even double that as a first step - nuclear costs decrease radically with lower risks perceived by investors), nuclear gets you > 30x less carbon in the atmosphere than wind+gas. That is not insignificant. > they're only used on such days, then the cost per Joule is even worse. Nuclear isn’t like gas: it is fixed-costs infrastructure, meaning that the more you use it, cheaper it gets. So you want to use it as much as possible. (French nuclear plants oscillate between 75% and 90% load depending on maintenance schedules.) So on a windy day, nuclear load won’t typically change too much, but rather gas and coal usage will go down to let wind electricity match up with demand. This means nuclear gets you less emissions even in that case.
    • phaemon 6y ago
      > £40/MWh estimate for wind included gas power generation No, they're totally separate things. It's not "wind and gas" as a single entity, it's "wind farms supply power to the grid at £40/MWh and gas plants also provide power to the grid at £40/MWh". In other words, it just means they cost about the same which is half the cost of nuclear. There is no 30/70 split as you imagined. Which makes sense. Scotland gets around 90% of it's electricity from renewables, of which around 70% is wind power. It couldn't possibly do that if your figures were correct.