Focus on British energy

No, this is not a joke. This is not parody. This is the depth of sickness and disconnectedness and murderous denial of reality.

---Mike Ruppert

Britain needs nuclear, fracking and every other form of dirty energy to survive. And they'll adopt fascism to get it.

Britain to seek nuclear state aid clearance this week

Reuters,

21 October, 2013

Britain plans to submit its application for state aid clearance to the European Commission for a new nuclear power plant later this week, Energy Secretary Ed Davey said on Monday.

"I'm confident we will manage to argue our case," Davey told reporters, speaking at the launch of a commercial agreement with French utility firm EDF to build a new nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point in the south-west of England.

Freezing to death in neo-liberal Britain

The issue of rocketing gas and electricity bills in the UK highlights the massive disconnect that exists between Britain’s well-heeled, neo-liberal political elite and ordinary people. 

Neil Clark

RT,

22 October, 2013

For ordinary Britons, rising energy bills – and the adverse impact that profiteering by the “Big Six” energy companies has had on our standard of living – is THE big issue of the day. It’s the issue that people are talking about in pubs and cafes, and it’s the issue that people want urgent action on. 

But our ruling elite have spent most of 2013 focusing not on energy prices - and how to bring them down, but on trying to topple the government in faraway Syria - and in privatizing the few remaining parts of the economy that are still in public ownership.

Of course, it’s easy to be blase about sky-high heating bills when you’re a millionaire, as more than two-thirds of the current UK Cabinet are. Leona Helmsley, America’s Queen of Mean and a notorious tax dodger, once famously remarked, “Only the little people pay taxes,” and the attitude of the UK elite has, over the past few years been that “only the little people” worry about rising gas and electricity bills. “Big and important” people like them have weightier issues to focus on, like how to get rid of Bashar al-Assad, and how to flog off the Royal Mail for the benefit of their chums in the City of London.

That said, the elite have been forced to feign some concern in the light of the latest eye-watering rises. First it was Scottish Southern Electric (SSE), which hiked its domestic bills by 8.2 percent.  Then the formerly state-owned British Gas announced a 10.4 percent rise in electricity bills and an 8.4 percent hike in gas bills. Now, today, the third of the so-called Big Six energy companies operating in the UK, German-owned Npower, has said it will raise its electricity and gas prices by 9.3 percent and 11 percent respectively.

It’s not as if these hikes are isolated occurrences. Between August and December 2012, the Big Six announced price rises of between 6 percent and 10.8 percent. In August 2011, British Gas raised its gas and electricity prices by an average of 18 percent and 16 percent. In December 2010, SSE raised gas prices by 9.4 percent, while British Gas put its gas and electricity prices up by 7 percent.  

The Church of England’s top cleric, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, says: “I do understand when people feel that this is inexplicable,” but the reason why bills are rocketing again is not inexplicable - it’s very easy to explain. It’s called corporate profiteering. The energy companies are hiking our bills because they can. And they know that the current UK government, which always puts corporate profits before people, won’t do anything to stop them.

Forget the old excuse that companies are being forced to raise prices because of rising wholesale prices: wholesale prices of gas and electricity are only marginally higher now than they were back in 2009. Stephen Fitzpatrick, the founder of a small energy company, Ovo Energy, told the BBC that he had not seen a wholesale price rise for over two years. “If they're buying more expensive gas, more expensive electricity, in a large part we think this is because they're selling it to themselves," he said.

Any government that genuinely represented the interests of the British people would have taken tough action by now against the Big Six. The government could have ordered the companies to freeze, or better still, reduce prices. It could have passed a law banning energy suppliers from paying dividends to shareholders. It could have renationalized the entire sector – the best way to ensure lower, long-term heating bills for ordinary people and businesses. But the British government has done none of these things. 

Its advice to the public, every time big price rises are announced, is to lecture us on the need to “switch suppliers” – putting the onus on the people being exploited, and not on the exploiters, to change their behavior. 

In 2011, then-Energy Minister Chris Huhne, another very rich Cabinet member, criticized members of the public for not spending more time on seeking out better energy deals.  "They do not bother," Huhne said in an interview. "They spend less time shopping around for a bill that's on average more than £1,000 a year than they would shop around for a £25 toaster," declared the snobbish politician, who in 2013 was sent to prison for perverting the course of justice after seeking to avoid penalty points on his driving license.  

If anyone does propose getting tough with the greedy energy companies in Britain, they are portrayed as some kind of dangerous “Red” revolutionary. When Labour Party leader Ed Miliband declared that his party would freeze energy bills if returned to power in 2015, neo-liberals labeled him a Stalinist. 

