Britain drops tidal energy scheme, names sites for eight new nuclear plants.

[NNadir]

An official study said the proposed 10-mile (16-kilometre) barrage stretching across the Severn river, which was to generate energy using tidal power, could cost more than 34 billion pounds (54 billion dollars, 38.9 billion euros).

It described the project as "high risk in comparison to other ways of generating low-carbon electricity", although it said the proposal could be reconsidered in the future.


"Other low carbon options represent a better deal for taxpayers and consumers," said the energy minister, Chris Huhne.

The barrage would have stretched between Weston-Super-Mare in southwest England and the Welsh capital Cardiff.

But the report said the barrage was unlikely to attract adequate investment from the private sector and would rely heavily on public investment.

The project has been scrapped as Britain's finance minister George Osborne prepares to announce billions of pounds in public spending cuts on Wednesday in order to reduce the country's huge deficit.

The decision to scrap the project was welcomed by environmental campaigners. Martin Harper of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said the barrage would have "trashed" local wildlife sites.

It would have destroyed "huge areas of estuary marsh and mudflats used by 69,000 birds each winter and block the migration routes of countless fish," Harper added.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-britain-tidal-scheme-future-nuclear.html

The bold is mine.

This is very good news for people called "environmentalists," a term which in my view automatically excludes 100% of the mindless anti-nuke community.

The number of reactors is, by the way, reduced by 3 from the number of reactors proposed by the labor party when it was in power.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. I hope the nuclear plants bite the Tories and turn them to ash

[NNadir]

2. Labor proposed more nuclear plants than the Tories are proposing.

It doesn't matter if you are a Tory or Labor however, and the United States Secretary of Energy - a science Nobel Laureate - and many other liberal science Nobel Laureates, including Glenn Seaborg, George Olah, Eugene Wigner and Hans Bethe all knew or now know, nuclear energy is the world's cleanest form of energy.

Have a nice anti-science evening.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. so you support the Tory demons?

[Confusious]

4. non sequitur.

The expression is Latin for "it does not follow." Guess how.

[kristopher]

5. Kudos to the Energy Minister for a job well done. Oh, here's a different view...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4579597#4579597

Subsidy for eight nuclear reactors rejected
Posted by kristopher on Tue Oct-19-10 03:31 AM

Financial Times
By Sylvia Pfeifer


Ministers said they would not rule out taking on “financial risks” as the government paved the way for eight new nuclear reactors, but they insisted there would be “no subsidy” for new nuclear power.

This means there will be no levy, direct payment or market support for electricity supplied or capacity provided by a private sector new nuclear operator, unless similar support is also made available more widely to other types of generation,” said Chris Huhne, secretary of state for energy and climate change.

He made the remarks on Monday as he unveiled a revised draft national policy statement outlining a need for new reactors and gave the go-ahead for operators to use two new designs, Westinghouse’s AP1000 and Areva’s EPR.

<snip>

The government nevertheless expects about half of the new energy generating capacity built in the UK by 2025 to come from renewable sources – the majority of which is likely to be wind....


Read more: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/05a43498-daeb-11df-a5bb-00144feabdc0.html

If your primary goal was to make money building nuclear power plants, what would your attitude be towards renewable energy (like tidal projects) and climate change?

(Note to mods - this is not copyrighted material)
Pan-Europe Utilities (Citi) Industry
2 Dec 2008

Citigroup Global Markets European Nuclear Generation

Impact of planned renewables and energy efficiency on potential market share for nuclear power:

What the market should not take for granted

GDP impact on demand and load factors

Consensus view is that electricity demand in the wide European region will grow by 1.5% p.a. over the next couple of decades. This is a view shared by UCTE in its latest System Adequacy Report. Although it is virtually impossible to produce irrefutable electricity demand forecast we are tempted to argue that the risks are on the downside since:

1. During the boom years of 2003-07, when GDP growth was strong and infrastructure investment high on the back of very liquid debt markets and due to the convergence of the new EU joiners, electricity consumption grew by 2.1% p.a.

2. Energy efficiency is likely to become a bigger driver as technology advances and as awareness rises. It is important to highlight that such measures also fall under the Climate Change agenda of governments, which has been one of the driving forces behind the renaissance of new nuclear.

As a result, we would expect electricity demand growth to be in the 0-1% range for at least the next 5 years, before returning to more normal pace of 1.5-2%. We therefore see scope for an extra 346TWh of electricity that needs to be covered by 2020 vs. 2008 levels.

Should EU countries go half way towards meeting their renewables target of 20% by 2020 that would be an extra ca. 440TWh. Even if EU went only half way, which by all means is a very conservative estimate, that would still be ca.220TWh of additional generation. Under its conservative ‘scenario A’ forecast, UCTE expects 28GW of net new fossil fuel capacity to be constructed by 2020. On an average load factor of 45% for those plants that’s an extra 110TWh.

Therefore under very conservative assumptions on renewables, we can reliably expect an extra 330TWh of electricity to be generated by 2020, leaving a shortfall of 16TWh to be made up by either energy efficiency or new nuclear.

There are currently 10GW of nuclear capacity under construction/development, including the UK proposed plants that should be on operation by 2020. If we assume that energy efficiency will not contribute, that would imply a load factor for the plants of 18%. Looking at the entire available nuclear fleet that would imply a load factor of just 76%. We do believe though that steps towards energy efficiency will also be taken, thus the impact on load factors could be larger.

Under a scenario of the renewables target being fully delivered then the load factor for nuclear would fall to 56%.

(Bold in original)

Citigroup Global Markets European Nuclear Generation 2 December 2008

Who is going to pay for these plants at those sites the Very Conservative Government is naming?

[XemaSab]

6. All my little internets friends in teh UK are happy about this

My question is simple: if we destroy habitats to provide low-carbon energy, what exactly are we protecting here?