The government's Green Investment Bank could fund the building of new nuclear reactors, it has emerged.
It is the latest form of public financial support on offer to the industry from the government which continues to insist that the industry will not receive any more subsidies.
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools - Douglas Adams.
Senior coalition sources said civil servants who wrote the documents decided to include nuclear as a low carbon form of generation that could potentially receive funding in order to be thorough. They had not been instructed to do so by ministers, it is understood.
My guess is that was a "Yes Minister"-type ploy to sink the Green Investment Bank.
...civil servants who wrote the documents decided to include nuclear as a low carbon form of generation that could potentially receive funding in order to be thorough.
As they are absolutely right to do so. Nuclear is low carbon form of generation. If carbon intensity is a metric to test investment against, then nuclear gets the cash.
Nobody knows that for sure: given that the disposal logistics haven't been finalised yet, there's no way of telling what nuclear power's full CO_2 footprint will be.
What's the definition of "green"? I don't see it as just meaning CO2 emissions, but covering all aspects of maintaining, or returning to, a clean environment.
JohnB wrote:What's the definition of "green"? I don't see it as just meaning CO2 emissions, but covering all aspects of maintaining, or returning to, a clean environment.
Absolutely, I certainly wouldn't call nuclear green. But I would call it low carbon.
I'll call it low-carbon once I've seen one cleaned and tidied away properly, at low Carbon cost, at the end of its life. I might have to be cryogenically preserved and revived, mind
Crazy that an industry as mature as nuclear gets propped up in this way.
And yet the way the green deal is evolving, it looks like it's going to be left to the banks/energy companies/supermarkets to rinse householders, rather than being funded by the GIB. Nice!
RenewableCandy wrote:I'll call it low-carbon once I've seen one cleaned and tidied away properly, at low Carbon cost, at the end of its life. I might have to be cryogenically preserved and revived, mind
Sure, they haven't been decommissioned yet, but there's no way that decommissioning even approaches the carbon budget of 60 years operation of a 1.6GW coal plant.
There are many many reasons to critical of nuclear - I just feel attacking its carbon budget isn't one of them and weakens what could otherwise be a robust anti-nuclear case.
Pepperman wrote:Crazy that an industry as mature as nuclear gets propped up in this way.
It's not getting 'propped up'. It's being recognised as low carbon and the market failure of not valuing carbon emissions is attempting to be corrected. Anyone concerned about carbon should welcome attempts to shift the economic balance in favour of low carbon generation. Without such political influence coal remains cheap with its carbon emissions unchecked.
It is a prop because it implies that the markets won't support nuclear power even after decades of large scale deployment due to the high risk. So it falls to government, i.e. taxpayers, to take on that risk.
Pepperman wrote:Crazy that an industry as mature as nuclear gets propped up in this way.
It's not getting 'propped up'. It's being recognised as low carbon and the market failure of not valuing carbon emissions is attempting to be corrected. Anyone concerned about carbon should welcome attempts to shift the economic balance in favour of low carbon generation. Without such political influence coal remains cheap with its carbon emissions unchecked.
Another part of the current Government's strategy is to put a floor under the price of Carbon. Details of these proposals can be found here
A briefing on Carbon price support can be found here
Both pdf formats.
Irony alert:
I wonder if the EU will regard this as market manipulation?
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools - Douglas Adams.
