Poor households face having to help foot bill for building Sizewell C...

[AE-NMidlands]

... when industrial electricity useers aren't. https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... sizewell-c:

The UK government has been criticised for exposing low-income households to the cost of building the Sizewell C nuclear power plant while letting factories “off the hook” as a crucial planning decision is due this week.
If given the green light, the government hopes to use a regulated asset base (RAB) funding model to finance the project, which is being proposed by the French energy firm EDF.
RAB reduces the risk to investors, who will receive regular payments before the project begins generating power. However, it also means customers pay for the construction costs through higher energy bills.
A consultation on using the RAB model is due to close next month and shows operators in energy-intensive industries would be exempt but households receiving universal credit would have to pay.

In the consultation, officials said the exemption for electricity-intensive users – such as factories – would avoid the risk of putting them at a “significant competitive disadvantage” when operating in international markets as they may have to add the costs to the price of their products.

MPs had suggested electricity suppliers should be prevented from recovering the costs of their RAB payment obligations from consumers who are on universal credit.
The Green party MP, Caroline Lucas, said: “When energy bills are skyrocketing right in the middle of a cost of living scandal, the last thing that people can afford is the ballooning cost of embryonic nuclear white elephants like Sizewell C.

“Not only are these projects extremely expensive to build in the first place, with Hinkley Point C now at £26bn without having generated a single watt of energy, the RAB business model passes that enormous upfront cost directly on to the consumer. While giant companies are spared with generous exemptions, the very worst-off in society will be footing the bill. Nuclear is too slow, too expensive and the wrong priority.”
Alison Downes, of the Stop Sizewell C campaign, said: “Taxes of any kind hit the poorest hardest and this nuclear tax is no exception. Multimillion-pound businesses will be let off the hook if they use a lot of energy but a family on universal credit struggling to afford its heating bills will have to cough up to pay for an unwanted nuclear power station.”

Alison Downes, of the Stop Sizewell C campaign, said: “Taxes of any kind hit the poorest hardest and this nuclear tax is no exception. Multimillion-pound businesses will be let off the hook if they use a lot of energy but a family on universal credit struggling to afford its heating bills will have to cough up to pay for an unwanted nuclear power station.”

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said the government considerd it very important to support low-income households but believed that “support for vulnerable groups would be best tackled holistically” by looking at the factors driving up energy bills.

BEIS has estimated that Sizewell C would add an extra £1 a month to household bills to aid construction costs. But research by the University of Greenwich business school seen by the Guardian shows the average monthly cost could reach £2.12.

I'm hoping that it (and the loading of electricty distribution industry failure costs onto standing charges) will come to be seen as the massively regressive tax that it is, just like the poll tax, and have a similar outcome.

[Stinsy]

I've been moaning on about the standing charge being horribly regressive for many years. I've suggested several times a negative £10 a month standing charge. Paid for bay a higher unit rate.

It has been very disheartening to see government take several big steps in the opposite direction recently...

[Mr Gus]

No opt out AGAINST nuclear power station builds!?

..I'd be ticking the box marked "let those who want the ridiculous costs & clean up associated with this technology of which has never attained the claimed *power to cheap to meter* waste dumped in the North sea rotting in barrels & a pile of homelessness waste left looking for a long term home" ..to suck up that part of the bill I have naff all interest in covering for generations to come, a problem akin to that of "what do we do with the houses of parliament & costs related to that" !? which would likely trigger a Buckingham palace renovation too.

Funny that!

So many of us are signed up to renewables but are ignored elsewhere in the scheme of things.

[marshman]

__

[Ken]

I think it would be wrong to choose any tech based on the rich/poor argument as that is a problem for taxation/benefits/support etc.

The choice should be based on hard nosed assessment of lifetime costs,reliability, dependence etc.

I am not in favour of nuclear but i fear that is largely an emotional thing. The present leccy supply situation shows the wisdom of not all the eggs in one basket and perhaps for that reason alone we should have nuclear who knows -not i. My main aim would be to get rid of oil and gas everywhere and perhaps we need nuclear to do this?

