Keeping the lights on

Olaf

If we directed only a proportion of Brown's spending hose into fusion research we could lead the world.

Ed Isaacs

I don't see what the Tories ideological problem is. There are some issues which are really only pertinent at the village or neighbourhood level and, quite rightly, the Tories are saying that this is where decision-making should happen. Likewise it is the case at local authority level.

Clearly the provision of sites for the new nuclear programme is a national issue and should be the subject of a decision at governmental level. Those aspects that are important locally (e.g. design, access) need to be fully debated and addressed locally.

The Puppet Master

There's two problems with this:

1) We don't have the engineers to build them.

2) There is a long queue to buy the nuclear parts, which are now mainly made in Japan.

So nuclear is really not going to help us in time, it might take 10 or 15 years before we could break the ground on the first new plant. Odds are we won 't have the money anyway. So it's either coal or biomass.

TrevorsDen

but the tories could go to parliament to put a time limit on these planning laws

david

Zac Goldsmith commented yet?

Chris lancashire

Circumventing its own planning laws would not have been necessary if the Blair government had had the courage to tackle this issue 10 years ago. Instead, they dodged the responsibility, creating today's mess.

theprofromdover

I think every single article on this issue should carry a rejoinder-

The reason we are in this mess -desperate for any energy source we can find- is because no forward planning has been done on energy for over a decade.
Nuclear is an ugly, expensive and dirty option. We have no convincing and ethical method for dealing with the waste. Like the financial theft of our grandchildrens' inheritence, we are just going to pass the problem down the line.
We rejected the nuclear option ages ago for the right reasons -but then only sold off the technology a couple of years ago.

All politicians are unprincipled idiots.

Don’t be surprised when they start feeding new propaganda to the mainstream media that it is kind to the environment to burn damp newspapers and old banana skins in the name of 'carbon-neutral'.

The power cuts and huge domestic energy bills are coming, who will they blame then?

Amadeus Plonquer

I don't understand what the problem is. This is the cleanest way to lose money the Labour party have yet proposed.

Moraymint

It remains to be seen if the UK can ever find the amount of dosh needed to fund this type of hugely capital-intensive programme, as brought into sharp relief here:

http://tinyurl.com/ybe9y2e

... and in a more general sense there is a much more acute energy problem here:

http://tinyurl.com/yhmtkgb

... which means just keeping the supermarket shelves stocked could become a challenge long before we've thrown up half-a-dozen new nuclear reactors.

UK Energy Security: an oxymoron if ever there was one.

Dorothy Wilson

And the problem would not be so acute if Labour had not gone bananas with its "open door" immigration policy. More people equals more power requirements. Unfortunately, such a simple equation seems to be beyond them.

se1man

Puppet Master: "we don't have the engineers to build them."

Quite right. I was one of the engineers that built Sizewell B in the first half of the nineties. I was in my early 20s and had recently graduated in engineering and joined a world-leading power engineering company (we still had those in the UK back then).

I could see that building power stations was a deeply unfashionable thing to be doing and there wasn't much prospect of future work in the power station business.

So I left and took up a very different career, and most of my like-minded engineering colleagues did the same thing.

Our nuclear industry lost a lot talent back then.

Shame.

EC

"We don't have the engineers to build them"

The new reactors will the French EDF design. EDF always use their own engineering teams to build their reactors. The contribution of British workers in British jobs will only come in the form of digging holes and laying concrete - and only then under the strictest supervision.

JohnPage

Doubtless ministers think all problems would be more easily solved if citizens had no voice. It's called dictatorship and I am amazed to see a Spectator writer support it.

Anyway, global warming is vanishing and there's no evidence CO2 is causing harm. So more coal fired power stations, please.

Colin Pritchard

"the crushing of local democracy is anathema to Cameron’s thought"

Tell that to the South West Norfolk Conservative Association.

john miller

Why only 10? Why not 15, or 20 or 50? Labour won't have to find the money for these so why not go the whole hog and embarrass the Tories a bit more?

Perhaps Labour could have saved a few bob towards them had they not built the preposterous wind farms. One nuclear plant would produce their total annual output in a couple of hours, so that was a bit of a mistake.

Archie

About effing time! Has anyone asked - if anyone cares - what that prize prat Goldsmith thinks?

Billericay Dave

We have no choice now we have to build new coal and nuclear plants, the old ones are coming to the end of life. So unless you want to live in the dark ages or rely on imported gas and oil its the only option.

Tiberius

Extracting gas from shale is the future.

Does no one read the articles towards the back of the magazine?

