Miliband’s £14 Billion Nuclear Boost to Avert Net Zero Blackouts
Ed Miliband is set to commit more than £14 billion of public money to a nuclear power renaissance in a bid to avert blackouts as Net Zero approaches. The Telegraph has more.
The Energy Secretary will on Tuesday commit £14.2 billion to building two giant reactors at Sizewell, Suffolk, capable of providing six million homes with electricity regardless of low winds and dark winter days.
The heavy investment comes as fears rise that Mr Miliband’s rush to build wind and solar farms is leaving the grid too exposed to the weather and vulnerable to outages.
Over-reliance on intermittent renewables could even threaten blackouts of the kind that hit Spain in April, say experts.
Nuclear generation is a reliable source of so-called baseload power, the minimum amount of demand on the grid.
Writing in Telegraph, Mr Miliband said the announcement marked a new “golden age” for the British nuclear industry.
He said: “This challenge of energy security and the demands of the climate crisis mean that it is in our interests to shift as fast as possible to clean, home-grown power.
“The demand for that power is expected to at least double by 2050. That’s why we need all the clean, home-grown sources that we can to meet the demands we face. New nuclear is a crucial source of firm, baseload power.”
In the Spectator, Ross Clark looks at the expected timeframes for this boost to nuclear power and concludes it isn’t going to save Ed Miliband.
But nothing that Miliband has unveiled does anything to help the Energy and Climate Secretary achieve his ambition to decarbonise the electricity supply by 2030 – or ease the coming crunch as he tries to reach that target. It has already been 15 years since the government approved plans for a new nuclear plant at Hinkley C – which developers EDF promised would be ready to cook our Christmas turkeys by 2017. The earliest it will now open is 2029, by which time it will have cost at least £46 billion.
Hinkley C is proposed to use the same design, which has proved difficult and costly to build in France and Finland, too. Why Miliband should think it will be any different this time around is hard to tell. To judge by past experience, it will be the 2040s before Sizewell C is cooking our turkeys. The only change in Sizewell C’s case is that the UK taxpayer will be bearing far more of the construction costs. In Hinkley C’s case, EDF is supposed to be bearing all the risk; with Sizewell C, that has been mostly transferred to the taxpayer.
Nor are SMRs going to save Miliband. There is logic in reducing the scale of nuclear reactors so that they can be built on a production line rather than by bespoke design on-site. It is good that Rolls Royce has won the competition for government cash to develop its SMR design, £2.5 billion funding for which has also been announced today. Nevertheless, there is hardly anyone who believes that SMRs will be up and running before 2035. There is also no guarantee they will prove cheaper than existing large nuclear plants.
Both the Telegraph report and Ross’s Spectator article are worth reading in full.
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I, unfortunately, heard the deranged Millitwonk on a brief radio bulletin in which he called fossil fuels “erratic” FFS Were he Pinocchio his nose would be hovering over his constituency by now, if not further…..
A small drop of sanity at last… announcing a fleet of 10-15 over the near-mid term would have been even better
More coal and gas would be sane, announcing smaller mesh nets to catch fairies at the bottom of the garden is not sane.
That is choosing the most expensive “solution” to a non-existant problem… in case I am too obscure.
Sane? Ye gods!
I agree in principle, however I think we have to be realistic, and admit the chance of ANY western government building new coal fired power stations is slim to zero, let alone the pits to dig the bloody stuff up. The optics are too bad, and we all know our crazy politicians are ruled by the optics and social media…
https://www.sizewellc.com/
When I head this story, it sounded like a re announcement tactic (which haopens occarionally), although I suppose it’s a formal agreement. It’s been on the go since around 2012, after all. Apparently it will be similar to Hinkley Point C.
By similar to Hinkley Point do you mean it will be delivered 12 years late and five times the budget?
So while China is pushing ahead with a design that does not need cooling water and so opens up where it can be sited and the Koreans have a design that was built in the Gulf in just four years, we will be going for a creaking French design that in the two completed locations has been delivered 12 years late and 5 times the budget and at Hinckley Point is going the same way.
In a post at the NotALotOfPeopleKnowThat web site covering the SMR decision, a comment adds that Korea has signed a contract to build two power stations in the Czech Republic for £8.5 billion each. To your point about the gulf, also mentioned there is that Korea built four in the middle east over six years.
A few GW. France has 63GW capacity.
And 59 reactors for 70% to 80% of its demand.
Tot up how much such a fleet would cost to build and run, then let’s discuss coal.
Hydrocarbons seem best, not sure how long they will last but that’s probably not an issue for a few generations.
I would rather have nuclear than wind and solar though it’s not a like for like comparison as wind and solar are intermittent – 7% of our electricity over last year came from France.
They did sensibly start a lot earlier though, to be fair… good long term strategic planning
Homegrown:
Where will the steel for Sizewell C and the proposed SMRs come from?
