Planned Somerset nuclear plant on hold ? or not ?

[Ralphw2]

How likely is it that EDF will pull the plug and cut their losses? I remember predicting years ago that this power station would never reach the point of actually producing power. I may be wrong, but I suspect this will be the last nuclear station ever built in the UK. They are just too expensive, it will be cheaper to build renewables and long term storage, or , more likely, the economy contracts to the meet the energy currently available.

[clv101]

At £46bn, how does the economics of Hinkley C compare with the Severn barrage now?

[clv101]

It is quite a damning indictment of 'progress' that we can't build this thing. The previous generation of British engineers, operating without computers, in a weak economy, managed to design and build a dozen nuclear power stations in a couple of decades - and they were good! None blew up (yet!) and most even received life extensions.

Hinkley C is an utter fiasco.

Quote from 8 years ago.

[BritDownUnder]

At £46bn, how does the economics of Hinkley C compare with the Severn barrage now?

Probably any Severn barrage will also suffer for scope creep and cost inflation. There are many variations of the Severn barrage but one design estimated a peak power production of 8GW for a certain part (not sure how many hours but maybe 6 hours) of the tidal cycle (bit over 24 hours) and this peak would fall over the Spring tide / Neap tide cycle (about 30 days). There will need to be tidal stations on both the East and West coasts of the UK to even out the fluctuations.

On the topic of earlier nuclear I feel a great mistake was made by not continuing with the Sizewell B type or even the earlier AGRs though this type was not used outside the UK but was considered 'safer' than PWRs. In my mind there was an orchestrated campaign in the civil service, left wing environmental pressure groups and the fossil fuel lobby to stop this happening.
I think the HP3 power station will get finished but will probably require UK government support and the fact that the Finnish power plant is nearly generating electricity as far as I know and is a similar design.

[adam2]

The similar nuclear plant at Flamanville in France has now had the fuel loaded into the reactor and is expected to start producing electricity this year, with full output expected by the end of this year.

https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles ... French-EPR

Perhaps it going to open ? I never expected it to get this far.

If it works, that would appear to substantially increase the chance of Hinckley C opening.

[Potemkin Villager]

The similar nuclear plant at Flamanville in France has now had the fuel loaded into the reactor and is expected to start producing electricity this year, with full output expected by the end of this year.

Assuming something untoward is not discovered during the 5 month commissioning period!