The cost would be a drop in the bucket compared to proposed spending on non-nuclear ‘green’ energy, in futile attempts to influence the weather.
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The government is close to giving the green light to a new nuclear power station at Sizewell in Suffolk, says BBC News (via The GWPF).
The BBC has learned that talks with the Sizewell contractor, EDF, have intensified in recent weeks.
This comes after the collapse of projects in Anglesey and Cumbria when Japanese firms Hitachi and Toshiba pulled out.
Government officials are insisting that it “remains committed to new nuclear”.
This commitment to new nuclear may be included as part of a 10-point government plan to be published in early November.
That plan is expected ahead of a detailed government white paper in late November which will attempt to set out the course of UK energy policy for decades to come.
Unions have warned that a failure to transfer jobs, skills and new opportunities from the current project under construction at Hinkley Point in Somerset to Sizewell in Suffolk would put thousands of high skilled jobs at risk.
The details of how new reactors at Sizewell will be paid for are still being hammered out.
The government is considering taking an ownership stake and consumers may see a small addition to their bills to pay for the project as it is being built, in order to drive down the costs of financing a project that may cost up to £20bn and take about 10 years to build.
The bigger the government stake, the smaller the call on consumers to “pay as you go” for the development and construction costs.
This funding model has been treated with suspicion before, as opponents say it transfers the risk of delays and budget overruns from the contractor to the consumer and the taxpayer.
However, the BBC understands that the fact Sizewell C is a carbon copy of Hinkley – which has seen work on a second reactor there completed 30% more quickly than the first – is thought to have substantially mitigated that risk.
Continued here.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
October 31, 2020 at 09:15AM
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