Hinkley Point: UK approves nuclear plant deal

[FBaggins]

The government has given the go ahead for a new £18bn nuclear power station in the UK after imposing "significant new safeguards" to protect national security.

The new plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset is being financed by the French and the Chinese. In exchange, China wants to use its design for new UK nuclear stations.

The Chinese welcomed the decision, saying they were not concerned about new rules on future projects.

Jean-Bernard Lévy, group chief executive of French firm EDF, which is building the plant, said: "The decision of the British Government to approve the construction of Hinkley Point C marks the relaunch of nuclear in Europe."

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37369786

Ya gotta love the BBC's measure of how much electricity that is. Instead of the number of households supplied...

[NNadir]

1. The most important metric is that the plant will save lives, those that would have been...

...lost to air pollution, and those that would have been lost to climate change. Unfortunately we would need a few thousand plants of equivalent size to actually address climate change, and that won't happen.

What will happen is that the use of fossil fuels will continue to rise while people uselessly throw extra money at so called "renewable energy," with no result.

There is no intrinsic reason that nuclear plants should cost 18 billion pounds; since much of the money spent is to address safety standards that improve on current safety standards. This is wasted money, because existing nuclear plants already meet safety standards that no other form of energy can meet. Much of the cost of these add-ons, diverted to say, medical care for those who lack it, would save lives far more efficiently.

For the two trillion dollars squandered uselessly on so called "renewable energy" even including the unnecessarily high cost of Hinckley C - which in an environmental sense did not work, is not working - and no matter how much more money is thrown at it, will not work - we could have built 84 new versions of the Hinckley C plant at today's exchange rate from pounds to dollars. Looking at the Wikipedia page, the plant is rated (2 reactors) at 3,200 MWe, which at 41% thermal efficiency amounts to 4500 MW(th), we can calculate that 84 reactors would produce about 10 exajoules of energy each year, more than double the amount of energy that is produced by all the world's solar and wind plants worldwide, built over a period of half a century of wild cheering, not that the liars in the so called "renewable energy" scam report energy but rather report peak capacity at levels that the actual systems almost never achieve and if they do achieve them, do so for a few minutes.

Moreover the reactors would not be landfill in 20 years as the wind and solar trash will be, but are designed to last at least 60 years. This means the reactors will be serving humanity when the children born today - who we have screwed royally - are grandparents.

Obviously nuclear energy is not perfect; but it need not be perfect to be vastly superior to everything else, which it is.

Unfortunately the specious marketing offered by the fig leaf for the fossil fuel industry, the so called "renewable energy" industry has prevailed, and we will not sensibly divert the money as we need to do, were we suddenly and unexpectedly to begin giving a shit about the future.

[kristopher]

2. Public support for Hinkley falls to an all-time low as UK decision looms

Tuesday 13 September 2016 1:07pm
Public support for Hinkley falls to an all-time low as UK decision looms

Jessica Morris

Public support for plans to build the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant has fallen to an all-time low, a new poll has shown, ahead of Whitehall's widely anticipated decision on the project.

The survey of 2,000 people, by Populus on behalf of Greenpeace, showed a quarter are in favour of Hinkley, while 44 per cent oppose it. Previous polls this April and in October 2015 put support at 33 per cent and 29 per cent respectively.

It comes as the government prepares to make a final decision on Hinkley later this month, after it was unexpectedly delayed by Prime Minister Theresa May earlier this year.

Hinkley is expected to provide seven per cent of the UK's electricity over its estimated lifetime of 60 years, however the project has been dogged by concerns over safety, security and the high costs involved. It's due to start generating power in 2025, although experts have warned it is unlikely to meet this date.

The poll also showed just under two thirds said they believed the government should prioritise an energy system based around renewables, while 16 per cent believed it should prioritise nuclear and five per cent wanted policymakers to focus on gas-fired power stations...

http://www.cityam.com/249288/public-support-hinkley-point-c-nuclear-power-plant-falls

[FBaggins]

4. So that's a win-win for both of us.

You get to be happy that people aren't pleased with it... I get to be happy that they're building it and a chain of other plants. Everybody is happy.

[kristopher]

5. Nuclear power is a perennial favorite of undemocratic authoritarians

And support for it slows the effort to address climate change.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. The BBC has access to a device to boil a cup of water that draws 37.5W

I don't know what it is, but it must have some damn fine insulation. Most people use a kettle drawing 3kW or so. Do it at 1/80th of the power, and you're waiting around a long time, and hoping you don't end up losing the 37.5W as heat to the surroundings before it boils.

(In comparison, their TV uses 55W, the light bulb 11W, and the phone charger 5W, which all sound feasible).

[FBaggins]

6. It should be closer than that... but yes, appears off

If you assume four ounce teacups (filled 3/4 full of course), then a 2200 watt 1.7 Liter unit (first I found on Amazon) would produce 19 cups of tea.

So that would be 115W/teacup of tea. Off closer to a factor of three than 80.

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. 3 fluid ounces isn't a cup, it's a mouthful

4 cup teapot = 1.2 litres: http://www.hartsofstur.com/acatalog/London-Pottery-4-Cup-Farmhouse-Filter-Teapot-Ivory-17273250.html#SID=1260

Your 1.7 liter unit might do 6 cups = 366W per cup, even when being efficient (6 cups is as much as you expect to get from a large pot, I reckon).

On edit: it's probably a decimal point mistake - 8,533,333 cups would be 375W/cup, or 8 cups from 3kW. If it's 'cups' rather than 'mugs' (which is pretty rare, these days), you might say a large teapot does 8 cups.