Chuck Unsworth

There are all sorts of thingfs wrong with this proposal, but one major problem is that enhanced electricity capacity does not lead to reductions in oil and gas consumption - except by power stations insofar as they are scrapped. When Putin turns of the gas taps or when the Saudis get excited we're still stuffed. Or is there an equivalent program of converting all existing housing to solely electrical heating and cooking and all cars to electricity? And this could be done within ten years? Let's not be too silly.

daniel maris

Olaf - oh laff at him! They have been promising fusion power "in just twenty years" for the last 60 years. That would be pouring money down a very capacious drain.

Tiberius is right about the shale gas. It makes a nonsense of the lights going out. Of course there is the carbon issue, if you take that seriously, but really it amounts to us having to pay a bit extra (10%-15% would be my guess) to extract the carbon.

Nuclear power will be another money pit as it always has been and the Finns and others in Europe have recently raised serious concerns about the design of the latest French reactors. Also, don't forget in the last French heatwave a load of French nuclear reactors started conking out because they were water cooled and the water was too hot!

Nuclear power is the stupid choice.

Far better to carry on maximising wind power, begin capturing wave and tidal power, make better use of biomass and energy from waste and hydro. Do all that and the remaining gap can easily be filled by clean coal or shale gas.

Panic over. Forget nuclear which perpetuates the secret state and offers terrorists the juiciest of targets.

Kittler

Electric power is supplied by private companies, there is a market.
Why then do the Conservatives require policies or plans?
Is this Socialism? Is the supply of other goods and services to be planned?

Ross J Warren

"This project is likely to be managed by a Conservative government and it poses the Tories an ideological problem: the crushing of local democracy is anathema to Cameron’s thought. The Tories’ energy shadow, Greg Clark, suggests that these proposals be put to a parliamentary vote to confer ‘democratic legitimacy’"I think this is something of a red herring as is so much that is currently put up the flag pole. There is no need to Crush anyone’s local democracy. The places that are offered these power stations will be grateful for the jobs. Or is it more a case that this might interfere with the views of a small number who imagine the world was made solely for them. These NIMBYS frankly are such a minority that they will just have to get use to the new reality. This nation will be run for the benefit of its entire people not just those few who have missed the boat, or who are in real danger of doing just that.

2trueblue

John Miller. The reason we had wind farms was because on the committee advising the government about alternatives; coal/gas/nuclear, 11 of the 18 had direct interests in wind farms. No real analysis was done on exactly what the conversion rate would give us in comparisson to our needs. Tidal issues were side lined, never understood why as they are reliable and constant. We are sitting on a mass of coal, and there are cleaner ways to extract and use it.

For now we have to do what is best, quickest, most efficient, cleanest, and affordable, for us to keep the lights on. This government has bent its mind on how to tax us more for everything rather than educating people in the basics, which includes how to cut down on waste. Houses built and reroofed in the past 12 years should have had grants for solar panels if Labour had any green commitment. Sadly it has been all talk and initiatives that were unfulfilled.

Labour have left us this problem problem and altering the bedtime story is not going to cure it. This has definitely been the Brown period.

Lets hope people remember who left us this great legacy.

Stu

As with defence procurement we must go where the expertise and resource lies, be that France, US, wherever.
Frankly, 10 staion are not enough and we should do this for energy security reasons alone.

Peter From Maidstone

Kittler, I imagine that there is a need to consider planning proposals, and also to manage the provision of power in the best interests of the nation. Since we all need energy it is not sensible to allow an unrestricted market to provide energy. We are, after all, a nation not a large group of individuals, and we would wish, as a society, to make sure that people in less economic areas also have energy, and water, and telephones etc where a market might just say - sod you lot.

Peter From Maidstone

Is it not possible to prevent all emissions of CO2 from a power station? I mean as a technicality - I don't know about cost. I would have imagined so. And could not all carbon be captured and made into a brick? If we wanted to and believed it necessary?

Nick Grealy

If we subtract " having to trust Vladimir Putin not to turn the tap off" from the rationale to build a lot of nuclear, what remains exactly?
As George Trefgarne rightly says in The Spectator this week, shale gas will change everything and especially the paranoid fear of Russia. That fear of Russia costs us millions each year measured in how much fear the energy risk industry whips up to sucker businesses and domestic users into fixing the price of a commodity whose price is collapsing everyday.
Now that shale gas is making a mockery of the shortage scenario, we're asked to dip into our pockets again, this time to support nuclear and soon possibly to pony up for CCS - another expensive solution to a non-existent solution.
Why don't politicians (of all parties) trust National Grid when they say the lights are going to stay on in 2016 and before and beyond. National Grid are the experts, not the politicians. Surely at the Speccie of all places, private sector expertise should trump politics!

