Impressed £67.5 billion... nope... 263 billion, and rising.

[Embattle]

Disagree. We're choosing it because it's politically expedient. We could quite easily choose a nuclear free energy solution for the future, meet our carbon targets, use existing technology, and have a similar, if not advantageous, cost base.

Naaa although I question pervious comments in other threads by myself that stated at least an equal amount would need to be invested in renewables, etc at the same time to avoid a permanent future on nuclear but that comes as a result of the economy.

Currently in the UK we are on course for brownouts and energy rationing due to too much spend on unreliable renewables and too much foot dragging over nuclear.

Indeed something I said a while ago and the drag continues.

SimCity2000. It went wrong every so often. Meh.

Indeed it did, I left the game often collecting money only to realise a fire had then ripped through my whole city.

Cost of rebuilding is normally way lower than the benefit from having it. It's why cities dont build proper flood defenses. It's cheaper to just build it all (and handy, cos re-developing cities needs doing every 50 years).

Yes and no, it depends on a balance plus it is now realised building them in many places just increases the problem some where else.

 

[Job]

We simply.need reprocessing plants..all that waste is actually high grade nuclear energy and a reprocesing plant could run for decades off it and hugely reduce the potency of the waste..but were scared to build them because you use them to make nukes..maybe Iran could do it for us.

 

[Scouse]

We simply.need reprocessing plants..

That's what sellafield is.

 

[BloodOmen]

67.5 billion? christ

 

[Wij]

Gen IV reactors don't produce this stuff hardly at all. Molten-salt wouldn't produce hardly any. This is a cold-war legacy.

Also most of it is harmless but we're all scared of the n00klar !!!

 

[Wij]

Oh, and wind farms are shit and the legislation supporting them is what's making nuclear so expensive.

WIND FARMS

SHIT

 

[Raven]

It also adds a fuckton to our bills. We are basically paying for the energy for the energy companies, just so they can sell it to us again.

 

[Wij]

ROCs and FITs and insulation subsidies because they are paid for through fuel bills rather than general taxation function as an extremely regressive tax. Strange that they we introduced by 'Red Ed'. It's practically a poll tax.

 

[Scouse]

Oh, and wind farms are shit and the legislation supporting them is what's making nuclear so expensive.

Not the multi-billion pound always-growing never-ending waste storage costs?

 

[Wij]

Not the multi-billion pound always-growing never-ending waste storage costs?

Q: Why would they be a burden on NEW nuclear?
A: They wouldn't. Scouse is muddying the waters.

What's crippling new nuclear is the subsidies available to renewables. When you're talking about 20 years to pay back you want a reasonable idea that it will but with legislation and subsidies changing year on year investors aren't confident they won't have their profits taken from them by renewables.

Regulation forces the sale of renewables on the grid before other power (including nuclear, which is also nearly zero-carbon). Therefore investors who build wind farms are guaranteed that whenever the wind is blowing they will sell their electricity. Even if baseload plant such as nuclear is already producing enough leccy to meet that demand.

On top of that, investors in wind generation have no responsibility to the grid to ensure that there is supply when the wind isn't blowing. Not my problem init guv. Some other poor fucker has to invest in gas-plant which will only get to sell its leccy when the wind stops. Furthermore, gas-plant which is capable of being scaled up and back at short-notice is much less efficient than that which runs more or less constantly. Therefore it emits more CO2. It's worse in Germany where their crazy renewable subsidies and nuclear shutdown programme are actually bringing about new coal-plant that can be scaled up and back on demand. Coal emits about 3 times as much CO2 than gas and variable supply stations even more so.

Then, just to give a final kick in the pods, wind-fuckers get to sell renewable obligation certificates (ROCs) to other supply firms who have to buy more of them every year by law. Even if they are already producing leccy in a zero-carbon way, like nuclear. The mind boggles. I thought the idea was to reduce carbon, but it seems to be just to subsidise one stupid industry and fuck the effect on CO2 emissions overall (like Germany again who, when the wind isn't blowing, import lots of leccy from Poland or Czechoslovakia produced by dirty old coal, massively increasing CO2 emissions when you look at Europe as a whole.)

