Bahtatboy

£70bn (and growing) cost of decommissioning Sellafield. Just think a moment about that number. A medium-size conventional power plant costs about £1/2 - 1bn. So cleaning up (just cleaning up) Sellafield costs the same as building 100 average plants, each of which has virtually no clean-up costs when decommissioned (in theory you could just switch it off and it'd sit there, slowly rusting).

I still don't believe the £18bn quoted for the new nuclear plant includes the true decommissioning costs, which our great grandchildren are going to have to pay for.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-26124803

scrubbedexpat141

I wonder how many plants have been decommissioned around the world to date. Is it still a new thing or are we just spectacularly ****ing it up?

weasel decentral

I think the point is that when the plant comes online that gas,oil etc. will have increased in price to the point that the nuclear power is cheaper. So it's essentially a gamble on future energy costs.

Sellafield is a total disaster, and has only succeeded in making the Irish Sea radioactive.

Millhouse

Zee Germanz are busy decommissioning all of their plants. Last one will be 2018 (I think)

Amazingly, there is now so much renewable power on the grid in Germany that they are struggling to run the gas plants all of the time. Causes loads of problems for the owners of the gas plants with all the shut downs and restarts.

Bahtatboy

Problems (both technical and commercial) no doubt, but happy ones to have. What are their renewables?

Millhouse

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/10/15/...y-october-3rd/

Big problem as the gas plants are merchant and the renewables are dispatch first.

shiva

Germany did the right thing though, overly generous feed in tariffs and subsidies for manufacturers kick started a massive renewables boom. Granted now those manufacturers are in the shit but at approaching 40% of their daily power needs from renewables they have a good problem to worry about.

Nuclear has never and will never be the way forward if for no other reason than the sheer long term costs involved.
The UK is being held to ransom currently to pay for the construction running and decommissioning of a new nuclear plant with guarenteed power purchase agreements that are insane. Basically a foreign firm will take all the profits and inherit none of the cost, a great deal if you're the company and a shocker for the tax payer.

the_red_sheep

Wind, biomass, solar and hydro in that order.

They've gone big on wind farms for the last few years, and have several large offshore ones in development. Unfortunately no one has quite worked out the cost of, and how to, maintain several thousand wind turbines in the middle of the North Sea.

Gus Honeybun

Britain has a 112t stockpile of plutonium which costs Pds 80m/yr to store. Rather than build more bombs, why not burn it in a Mox reactor? We've moved on a bit since the early Sellafield plant.

Boomhauer

The Donald has lost his legal challenge against the windfarm being built in view of his Golf course

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...sh-golf-resort

Millhouse

burn it and make what? more of the stuff, no?

Millsyisland

What are the panel's view on fracking??

Bahtatboy

I don't know where to find the facts.

the_red_sheep

This is great news, the fact he thought he could essentially blackmail the Scottish government was absurd, and they would have looked incredible weak if they’d folded to him.

Will be interesting to see what Trumpy does next. Now that golf course 1 is open and golf course 2 is under development (I think), will he look to fully invest in the rest of the site with houses, holiday homes and a hotel as originally planned. A small offshore wind farm, some miles away, will not have a significant impact on the value or return of that development. Personally I always wondered if he got cold feet on the whole scheme after the flak he got over the environmental impact of building course 1, and the windfarm argument was a way of backing out without losing too much face.

the_red_sheep

Quote from Trump in the Irish Times:

“Wind farms are a disaster for Scotland, like Pan Am 103 [the 1988 bombing of a US bound flight]. They make people sick with the continuous noise. They’re an abomination and are only sustained with government subsidy,” he said. “Scotland is in the middle of a revolution against wind farms. People don’t want them near their homes ruining property values,”

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/s...sort-1.1688203

Wow!

I'm sure the people of Scotland are very grateful to have him speaking on their collective behalf, and I am as sure his interest has nothing to do with financial reward and everything to do with the people of Scotland's well being. What an uber-****!