[Stinsy]

I think it would be wrong to choose any tech based on the rich/poor argument as that is a problem for taxation/benefits/support etc.

The choice should be based on hard nosed assessment of lifetime costs,reliability, dependence etc.

I am not in favour of nuclear but i fear that is largely an emotional thing. The present leccy supply situation shows the wisdom of not all the eggs in one basket and perhaps for that reason alone we should have nuclear who knows -not i. My main aim would be to get rid of oil and gas everywhere and perhaps we need nuclear to do this?

I have nothing against nuclear in principle. However it has never delivered on the promise of cheap-reliable electricity. In fact the total cost per-MWh is astonishing if you consider all of the cradle-to-grave costs. I am also very wary of "big projects", they always over-run on both time and money long before they produce anything. If they'd commissioned 100x 30MW reactors, the first would be up and running by now.

I'd have much preferred the same amount of money be spent on Wind/Solar together with storage.

[spread-tee]

Infrastructure is ideal for GOVT spending in so many ways, Nuclear a bit more questionable, loading the cost onto bill payers is a blatant con to support the trickle up economy, but hey that is what austerity has been all about for the last decade

Desp

[Mart]

Only my guess, but hopefully it wouldn't be too far out.

So we have seen RE costs tumble since 2018 when the Gov were told by their economic advisors to ramp down the nuclear build as RE + storage looked to be cheaper. So going forward I'm thinking in terms of a HPC / SZC output situation of 3.2GW / 2.944GW (at 92%cf), call it 3GW's.

Next step, let's assume that the RE and storage solution is not perfect at the start, even with some overcapacity, so gas has to step in and supply none to all of that 3GW on occasions, say 10% on average. That's roughly 2,628GWh's pa. [I think if sized appropriately, and using a mix of RE, that a 10% average shortfall seems fair.]

Next let's consider the massive CO2 emissions hit that nuclear should have to account for, and that's the approximate 10 extra years for completion v's a package of RE. So nuclear, when it comes on line in ~15yrs, will have 'cost' us, 10yrs of gas generation emissions v's a RE + storage package. That's roughly 262,800GWh's.

So the nuclear option catches up with the RE example after 100yrs.

Of course the 100yr catch up, is based on the RE overcapacity not improving, the storage solutions not improving, and SCZ running perfectly for 100yrs. I also suspect that RE + storage is now (or soon) cheaper than the nuclear equivalent, so it may be possible to build 110-120% RE + storage for the same amount as nuclear, eliminating/minimizing the gas element, or perhaps displacing FF methane with green Hydrogen or methane produced using the RE excess.

[AE-NMidlands]

Are you including the cost of the embodied carbon in the Nukes?
The amount of concrete (and steel) in the pressure vessel fundations was staggering. I think a TV programme said it was a 3-day continuous pour, maybe the biggest ever in Europe.
A

[Ken]

We cannot make the mistake of putting all our eggs in a small number of baskets. It does not matter which production method we consider that is the paramount importance. In the case of when no wind and solar we need a very plausable plan. Part of that plan should be to reduce the effect when this happens ie not allow RE to dominate too much like gas has in Germany etc. This does not rest easy with a RE+ storage advocate like me but these are hard head decisions.

All out race to the cheapest solution, overbuild RE, i do not feel is the total answer. Its impossible to build enough storage to be 100% RE and we will have to pay capacity payments to standby gas? producers. I do not have total faith in the make H2 etc from excess RE to burn in power stations. Firstly with the advent of EVs and HPs and smart things will there really be that much excess? Secondly H2 will be far too valuable to just burn and will be used to produce steel,concrete,fertiliser etc.

Much of our concern is because we have not had it layed out how the grid will look in x yrs time when we have no wind and sun and i fear that nobody has a concrete idea either other than it will work out nearer the time.