Nuclear meltdown
I SEE our political leadership seem quite pleased that the Chinese have finally graciously consented to build a Chernobyl — sorry, typing error, I meant a Fukushima, oops, that can’t be right, oh, yes — a hinkley Point nuclear power station in somerset.
Our Government acts as though it has succeeded in winning a great deal. But it doesn’t look that good to poor consumers who actually have to pay electricity bills.
apparently, hinkley will take ten years to build, costing £18 billion, then produce 3.2GW of electricity at a guaranteed cost of £92.50 per MW hour for 35 years, come what may. that compares with the current wholesale price of £40.
Even now, industry is complaining that our energy costs are twice that of foreign competitors; tata could well be the first of many industries to bunk off to pastures easier on the pocket.
all that for a mere 3.2GW of electricity? hell, Drax, the old coalfired power station in Yorkshire, built in the last century, could knock out over 4GW of reliable and very inexpensive electricity.
that is, till the clowns that run our energy policy deemed that Drax was changing the climate and insisted Drax now burns wood shipped in from american forests 3,800 miles away!
Other coal-fired power stations are being axed one by one even though the safety margin between reliable electricity generating capacity and peak demand is down to an astonishing 1.2 per cent this winter.
If the winter is bitter, the wind doesn’t blow and the inevitable happens, the powers-that-be will have to resort to utilising expensive (and polluting) banks of diesel generators and switch off industrial customers.
What a way to run a so- called ‘advanced’ economy. the Chinese must be laughing at the gullible British all the way to the bank.
they’re building our nuclear power station, while they themselves added a breathtaking 39GW of new coal-fired power to their grid last year alone.
there are 2,100 new coal plants in the planning stages worldwide — yet we still insist that closing ours will stop climate change.
Even more bewildering, considering the time factor, the cost involved and that coal is now apparently not considered as a fuel: no one seems to have considered natural gas.
three years ago, after only three years in construction, Pembroke B gas-fired power station went on-line, generating 2GW of unsubsidised electricity at today’s prices, at a cost of around £1 billion.
It hardly takes a genius to work out that using gas — plentiful and cheap worldwide — we could generate about 34GW of electricity for the same price tag as hinkley generating 3.2GW — without the subsidies, massive price hike, the ten-year time lapse and eventual decommissioning costs.
Children at any primary school in this country could easily come up with a superior energy policy for this country than the halfwits in charge have afflicted on the nation right now.
JOHN PHELAN, address supplied.
BRAVO to Dominic sandbrook for his article on the national humiliation heaped on us by David Cameron and George Osborne kowtowing to the Chinese dictator to make very questionable trade deals (Mail).
My grandmother would have said: ‘those that would sup with the devil need a long spoon.’ how many people felt sorry for her Majesty the Queen and Prince Philip having to be demeaned in this way?
those of us who want to see Britain leave the EU had grave misgivings about the whole procedure. We suspect that at some point Mr Xi will insist on our staying in the EU.
so what will the ‘stay in’ camp say in the run-up to the referendum? that we can’t vote to leave because China wouldn’t like it?
Mrs BRONWEN SADLER, headcorn, Kent.