Green steel made by windmills and hydrogen. /s
Sizewell C is supposed to be a 3.2 GW power station. I’m pretty sure that figure is not per reactor… The Energy Secretary will on Tuesday commit £14.2bn to building two giant reactors at Sizewell, Suffolk, capable of providing 6m homes with electricity regardless of low winds and dark winter days. It may be capable of supplying power to 6m homes but it sure as Hell cannot provide all the power for 6m homes. 3.2 GW / 6m = 533 W. Just over half a kilowatt per home at any given moment. At a guess this is the baseload they’re expecting. I know that not every home demands power at the same time, but surges due to putting the kettle on after popular TV programs or in advert breaks or cooking Sunday lunch or dinner is a known thing. Ofgem reckons that the typical home uses 2,700 kWh of electricity and 11,500 kWh of gas per year. 2,700 kWh / 365 = 7,400 Wh per day As a constant average load 7,400 Wh per day is only around 308 W. When the 6m homes all get rid of their boilers and gas cookers the 11,500 kWh of gas energy will… Read more »
Its a 2 reactor design, almost identical to Hinkley Point C.
From that most reliable of sources Wikipedia:
My understanding of that is that the power station is rated at 3.2 GW not the individual reactors.
We can let a committee of self annointed guardians of our society to plan and execute the delivery of energy to 70 million Britons and hope they get it right (bearing in mind that they will personally pay no price and face no consequences for getting it wrong, even catastrophically wrong).
Or we could let private capital and expertise organise themselves and, through a system of market incentives that reward the good and penalise the bad, produce energy for the 70 million. Added bonus: each person can decide the available solution that best suits them.
Personally I chose the second option.
It’s a pity Miliband and his conies spent most of their careers obstructing nuclear power. This is better late than never, but we have to remember that it was the likes of him that put nuclear back 20 years, and they buried it so deep in red tape that when we do build a new power station it takes us 4 times as long as anybody else.
Anything which needs public subsidy is not a viable business.
It doesn’t stop at taxpayer cash to provide capital, it involves reactor lifetime guaranteed, inflation-linked pricing. Current Hinckley Point C originally supposed to charge £24 per MWh, is now guaranteed £128 per MWh and the consumer will be on the hook for that for 20 to 30 years.
Nuclear is the most expensive electricity generator. People who say it is cheap electricity use the same reasoning that the windies and sunbeamers use, they consider only the consumables cost and nothing else like return on investment for example.
EDF has just been renationalised in France because it cannot raise enough cash from private investors to replace its aging fleet of nukes, so the French taxpayer will pay.
But the real problem with Minibrain’s all-electric scheming is supply is not the only issue, it’s load capacity and distribution from generator to point of use which is key – and the infrastructure is not there to cope, particularly low voltage, local cables and equipment.
It’s no use generating electricity if it cannot be delivered.
“It is good that Rolls Royce has won the competition for government cash to develop its SMR design, £2.5 billion funding…”
Good! Good! Are you mad? Why is it good that taxpayers have to pay a private business to develop a product? Socialising the risk and cost, but focussing the profit. Good?
If SMRs are going to be so great, why does RR need to risk taxpayer cash and not its own?
Lots of small reactors instead of larger ones make no sense. And nuclear reactors cannot be used as back-up for wind and solar, so gas will still be needed.
Illiteracy in economics and physics is rife – not just in the Labour Party.
I wager he will not build them for that much. Where are the RR mini nukes – its about time they were commissioned.
The Government calls this an “investment”. What is the ROI (Return on Investment) and when is cash returned to gov’t, and how much?
So baseload nuclear and intermittent solar on everyone’s homes – where’s the rest coming from?
Gas, like it was always going to… despite their ‘wishes’
Whatever has happened to Small Modular Reactors. I thought they were more affordable and easier and faster to roll out.
Several companies working on commercial versions now – part of this announcement is support for Rolls Royce and their SMR. There’s a good argument you are better building big with nuclear, however I could see SMR’s, which in theory you can build quicker, being part of the solution
Does anyone know what happened to the Plutonium Ed was going to bury?
Does that mean the reactor that has been running for decades in Derby isn’t considered an SMR?
Exactly – the test plant for their military sub reactor has a great record. I believe there was a point raised somewhere else, can’t recall where, by another poster that this reactor is designed for highly enriched uranium for military use, whereas some others are using less enriched material in their designs. Key point is RR know how to make the things and have been running them in very, very challenging environments for decades…
He’s aspiring to become the next Al Gore and all the rewards that go with it or something is loose up top!
Or both!
A key objective of the sham CO2 bunk nonscience is to dupe the environmental lobby into demanding nuclear-power generation whereas previously they were adamantly opposed to it for many good reasons.