Transcript Dr Paul Dorfman of NCG

UCL ENERGY INSTITUTE
UK Energy Policy: Late Lessons from
Fukushima
Westminster, 28.1.16
Dr Paul Dorfman
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The Deal
• UK guarantees EDF and China Nuclear
Corporation twice the market price we currently
pay for electricity.
• 35-year locked-in index-linked contract.
• Subsidised through UK taxes and consumer
energy bills.
• Treasury guarantees £10bn credit for any project
debt.
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Legal Challenge
• Austria, Luxembourg and 6 German Stadtwerke
have launched a legal challenge through the EC
Courts.
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EDF EPR Faults
• ‘Very serious faults’ in top and bottom of the EPR
Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV).
• French nuclear regulator just delayed ‘safety
review’ on EPR RPV at Flamanville to end of
2016.
• ‘Destruction-testing’ Hinkley RPVs - so must be
re-forged.
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EDF Finances
• ‘EDF shares sink to all-time low as nuclear waste
cost estimate soars’.
• ‘Areva bonds lead junk decline’.
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EDF EPR Construction
• EPR Flammanville, France: 5 years late - costs
have trebled.
• EPR Olkiluoto, Finland: 10 years late - costs have
more than doubled.
• EPR Taishan, China: Faulty RPV installed.
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UK Parliamentary
National Audit Office
• New nuclear at Hinkley Point C is 'undeliverable’.
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EDF EPR Hinkley Point C
‘Safety Case’
• ‘For the very worst reasonably foreseeable event,
including terrorist attack, the maximum rate of
radiation release would not exceed 0.03% of the
reactor core volume per day’.
• Accidents are by nature, accidental…
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UK Nuclear Accident Liability
• Currently, UK nuclear accident liability is capped
at £134 million per major accident.
• The EC aims to raise this to £1.2 billion per major
accident.
• Starting estimates for Fukushima stand at £100
billion and rising.
• Nuclear is uninsurable.
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UK Nuclear Security
• UK Parliamentary Joint Committee National
Security Strategy 2015: ‘All UK civil nuclear
infrastructures are uniquely implicated in all four
tier-one threats’.
• Government has just cut UK nuclear police by
16% (200 officers).
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Climate Change
• UK Institute of Mechanical Engineers (2009):
Climate Change: Adapting to the inevitable.
• ‘Coastal nuclear plant is at risk from sea-level rise,
storm surge, flooding, and eventual nuclear
islanding’.
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German Federal Office for
Radiation Protection
• ‘In the vicinity of nuclear power plants, an
increased risk of 60% was observed for all types
of childhood cancer, and for childhood leukaemia
the risk doubled’.
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Last Weeks Energy Press
• ‘US solar employs more workers than oil and gas’.
• ‘Denmark sets world record for wind energy
production’.
• ‘Wind energy costs tumbling’.
• ‘Britain abandons onshore wind just as new
technology makes it cheap’.
• ‘UK renewable energy industry is about to fall off a
cliff’.
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Current UK Energy Policy
• Levy Control Framework.
• Nuclear will ‘eat all the pies’.
• Renewables on a cliff-edge.
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German Energiewende
• ‘As the first big industrialized nation, we can
achieve a transformation toward efficient and
renewable energy - with all the opportunities that
brings for exports, developing new technologies
and jobs’.
Angela Merkel, German Chancellor.
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Thank You
Dr Paul Dorfman
www.ucl.ac.uk/energy