Wind-farms are just an arms race between generation companies to suck money off each other via ROCs for energy that isn't needed and is just making baseload plant less and less profitable. We might as well be passing laws to stick forks in our cocks.

 

[Raven]

The whole point of renewables is to appear to be doing something and to make money for a select group of people, just part of the OMGTHEWORLDCHANGESREALLY? industry.

 

[Scouse]

What's crippling new nuclear is the subsidies available to renewables

Disagree. What's crippling new nuclear is the cost of new nuclear.

Despite new nuclear being on the receiving end of mahoosive subsidies - bidding companies are to be responsible for only the build and running of new nuclear power stations and the receiving of the profits thereof - not the decomissioning and waste disposal, where the bulk of the cost comes (that's down to us taxpayers).

Despite this massive subsidy - worth more than all of the subsidies that renewables get combined (regardless of whether they're good or bad) - companies are shunning nuclear power.

It's expensive. It's unprofitable even when companies are given a zero-risk option with taxpayer bailout of all the nasty.

Yes, it's zero-carbon. But, like the renewables you hate, it's SHIT

 

[Wij]

Disagree. What's crippling new nuclear is the cost of new nuclear.

Despite new nuclear being on the receiving end of mahoosive subsidies - bidding companies are to be responsible for only the build and running of new nuclear power stations and the receiving of the profits thereof - not the decomissioning and waste disposal, where the bulk of the cost comes (that's down to us taxpayers).

Despite this massive subsidy - worth more than all of the subsidies that renewables get combined (regardless of whether they're good or bad) - companies are shunning nuclear power.

It's expensive. It's unprofitable even when companies are given a zero-risk option with taxpayer bailout of all the nasty.

Yes, it's zero-carbon. But, like the renewables you hate, it's SHIT

Wrong. The clean up cost will not be the main cost with new nuclear. Not even close. You're obfuscating between future plant and historic legacy again.

And I've already said that the reason investors want guaranteed returns and are reluctant to make a long term investment is the uncertainty surrounding future renewables legislation.

You're wrong on all counts.

 

[Wij]

Also I take massive issue with your level of subsidy for renewables. I bet your figures don't take into account the indirect subsidies:

Renewables don't have to give a shit about what happens when they aren't producing power. Given that wind is massively more variable than other plant and that variation is not controllable they are causing problems for the grid with no obligation to solve them.

Renewables get to sell their leccy whether its needed or not, pushing other generation off the market.

If you don't count those as indirect subsidies then you're being dishonest.

 

[Scouse]

Wrong. The clean up cost will not be the main cost with new nuclear. Not even close.

You can't say that because we have no idea how to clean up nuclear waste.

Current "clean up" costs are actually long-term-storage costs. Costs that have no end in sight and will always rise.

You can only attribute a cost to an activity if you know what that activity is - and since we don't know what that activity is we cannot assign a cost. The only thing we can say with any accuracy - because it reflects the current reality - is that storage costs continue to increase with no end in sight.

 

[soze]

That is not just based on Sellafield though is it because a huge amount of the money being spent there is decommissioning the old weapons plants and not just storing new and existing spent fuel rods. An Inside Out show talked about how reclaiming a building had fallen 7 years behind schedule and was over £700m over budget. But it was not a power station it was a Weapon plant so the total cost of Sellafield could be misleading when used as an argument against Nuclear power.

 

[Scouse]

That is not just based on Sellafield though is it

Yep. The £67.5 billion is for Sellafield alone. It's £100bn or thereabouts for the rest.


So, not far off the cost of the entire budget defecit...

 

[Wij]

Yep. The £67.5 billion is for Sellafield alone. It's £100bn or thereabouts for the rest.


So, not far off the cost of the entire budget defecit...

LE
GA
CY
!!!

 

[Wij]

You can't say that because we have no idea how to clean up nuclear waste.

Current "clean up" costs are actually long-term-storage costs. Costs that have no end in sight and will always rise.

You can only attribute a cost to an activity if you know what that activity is - and since we don't know what that activity is we cannot assign a cost. The only thing we can say with any accuracy - because it reflects the current reality - is that storage costs continue to increase with no end in sight.

I don't have a project plan to hand sorry but it won't be a big problem. I can dig something out if you want to get anal.

