Matt Ridley's blog; nobody escapes unscathed!
"Hinkley is but the worst example of a nationalised energy policy of picking losers. The diesel fiasco is another. The wind industry, with its hefty subsidies paid from the poor to the rich to produce unreliable power, is a third. The biomass mess (high carbon, high cost and environmental damage) is a fourth."
Yes, good article. T'was in the Times the other day.
I dont think Hinkley is nearly such a bad deal as renewables, with all their hiiden costs of intermittency.
Although it is a bad deal.
whilst I won't disagree
I don't think that it's just us
tim
I must be missing something here. There are these occasional headlines about host the cost is going up. Can someone explain why we should give a shit? We will be paying for volts produced, not capital expenditure.
Unless perhaps people are worried about the project being abandoned half way through.
I don't see it as a fiasco. It's a subject that has caught the media in the wake of VW fraud. In practice ad-blue can reduce NOx and DPCs can reduce particulates. Its only a problem in certain areas such as inner cities where NOx is already high from gas boilers and the like.
Local councils are also to blame by encouraging stop-start traffic, sometimes intentionally to meter traffic. Birmingham is a good example.
If the poor weren't so opposed to nuclear power..............
That's certainly a concern. EDF and Areva are struggling. Would the Govt just abandon the scheme and the site if they went bust? I doubt it; there'd be too big a hole in both Govt energy policy and national electricity supplies, which might mean them (i.e. us taxpayers) picking up the tab.
Ridley quotes Howell as saying "the Chinese increasingly realise that the Hinkley design is a dead end, as costs escalate and delays grow. And they know that the future for nuclear power must lie in smaller, modular units, mass-manufactured like cars rather than assembled from scratch like Egyptian pyramids. Their ?Nimble Dragon? design could slot into both the Hinkley and Bradwell sites, perhaps beside the larger Hualong design."
A real possibility, I should think, especially as the Chinese are already involved at Hinkley.
I thought he was referring to the subsidies being offered to diesel powered stand-by generator units. However you're probably right and he does mean cars.
Another Dave
... via traffic calming measures.
So which is preferable children being damaged by air pollution of by collision with vehicles?
I normally like Matt's stuff, but in defence of Hinkley Point C I suppose I might quote this from the Wikipedia page on the collapse of Northern Rock.
"Matt Ridley was forced to resign as chairman in 2007, having been blamed in parliamentary committee hearings for not recognising the risks of the bank's financial strategy and thereby harming the reputation of the British banking industry"
govermnet has committed to a strike price of £95/Mwh for hinkley so that is what the energy will be sold at irrespective of market rates.
With traffic calming, you get both!
over a thirty year supply period, given that it will be 10 years before we have to start paying, that would probably be a good deal as market prices, will almost certainly, have increase over time.
Unfortunately, it's index linked, so at the end of the 30 year period it will still likely be above market price
No
they'd "win" a half built power station for free
tim
Or would it still be owned by the Chinese and EDF's creditors? Under those circumstances, the Chinese would be in a strong position to persuade the Govt to allow them to install, and quite possibly pay for at least in part, their own design of reactor.
But that has nothing to do with what it may cost EDF to build it. Which is my point.
What collisions? You can always stop that by blocking off rat-run routes so only bicycles or foot-traffic passes.
Round our way there was the cross-roads in the village. That in 15 years there'd been no accidents there didn't stop the bloke on the corner having a whinge about "how dangerous" it was.
Solve problems that actually exist, that is those for which you have some stats showing an actual risk, not things that "might happen".
Best to separate the two. Have roads for cars and walkways for pedestrians. If necessary more roads rather than encouraging cars to use populated side-streets.
More separation is win-win for children being less 'damaged' by air pollution and RTAs.
The rat-runs are created by council policy by reducing speed limits and putting in more traffic lights on major roads. This giving equal right of way from side roads as the main road itself.
It doesn't help with councillors being decrepit old ladies frightened of turning into main roads. I'm sure there will be a set of traffic lights there soon. Which are themselves the cause of more road deaths than anything else.
Emotion and fear tend to trump common sense.
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