Yet in Hungary, the center-right government of the staunchly anti-communist Viktor Orban is going way beyond anything “Red Ed” proposed in its battle against greedy energy companies – imposing a 10 percent cut in bills in January this year, with a further 10 percent cut to come. His government is also drafting a law to ban energy companies from paying dividends to shareholders, with the aim of eventually returning the sector to public ownership. If Ed Miliband is a “Stalinist” for calling for a price freeze, what on earth does that make Viktor Orban?

The issue of rising energy bills and the blatant profiteering of the greedy energy companies could well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Around 5.3 million households in Britain live in fuel poverty and the number continues to rise. Last December, the Fuel Poverty Advisory Group estimated that 9 million people would be living in fuel poverty by 2016. The latest price hikes mean more misery for Britons and the likelihood of more people losing their lives this winter due to inadequately heated homes. 

Are we just going to sit back and allow people in the UK to freeze to death this winter because of the profiteering of a handful of greedy companies? Or are we going to demand the political changes which will lead to an end of the current iniquitous system? The rising and totally justified anger against the energy companies, and a government that does nothing whatsoever to stop their profiteering, could lead to major political changes and bring to an end the era of neo-liberalism in Britain. People have had enough and if we can’t turn the heat up in our homes this winter, we should make sure that we turn the heat up on those in the UK elite who think that toppling the government in Syria is more important than cutting energy bills at home.

Neil Clark is a journalist, writer and broadcaster. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. Follow him on Twitter

‘Historically safest energy’: UK needs nuclear plants to reduce carbon emissions but won’t stop there

RT,

22 October, 2013

Two UK nuclear power plants aimed at meeting obligations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions will likely be followed by others once the government sees the energy comes at a reasonable price, former adviser to the UK government Sir David King told RT.

RT: It seems the UK is rather bucking the trend compared to the rest of the world, particularly Germany, when it comes to nuclear power. Why is that?

David King: A decision was made back in 2007 by the British government that we should invest in new nuclear power stations. The Fukushima disaster has been analyzed in painful detail by those of us who advise governments, and the conclusion is that we can still build nuclear power stations safely and deliver electricity in a reliable way.

What you’ve got to also remember is that in Britain we have a commitment to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent by 2050. And we have a detailed plan to achieve that. The parliament has set out a climate change committee. They’ve established carbon budgets on a full yearly basis and we have carbon budgets out to 2028. In order to meet these budgets, we have a detailed plan of producing electricity on the grid. And included in that plan are renewables. Included in that plan is nuclear energy. So it is part of a mix.

RT: The main argument being named against building nuclear plants is the risk of a disaster, like the one in Japan in 2011. How big is the threat? Surely you can't put a price on people's safety?

DK: We’re not putting a price on people’s safety in the way you’re suggesting at all. We have the toughest regulatory procedures in the world in place. And the new nuclear power stations that would be built - two more would be built as the result of a decision announced this morning by the government - these power stations would be even safer than the previous generation of power stations because of the regulations that are being tightened up so much.

I think one has to be awfully worried about the scare mongering that goes on about nuclear energy. And I say this because we just have to remember how many lives have been lost with coal, mining coal, from silicosis from coal. We know all forms of energy have risks. In analyzing this situation globally, you will find that nuclear energy per kilowatts of electricity produced is by far the safest energy historically that we have used to produce electricity. So when I say scare mongering, I think we should all get it back to perspective. We of course know the risks associated with nuclear energy, but knowing the risks, you can then manage them down to a very tiny proportion.

RT: Are these nuclear plants really going to do the job of keeping Britain's lights on?

DK: It is two nuclear plants that have been announced at Hinkley Point. And of course this isn’t enough to keep the lights on. I’ve already said that we have a balanced approach to providing energy for the UK. This includes micro-generation, it includes solar photovoltaic, it includes wind power, it includes gas fired power stations, and it includes nuclear power. These two power stations at Hinckley Point are likely to be followed by others and we would watch the rollout with a great deal of care.

But the main point is we’re going to see that electricity keeps being provided for the United Kingdom throughout on a regular basis and we’re going to see that we optimize the price at which that electricity is available. Most importantly, we will deliver on our international commitments on the biggest concern we are all facing which is the challenge of global warming.

If we don’t manage to bring down our carbon dioxide emissions over the next 15-20 years, we’re faced with a disaster of an enormous magnitude compared to we are now taking about. The number of people that have died directly from radiation at Fukushima is probably close to zero. So we just need to keep it all in proportion.

U.K. Nuclear Future Relies on Reactor Plagued by Delays: Energy

To ensure the future of its nuclear power industry, the U.K. is relying on an unproven reactor design plagued by delays and billions in budget overruns.

Bloomberg,

22 October, 2013

The government’s deal yesterday with Electricite de France SA to build a $26 billion plant at Hinkley Point in England involves two European Pressurized Reactors. The first EPR project in Finland, led by Areva SA, the French company that designed the technology, is seven years behind schedule and won’t be completed until 2016. The second, an EDF project at Flamanville in northwest France, will cost more than twice as much as expected.

