Sure, nobody cares when those government-backed projects fall massively behind schedule and over budget. Oh, how is the GWEP going again? Oh, nothing to see there
I don't think its physically possible for a nuclear reactor to cost more than the Hinkley Point C budget - you could replace all the steel in the reactor building (and the steel content is ludicrous compared to designs like the AP1000, ESBWR and similar) with silver and not do that.
I think (I hope!) its been contingencied to death after the disasters at Okiluoto (sp) and Flamanville.
It's a nice point to ruminate over - What Government could have done if the CEGB had remained nationalised and existed now... however it doesn't help deliver Hinkley from the position where there is a very weak supply chain in the UK, an apparently hopeless reactor design and the main contractor is effectively a JV of French and Chinese governments.
Why does the reactor get easier to build if the money is 'private'.
A £1 from the state buys as much nuclear reactor as £1 of private capital, although it isn't really private capital since most of the risk is transferred to the taxpayer thanks to the strike price and the magic of limited liability.
The treasury could buy the Hinkley Point reactors outright, even at that ludicrous price, without it showing up as more than a rounding error on government spending for the year.
They don't want to because they are still enslaved to the fiction that is the free market in electricity.
Supply chain problem scan be solved by going to the one reactor design that can be built in countries with little to no nuclear supply chain - the CANDU.
If you can get 70% in-country equipment purchase in communist-era Romania I think you can manage it in the UK (I believe the primary imported components were the zircaloy pressure tubes and the large turbine equipment).
You don't necessarily need to move it twice - the demand is at low voltage too. And it's cheaper to take those losses if the generation is cheap, compared too centralised systems.[ And of course if your production is near the demand, then you don't need so much T&D infrastructure.
Ah, so you intend to surrender the primary reason we have a grid in the first place, supply and demand will no longer be pooled into national aggregates?
Demand moves across the course of the day, week and even the year. Unless you overbuild generation all over the place (which all has to be paid for) doing this is not really very practical in real life.
In reality, it will of course be some mix of transmission-connected large-scale generation at a distance from demand - such as offshore wind - and distribution-connected generation near point of use. What mix? Nobody really knows but whatever market design comes to pass will lead to the market deciding. However, every time UK Govt decides to spaff a load of bill-payers cash on an expensive upstream project, they are probably improving the case for own generation.
But without those enormous sums of billpayer money, there would be no local generation.
Big multi hundred megawatt H-class CCGTs would have
annihilated virtually every other newbuild generation scheme - at least with private capital return rates.
Unless you can't use gas for climate reasons there is no reason to use anything else as things stand.
Additionally integrated generation like rooftop PV panels drive up the price of grid electricity per unit (especially for everyone who doesn't have them) because the people who have them use less grid electricity
but still expect a grid connection to be maintained for their convenience.
The cost of the grid connection still has to be paid for but is amortised over less electricity.
The cheapest way to reduce the price of electricity per unit is to get everyone to use more.
However... a vertically integrated electricity system missed the benefits of horizontal integration across energy vectors in an energy system. Would a 2017 era CEGB have adopted CHP in any meaningful way, as Scandinavians have done? It certainly didn't.
Leaving aside that essentially every significant CHP project (in terms of actual energy produced) in the UK dates
from the CEGB era, it would have to stand on its own feet economically - and it doesn't.
The capital cost of District Heat distribution systems are enormous [something approaching £5000
per dwelling], and the costs associated with cramming CHP plants into every house are even more enormous in efficiency (or lackthereof) terms.
I am afraid practical carbon dioxide based air source heat pumps have slammed the door close on district heat in a substantial way.
And I, for one, salute our benevolent German taxpayer friends for sending these technologies shooting down the cost curve! Effectively they've provided a huge gift to the rest of the world.
Yes, they have reduced renewables from ludicrously overpriced to simply extremely overpriced.
Offshore wind is still so expensive that it can't even compete with the ludicrous price that the owners of the Hinkley Point scheme were able to get from the desperate politicians in the DECC (or whatever it is this week).
The problems of the German energy system is because the Germans inexplicably failed to see, or act on the impact of zero marginal-cost generation on wholesale markets and implement a capacity market in a timely manner.
Ah yes, the capacity market - where we pay for huge installed capacity of diesel engines and open cycle turbines, which are not really the kind of generation any large scale grid should be relying on.
I still can't see the advantage this way of things has over simply building conventional low carbon generating plant all owned by the grid supplier [which would be owned by the state, as befits a capital-intensive business where the capital can last 60-120 years or more], and not bothering with short-lived expensive-to-operate unreliable generating sources like offshore wind.
On shore wind is unfortunately vulnerable to cold winter weather with no wind that has been known to happen in recent years (in one case two weeks with almost no real wind generation).
Batteries in a capacity market will be of no use in that scenario since they will only be able to keep it up for a matter of hours before they deplete and load shedding becomes necessary.
EDIT:
My objective is to reduce electricity rates to comparable to those in
Quebec, with Tidal and Nuclear I believe it can be done, but only with gilt-rate capital.
Rates this low (note that is
Canadian dollars, not US Dollars) would be a massive boost to the quality of life in the UK, and it could be done with near-zero carbon emission
