If offshore wind, all of it, is on course to deliver 10% then Hinkley Point C at "only" 7% seems pretty reasonable given that it's probably a more dependable and controllable source of power. The problem with HPC is that it's the old nuclear fuel cycle originally derived from the need to develop nuclear weapons rather than any of the proposed alternatives. Well that and it being owned, controlled and probably constructed by foreign rather than domestic interests...

Tom
I think you are getting two different numbers mixed up.
The £92.50 is the guaranteed price that EDF will get (so 92.50 - what they sell the power for). Then there is the build cost of whatever (£3 or 6 or 12 or 24bn).
The wind farm costs is an amortised price for the life of the farm. So expected capital cost / expected generation revenue (in €/MWh.

I think.

The cost of the energy produced, as many opposed to nuclear power would agree, is only part of the story. The 'strike prices' for HPC and offshore wind are not wildly different from each other especially in an energy market with variable prices.

What is the point in lots of 'cheaper' energy produced by wind when it's not available when and where it's needed with little to no ability to realistically store it on any meaningful scale. Speaking of which I don't think there has been any progress on the proposed Coire glas or Balmacaan pumped storage schemes each at something like 30GWh's of storage.

To do a far comparison, wind would have to be a lot cheaper then nuclear due to the cost of storage (will never be cost free) and the cost of building gas power stations for when the wind does not blow. Hence I think the “green” party and lib dems should be taken to task on why they allow their members and councillors to put up the cost of wind by being NIMBYs.

Posted By: ringiTo do a far comparison, wind would have to be a lot cheaper then nuclear due to the cost of storage (will never be cost free)

Since we are talking about storage, does the cost of nuclear include the cost of the storage of the spent fuel for as long as necessary?

If the Romans had nuclear power, we'd only still be guarding their waste due to the failure to innovate and experiment. Probably due to disinformation and scaremongering enabling the failure of politicians and beancounters to approve, regulate, educate and fund science adequately.

Pretty much the same language and arguments being used by 'environmental' lobbyists for the past decades...

Posted By: SteamyTeaTom
The £92.50 is the guaranteed price that EDF will get.

Probably already covered (I'm not visiting as often as I was), but remember that £92.50 was the price at the time of the agreement. Due to the built in inflation proofing indexing the figure has already increased. Somewhere around £102?

What “experimentation and innovation” do you expect to deal with irradiated steel and concrete? I can see that perhaps more might be done with spent fuel rods but, though the nastiest, those don't make up the bulk of the waste that has to be dealt with.

I don't know my crystal ball isn't working today.

As far as I know the bulk of nuclear waste such as irradiated concrete and steel is generally low level waste with much more human timescales before they decay to the point of being "safe". Even then the bulk of material isn't radioactive, it's like sorting through a bucket of sand to remove the activation products which doesn't financially stack up.

I'd rather we worked toward closing the fuel cycle rather than finding creative places to dispose of the waste.

Even with current technology waste stockpiles can be utilised as fuel reducing the activity and volume of material needing to be stored, with reprocessing and transmutation technically much more can be done. I'm not really arguing for business as usual, the once through fuel cycle, but I don't see how 1 unit of waste is really all that different from 100 units of waste the genie is already out of the bottle and can't be stuffed back in. The more immediate problem is how we provide for our energy needs while limiting the impact that has on the environment and of course many think Nuclear should be ruled out completely and that's fine.

As with most things it's not our technology that actually limits what we can do...

Posted By: SteamyTeaBut for the last 60 years, we have stored it pretty well...

Well, apart from the bits that maybe can't be properly traced - like these, for example: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/feb/14/sellafield-records-nuclear-waste And the allegedly intermediate level waste dumped in low level disposal trenches - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49_IU4wzVG8#t=38 And the 170kg of enriched uranium that may (or may not) have gone missing - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/105564.stm And the waste that was dumped at sea - http://www.davidsmythe.org/nuclear/flowers%20commission%201976.pdf until the London Convention on dumping came into force. And the (authorised) breaching of waste storage limits - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/14/sellafield-nuclear-waste-storage-safety-limit-relaxed

So pretty well, but could do better.