(Insert joke here)

 

[Scouse]

LE
GA
CY
!!!

Yes. But it's not like new build has zero decomissioning or disposal problems. Yes, they've got smaller unsolvable problems - but they're still unsolvable problems.

I don't have a project plan to hand sorry but it won't be a big problem.

I don't quite get how you can say "won't be a big problem" when the existing problem, at sellafield alone, is costing ~70bn and that new nuclear build will only exacerbate the problem.

It's the same problem with new nuclear as with legacy nuclear - the same unsolveable problem.

anal.

Fnarrr

 

[Raven]

Yep. The £67.5 billion is for Sellafield alone. It's £100bn or thereabouts for the rest.


So, not far off the cost of the entire budget defecit...

So that's for a single old plant rather than the many new, cleaner and more efficient plants?

Bad example.

 

[Scouse]

So that's for a single old plant rather than the many new, cleaner and more efficient plants?

No. Sellafield is the reprocessing plant for material from the other plants.

How do you define "cleaner" when the decomissioning material and waste from the new plants will be dumped in the same pools as the rest of the crap from the legacy plants - to sit there forever and simply add to costs - because we don't know what to do with it?


All on the taxpayer, of course. Not the profit-making generator - because there is NO profit if the generator has to pay for the storage and decomissioning....

 

[Chilly]

What if a new plant increased costs by only 1%. Surely it would be a good thing, on balance?

 

[Scouse]

What if a new plant increased costs by only 1%. Surely it would be a good thing, on balance?

Taking that incredibly low number that may seem, on the surface, like a good thing.

However, most decomissioning costs are ones that have an end in sight. Pulling a figure out of my arse, say, 10 years to decomission a conventional power station. No storage or maintenance costs after that.

What if those costs are incurred in perpuity? Are ongoing and effectively never stop. That 1% suddenly becomes a chain around your neck.

Remember, these are costs that are unique to nuclear power and are there because of a problem we do not know how to solve - and taken into consideration make the finances around nuclear completely unknowable and never ending. The only certainty is that they will continue to incur. And only the taxpayer can fund never-ending cost.

 

[Chilly]

Taking that incredibly low number that may seem, on the surface, like a good thing.

However, most decomissioning costs are ones that have an end in sight. Pulling a figure out of my arse, say, 10 years to decomission a conventional power station. No storage or maintenance costs after that.

What if those costs are incurred in perpuity? Are ongoing and effectively never stop. That 1% suddenly becomes a chain around your neck.

Remember, these are costs that are unique to nuclear power and are there because of a problem we do not know how to solve - and taken into consideration make the finances around nuclear completely unknowable and never ending. The only certainty is that they will continue to incur. And only the taxpayer can fund never-ending cost.

Or we solve the problem properly. Technology is pretty sweet.

 

[Scouse]

Or we solve the problem properly. Technology is pretty sweet.

Great idea! If only the tens of thousands of scientists and the multiple governments who've pumped billions into solving that problem - and who've obviously successfully come up with the solution - weren't the subject of a horrible coverup that makes clean, cheap, freely-available energy for all, solving one of the worlds biggest problems, unavailable, eh?

 

[Wij]

Nuclear technology is allowed to advance too, not just solar and wind. There's all kinds of designs that will make the problem negligible. Just from a quick search.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kirksorensen/2011/07/27/waste-digester/

 

[Wij]

http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html

 

[Scouse]

Nuclear technology is allowed to advance too, not just solar and wind. There's all sorts of ideas that people have come up with but none have come to fruition and all are decades away from action

"Could", "maybe", "in the future".

Just like Carbon Capture and Storage - that politicians are currently bigging up as an ameliorating answer to more coal and gas power stations - except it doesn't work, doesn't exist.

Norway's equivalent of a "moon landing", no less. Pie in the sky.


Listen, I'd genuinely be pleased as punch if nuclear could solve this problem. We could reasonably safely build loads of massively overengineered nuclear reactors and maybe spend some of our defence dollar in protecting them. Then we'd have a clean, safe, cheap form of energy.

But we don't.

 

[Wij]

We already have reactors that much less waste. It will keep improving. And we will get more realistic about the dangers of low level waste and stop being such pussies about it.

It's not a problem. The problem was the weapons research.