Dirty Euri

Nuclear energy is the most expensive energy source and is capable of wiping out huge slices of landmass in one accident or terror attack. Such as we saw on Chernobyl.
Hydro electricity is cheaper safer and more reliable It provides 99% of Norways electricity.
The government is disgrace for using such a dangerous energy source.
I nottice Kent does not get a nuclear plant. Hmmm is that because it is where all civil servants live?

Dirty Euro

A lot of people support nuclear because hippies do not. It is childish knee jerk reactionaries who support nuclear.
Hydro is cheaper safer and more reliable. End of story.

Peter From Maidstone

Can anyone recommend a serious and solid analysis of the energy situation now and going forward in the UK?

Peter From Maidstone

Dirty Euri, I don't know if you are the Eastern European cousin of Dirty Euro. Kent does have a nuclear power station and has had since 1965. Hmmm is that because you don't know what you are talking about?

Hydro is certainly cheaper and safer, but in East Anglia you would have some trouble getting up a head of water to generate very much electricity. Norway is fortunate to be very mountainous and have a very small population, about half that of London. So Norway is not a very good example.

Michael Booth

Nuclear energy is so safe that the ten proposed sites are nowhere - I repeat nowhere - near London. Funny that...

M. Simon

The US Navy's Polywell Fusion Reactor experiments are being done for under $20 million a year. Results in about two years.

Dirty Euro

The rest of the county must rebel and tell the south east look if you need nuclear power plants build them yourself in the south east. Every other part of the country can get done from hydro alone it is cheaper and safer.

The North of England alone has tonnes of hydro potential they do not need nuclear plants to supply London. Why should the rest of the country be irradiated because of OVERPOPULATION IN THE SOUTH.
Why on earth does the Cumbria region need four nuclear power plants what on earth is that all about? Is that some kind of joke? When of all the English regions it is most capable of supporting itself by hydro.
Pete everyone else worked out I was talking about the proposed sites. I am sorry everything else has to be explained to you.

Dirty Euro

So we have two proposed nuclear plants for the South east. Which is the region that requires the most energy. While we have 4 proposed nuclear plants for lowly populated Cumbria. Explain to us on what planet that makes any sense. This is some kind of sick joke.
Anyone with an ounce of cynicism can see it is stick the nuclear plants in the low populated north areas as far away from the south east as possible because the civil servants live in the south.
Surely everyone can see how suspicious this all is.
Knowhere else other than the south east has any logical need for nuclear plants.
If they need them so bad build 10 of them in London city right next to civil service buildings. But leave the rest of us alone. Cumbria is easily capable of supporting itself by hydro alone. So is almost any other part of the country.
The South east civil service is evil, sick and grotesque..

daniel maris

The cheapest energy is tidal. It takes a while to become the cheapest (like paying for a bridge), but once it's paid off, it is the cheapest form (see figures for La Rance in France). Of course there is an environmental impact - and that has to be weighed in the balance.

Nuclear is an immoral form of energy. No one should burden future generations for hundreds even thousands of years, with our the cost of maintaining our energy. It also creates a "secret state" atmosphere around energy - all employees have to be security vetted to a high degree and there has to be a special, armed police force.

Current concrete domes at nuclear facilities do NOT protect against high speed attacks by jet airliners.

Nuclear is an absurd option while cheap shale gas is coming on the market.

Peter From Maidstone

Dirty Euro, since when has England been split into little regions? That sounds like a Labour and EU way of thinking. We are a nation and so we should support ourselves as a nation. Are you suggesting that anything done in the South should not be allowed to benefit the North? So Cumbria should manage itself on its own tax income? Cumbrian Doctors should only be trained in Cumbrian hospitals and only Cumbrian trained teachers are allowed to teach Cumbrian children?

We don't live in that sort of a country. That is a Labour vision of divide and rule and you seem to have bought it. It is possible to be able to criticise placing 4 power stations in Cumbria from a variety of points of view but choosing an almost racist one of North v South is not the best.

Forlornehope

Peter, if you really want a thorough analysis of the energy options, read Prof David MacKay's "Sustainable Energy - without the Hot Air" it's available, free, online here:

http://www.withouthotair.com

The brief message is that, if you do the sums, we need nuclear, indeed we need some of everything to balance use and consumption. The positive side of this is that we don't have to live in communes eating a diet of home grown cabbage either.

Unfortunately, the poor chap has just accepted a post as a government adviser. He might be wondering if that was such a good idea!