EDF says the lessons learned mean Hinkley Point will go more smoothly and that both the budget and time frame set out yesterday are realistic. History suggests the plan for the U.K., which needs to replace aging reactors built in the 1970s, isn’t ironclad, said Roland Vetter, head of research at CF Partners (UK) LLP, which runs a fund that invests in utilities.

“Nuclear is the biggest gamble in power generation,” said Ingo Becker, an analyst at Kepler Cheuvreux in Frankfurt. “At 16 billion pounds ($26 billion) for two EPRs, they have probably taken into account possible cost overruns.”

Billed as safe enough to withstand an airplane crash, the EPR reactor is at the heart of EDF and Areva’s hopes for a revival in nuclear power as a French export industry. The U.K. has remained committed to nuclear even after the Fukushima disaster in Japan turned others off atomic generation, including Germany, which decided to shut all its reactors.

Soft Soil

EDF has set a budget for the two 1,650-megawatt Hinkley Point reactors based on the latest estimate for Flamanville of 8.5 billion euros ($11.6 billion) for a single unit.

The U.K. project, expected to take 10 years, will be more expensive because soft local soil means it needs deeper foundations, requiring 30 percent more concrete, EDF said in a presentation yesterday. The Paris-based company also has to build an atomic waste facility and 3.8-kilometer (2.2-mile) pipes to carry seawater to cool the reactors.

“We are very confident in the cost,” Vincent de Rivaz, head of EDF’s U.K. unit, said at a London press conference yesterday. “We are a company which is able to learn from its experiences.”

EDF points to its project to build two EPR reactors at Taishan in southern China as evidence it can deliver in the U.K. The plant, built in partnership with China General Nuclear Power Corp., will start commercial operation in 2015, EDF said yesterday. That’s only a year later than originally planned. China General and China National Nuclear Corp. will hold minority stakes in the U.K. project.

Greater Certainty

The U.K. design assessment means “you have much greater regulatory certainty at the start,” Energy Secretary Ed Davey said yesterday. “That wasn’t the case in previous projects with the EPR.”

The EPR was criticized in France for being too big and costly after an Areva-led group lost a $20 billion atomic contract from Abu Dhabi in 2009.

“The credibility of both the EPR and the ability of the French nuclear industry to successfully build new reactors has been seriously undermined by difficulties” at Finland’s Olkiluoto site and Flamanville, according to a report ordered by former President Nicolas Sarkozy and published in 2010. It found the plant’s complexity was “a handicap.”

Even though work on Areva’s Olkiluoto-3 project started in 2005, the U.K. has opted for a design that’s yet to be completed. The Finnish plant is now scheduled to start in 2016, seven years behind schedule, operator Teollisuuden Voima Oyj said in February. Areva has said the reactor will cost the same or slightly more than Flamanville.

60 Years

“The technology takes 10 years to build and is supposed to run for 60 years, so it’s hard to evaluate,” Becker said. “It’s now known that costs are rather high for the EPR.”

At Flamanville, EDF has pushed back the commercial start of the generator numerous times and revised cost estimates three years in a row. In December, the state-controlled utility raised the estimate to 8.5 billion euros, more than double the initial budget, and confirmed a 2016 target start date.

EDF began building the Flamanville reactor in December 2007, initially estimating costs at 3.3 billion euros and with plans for a 2012 start.

Building two EPRs at Hinkley Point will cost 14 billion pounds, an estimate “in line” with the costs of Flamanville, EDF Chief Executive Officer Henri Proglio said yesterday on a conference call. The utility has tagged on another 2 billion pounds for acquiring land, installations for waste storage and training 900 employees to operate the plant.

Learned Lessons

“There is a series effect since we learned lessons from Flamanville and Taishan,” Thomas Piquemal, EDF’s head of finance, said on a conference call yesterday. Developing another EPR at Flamanville would shave 2 billion pounds from the costs of the first one, he said.

Although work at Taishan in China has also fallen behind schedule, it’s progressing faster than the European projects. Key milestones were reached two years faster than in Finland, according to Areva, which will take a 10 percent stake in the Hinkley Point project.

“The EPR meets all expectations of the U.K.,” said Charles Hufnagel, Areva’s head of communications. “The highest level of safety, competitiveness of low carbon generation, and certainty for the project thanks to the U.K. licensing and lessons learnt from four EPRs under construction in the world.”

In the event development of the U.K. reactors follows the European trend rather than the one in China, the U.K. may have to take steps to prevent generation shortages.

“Any delays could hurt energy planning in the U.K,” said CF Partner’s Vetter, who helps manage a fund that invests in European utilities. “The U.K. would have to make sure there are alternative power sources.”