Posted By: FlubbaAs with most things it's not our technology that actually limits what we can do...

Exactly. There are a whole lot of other considerations: environmental, social, and so on. My gut feeling against nuclear comes from the way it forces/comes from are rather centralized and controlled society. The only country which has made much of a success of nuclear is France (and the sustainability of that's a bit questionable) but, compared with most western countries, they're pretty tightly controlled socially. Not in a terribly bad way but still something which most Anglo-Saxons would find uncomfortable.

Around here (Caithness) the local industries (apart from sheep) are the decommissioning of Dounreay and a lot of wind farm building (onshore and, soon, offshore) and associated grid strengthening. Dounreay is patrolled by lots of rather threatening and heavily armed police, the wind farms and grid substations aren't. When some plutonium is to be flown out of Wick it's moved with an escort of something like 250 police (I'm told, not seen it myself). When you meet a wind turbine hub moving down the A99 (as I did the other day) all you have is a couple of police cars politely asking you to park off the road for a minute or two to let it by.

OK, so Dounreay was a fast breeder motivated at least as much by weapons production as electricity generation. However, I've yet to see convincing evidence that there's enough uranium around for nuclear to make a significant dent in the world's energy[¹] needs without some sort of breeding and fuel reprocessing with all the associated security concerns of moving really nasty stuff around in significant quantities. There's also the proliferation considerations: if it's OK for Britain to be making and reprocessing plutonium (even for purely civil purposes) then presumably it's OK for Iran as well?

Posted By: atomicbisfIt [nuclear] was an avenue worth pursuing in the 20th century, but it turned out to be a dead end in my opinion.

I think that sums it up nicely.

[¹] Not just the electricity needs of a couple of western countries.

Posted By: Ed DaviesHowever, I've yet to see convincing evidence that there's enough uranium around for nuclear to make a significant dent in the world'senergy[¹] needs without some sort of breeding and fuel reprocessing with all the associated security concerns of moving really nasty stuff around in significant quantities. There's also the proliferation considerations: if it's OK for Britain to be making and reprocessing plutonium (even for purely civil purposes) then presumably it's OK for Iran as well?

[¹] Not just theelectricityneeds of a couple of western countries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfNPP5tYaZo

Nuclear in my opinion should be part of the energy mix if anything for science as well as actual power generation, of course business as usual in managing the fuel supply isn't going to work. Moving the stuff around is already done on a regular basis along with all sorts of other dangerous and hazardous materials often in much larger quantities without nearly the same level of scrutiny. At the end of it you end up with much less dangerous and shorter lived waste not to mention less of it to actually store and guard for that shorter timespan.

Proliferation concerns are political, we and others happily supply nuclear technology to countries frankly more dangerous than the likes of Iran and it doesn't really seem to bother most people. Iran bothers the political classes because they don't blindly follow what is dictated to them by the old boys club that is the UN security council.

Posted By: FlubbaIran bothers the political classes because they don't blindly follow what is dictated to them by the old boys club that is the UN security council.

The problem with Iran along with a lot of the middle east is that:
a) A lot of the population believe that drying in the name of god is the most worthwhile thing they can do in life.
b) The leaders of the country does not put much value on the life of their population, or of the solders in their army.
Therefore the concept of deterrents does not work well against them, so for example if they got the option of wiping out Tel Aviv in exchange for the death of half their population, they may choose to take that option. The counties that may be “more dangerous” tend to care about their population, so we can use our nukes capacity to make us believe we have no real risk from them using theirs.

Posted By: ringibelieve that drying in the name of god

drying up?

Are Nick and I the only ones who find Ringi's typos a source of humour? Or do others just not notice?