The news over the weekend and this morning confirms the UK is in the throes of a self inflicted nuclear power disaster. The fall out has the capacity to be catastrophic for energy consumers.
This concerns the deal, mentioned in passing in our last posting, that sees the French and Chinese consortia behind the financing and construction of HInkley Point C in Somerset, guaranteed a minimum price for the energy generated that is nearly double what we pay for nuclear power today.
The comment I intended to make at this point is eclipsed by Richard’s observations, which more eloquently articulate what I intended to say:
What is very far from clear, though, are the exact reasons why nuclear has increased in price so much. Nevertheless, in what is clearly a rigged market, the most likely culprit is the regulatory ratchet.
Increasing the time taken to approve schemes, and adding to design and construction costs, regulation is reckoned to be enough to have caused the massive price hike. And much of the regulation will have been promoted by Green activists, the aim being to price nuclear power out of business.
According to this seminal book, the process has been going on a long time. Now, it would appear, the activism has achieved its effect. We have a nuclear disaster – but not one that the Greens had predicted.
As fuel costs rise fuel poverty will kill vastly more than nuclear power is ever likely to. That is the real disaster, made all the worse by the fact that it is largely the result of deliberate ploys to increase the price of nuclear generated electricity.
We have recently seen similar efforts across the European Union by green activists to make the potential of shale gas to provide a secure, domestic source of energy, unaffordable through regulatory cost.
This is not about safety. This is not about efficiency. It is certainly not about providing sufficient energy to meet the growing demand of a rising population. It is solely about forcing countries to adopt what the activists perceive as ‘green’ and ‘clean’ energy because the alternatives would have been made uneconomic due to politics alone.
These green groups are pursuing their own narrow, dogmatic and flawed agenda, but have been appointed by the EU as the ‘voice of the citizens’. Without our consent or input these groups have been installed as our ‘representatives’ to government – but are following an agenda that we have never been asked to consider, let alone endorse.
Autonomous Mind 
In times gone by, the people would have joined together to collectively express their disquiet.
The author(s) of such machiavellian brigandry would have been able to observe the proceedings, their heads being on poles just outside the city gates.
The good old days…
And who said the corruption was limited to the UN, EU and third world Countries. We have to bribe foreign firms and government to build our Power Stations, promise them a hefty profit by fixing the market and let them take the profits home. Clever it aint!
If I told you that sunlight, arriving at the earth’s surface, could heat it to only -18C, and that 0.0004 of the atmosphere plays a leading role in raising the planet’s ‘average’ surface temperature by +33C, to +15C, would you believe me?
The PPE grad running our energy policy believes it. The UNIPCC’s Kiehl/Trenberth Energy Budgets diagram is very interesting. It has the surface absorbing only 161 W/m^2 from the sun. Via the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, that amount of flux is what you get from a black body at -18C.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Topics/energybudgets.html
The same diagram also depicts more than twice as much flux (333 W/m^2) coming from thin air than comes from our nearby thermonuclear furnace. Have you ever stopped to think you are being asked to believe that sunlight arriving at the earth’s surface can’t melt ice or evaporate water?
Maybe those CO2 molecules have capes, and little masks. If only real sunlight wasn’t so damn cold we wouldn’t need that magic heat pump thingy in the sky – hang on a minute …
We should burn the cleanest coal we can find and drop the guilt, and the taxes.
Of course, there’s also a history here of a pro-nuclear lobby that has assiduously supported the climate alarmist narrative in the knowledge that ultimately it would lead to nuclear. The ‘renewables’ can never deliver, the rest are CO2 emitters, which leads us to the present insane policy.
Say what you like about the people who ran Auschwitz – they have the excuse that refusing would have likely been terminal.
Nuclear power is about 1/3rd the cost of our current average. A European consortium China is building a generator similar to Hinkley Point for £4.5bn, whereas ours is costing £16bn.
This proves beyond dispute that 90% of the electricity bills are unnecessary state parasitism. It is impossible for any member of the LabConDem cartel who is in any slightest way honest to deny that they are personally rresponsible for that 90%; that they are personally responsible for keeping the recession going while the wlorld economy grows at 6%; that they are personally responsible for the 25,000 annual pensioner deaths due to cold.
Does anybody know a single member of these obscene Nazi parties who approaches the integrity, honesty and decency of the people rightly hung for Auschwitz?
Ironically, if we’d bought the reactor back when they were ‘considering’ wind turbines we would never have had to build a single one and we would have already paid for the reactor by now……..