China is poised to make a dramatic intervention in Britain's energy future by offering to invest billions of pounds in building a series of new nuclear power stations.
Officials from China's nuclear industry have been in high-level talks with ministers and officials at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) this week about a plan that could eventually involve up to five different reactors being built at a total cost of £35bn.
Greenpeace described the move as desperate, while others warned of security fears, but the government has been courting China as the UK atomic programme has been hit by rows over subsidies and worries that EDF – the French company with the most advanced plans to build new reactors in the UK – could be hampered by the change of government in Paris.
...or instead of investing in an uneconomic, potentially highly risky energy generating source, that creates a toxic legacy that is a physical and economic burden on future generations for hundreds of thousands of years, built and run by a state that is half way round the world from us, maybe the government could have an honest discussion with the UK population about our energy future and jointly decide how to manage the energy descent.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Frederick Douglass
I find it interesting (and depressing in equal measure) that the expected costs of new nukes are casually being bandied around at £7 billion a pop now.
The pro nuke policy that the government adopted was largely based on them being the most cost effective low carbon source of generation and that was based on the levelised cost study of 2010 and its update in 2011 which put them at £3.5 billion each.
So prices have doubled in the space of about 18 months. And we can expect further increases beyond this no doubt.
Why are we getting the Chinese to build them? Why can't we construct a nuclear power station for ourselves? I thought we were supposed to be world leaders in hi-tech engineering.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
I'm assuming if we cannot pay the Chinese with money, we will just pay them back later. When later is however is anyone's guess.
Either than that I'm assuming we will sell off potentially important natural resources e.g. coal as I reckon China at their heart are very forward-thinking despite their seemingly blind and insatiable hunger for growth and expansion. It's a shame our government doesn't usually seem to be able to see past election day unless its a special occasion.
Also didn't the article say China was planning to expand atomic power to Africa and other areas. I bet America loves the idea of that!
In addition to the general concerns about escalating costs, waste disposal and the like, I would not trust a chinese nuclear reactor not to go bang or spring leaks.
China is well known for fake goods of all descriptions, from designer consumer goods, to more seriously, electrical fittings, cables, motor tyres, aircraft parts and the like.
I dont like the idea of a chinese circulating pump that serves some vital purpose, for example being specified as "100 horsepower" and then afterwards found to be 100 chinese horsepower, or about 70 actual HP.
Or for example safety critical electrical control relays, that are meant to be designed and built to a very high standard, but are actually the cheapest available automotive or household appliance relays, rebadged as safety critical ones.
Or even electric cable that is said to be 2.5mm but is actualy 2.5 chinese mm, or about 2.25 actual.
The pumps, relays, and cable would of course be supplied with whatever approvals or certificates that the customers asks for.
"Installers and owners of emergency diesels must assume that they will have to run for a week or more"
UndercoverElephant wrote:Why are we getting the Chinese to build them?
Or, more interestingly, why would the Chinese want to build them for us?
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
