Point is we don’t need nuclear
THE cost of building the new Hinkley Point nuclear power plant has risen by £1.5billion, we learned this week.
This white elephant tells you everything you need to know about the expensive waste of money that is nuclear power.
The SNP Government are regularly attacked for their opposition to building new nuclear generators.
While Scotland has no say in the UK’s energy policy, including subsidies, we can use the planning system to “presume against” new nuclear.
Not that we are ever likely to be faced with the decision on whether to use that block, as the cost of building a new station is so astronomical, it is inconceivable the UK Government would willingly subsidise one in Scotland.
This week, the French energy firm EDF said the UK’s first nuclear power plant for decades – at Hinkley in Somerset – will now cost £19.6billion to build.
This will demand a level of subsidy from consumers far in excess of anything we put into, say, new wind technology.
Wind power generated in Scotland is now one of the cheapest sources of electricity – and it is getting more efficient all the time.
In May this year – a sunny month as I distantly recall – wind turbines alone provided 863,494.63 MWh of electricity to the National Grid – enough to meet 95 per cent of our household needs. In Scotland.
That’s up by a fifth on the same month last year.
In one of those days, May 15, output from turbines generated enough electricity to power 190 per cent of homes.
This is before you include Scotland’s other rich source of renewable energy, hydro power, where we are also a leader.
All renewables together show that Scotland is a regular exporter of electricity of the clean, green variety.
It’s just a shame that this technology is being starved of investment by the UK Government.
Norway, by contrast, has invested its oil wealth in renewables manufacturing. It is bitterly ironic that the offshore wind technology announced for the Scottish North Sea last week was developed in Norway.
The UK Government have cut the subsidy that has helped to build the Scottish wind industry while burning money in the radioactive towers of the future Hinkley B.