To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what estimate his Department has made of retirement dates for existing nuclear power stations. (160098)
Tabled on: 07 March 2023
Answer:
Andrew Bowie:
EDF has recently announced that Heysham 1 and Hartlepool Nuclear Power Stations will continue to operate until March 2026, an extension of two years. Heysham 2 and Torness Power Station are currently planned to generate until 2028, and Sizewell B is expected to continue generation past 2028.
The answer was submitted on 15 Mar 2023 at 14:42.
Comment
This is helpful, offering a bit more reliable power for longer as they review closure dates. It is a reminder that we need to build substantial new nuclear capacity urgently simply to replace what is closing.
March 21, 2023
The UN is out of control and is becoming a danger to the lives of billions with its scaremongering. MPS should be openly condemning these doom-mongering parasites that use this form of politics to enrich themselves and their mates. They’re even worse than the WHO
March 21, 2023
And both partnered with WEF, DOM.
March 21, 2023
Yes, heard the doom and gloom on the radio the other day. Apparently all it needs to solve the problem is trillions more dollars. What a surprise.
March 21, 2023
Big surprise ….lots of money in the right pockets and climate change will disappear
March 21, 2023
Been to any interesting social events lately, Dom?
March 21, 2023
been to any rational meetings with Red Flag sung at the end?
Or just the red faced agitated carousing of linked arms waving your banners?
March 21, 2023
Dom
I think the UN know that the net zero nonsense is falling apart, hence they are working extra hard to scare everyone into thinking itâs real. Reality is beginning to hit with large businesses such as Vanguard etc who are beginning to lose moneyâŠEDF clearly see that trying to use the equivalent of a candle to supply their customers with energy isnât working!
The international organisations such as the UN, WHO, WEF should all be disbanded!
March 21, 2023
We need to leave the UN and all its institutions âŠ.its not fit for purpose
March 21, 2023
remind me, what was the purpose?
March 21, 2023
On an international level, itâs a bit like the House of Lords, itâs a place where retired politicians are employed
March 21, 2023
Forget all this Net Zero fear driven crap and start by getting one if not two coal burning installations up and running.
The profits being made out of taxpayers subsidies is a damning indictment against the decisions made since the badly thought out Climate Change Act.
Get this country and its people on a really sound foundation to be in a position to afford the ÂŁtrillions to get to this totally unachievable target.
Somebody should be investigating the money trail. Who stands to benefit the most out of all this madness? It sure as hell won’t be the environment and the people’s way of life.
March 21, 2023
Who are you appealing to? The vast majority of MPs are actively against what you advocate. Labour is set to form the next government and wants the opposite of what you say. It thinks it can force an economy based on wind and nuclear by 2030. No multi national energy generator will invest in new reliable fossil fuel plants again in this country.
March 21, 2023
Nuclear by 2030? Not a chance unless EDF can be paid enough to keep 1 going.
March 21, 2023
Did someone mention ‘coal’
March 21, 2023
Trouble is, all the people with the power to do it, have swallowed the whole UN propaganda hook line and sinker, so we are going to be pauperised to enrich their friends. Remember – ‘You will own nothing and be happy’. Its coming faster and faster. Our money will no longer be ours and will be confiscated by various means (except those very rich at the top of course).
March 21, 2023
Theyâre too scared to say the global warming & climate change is a scam âŠtoo scared
March 21, 2023
Wonderful news! This morning our renewable energy assets are producing an outstanding 11.8GW of electricity at 07.00hrs, equivalent to 45% of demand. 6% of this (~700MW net) is being exported to the french!
March 21, 2023
What were they doing last week ! or the week before that !
March 21, 2023
Sakara Gold
How long a period is that for? Or is it just the peaking of output.
Is it guaranteed for tomorrow and the rest of the week/ months?
March 21, 2023
What a out the 55 days last year when it was less tha 2%
March 21, 2023
Are any French Nuclear still operating?
March 21, 2023
According to selectra.info âLe nucleaire en France en 2023: production, avantages et risquesâ, on 20/03/2023 25 reactors were 100% operational, 7 partly operational, and 24 are presently stopped. And of these 24, 17 are in planified maintenance and 7 in âforcedâ maintenance.
March 21, 2023
Methinks no thanks to HMG policy, more forced on them by circumstances. They have been shown up as palpably more obsessed with renewables and reliant on overseas inter connectors compromising our supplies and making bills unnecessarily high.
March 21, 2023
Oh dearie me!
And hasnât THE DATE been brought forward by a decade or something?
Net utter rubbish by 2040 now?
But then, none of this carnage and cruelty was ever about the climate!
I think that world domination was predicted in âThe Eagleâ circa 1952.
Not sure it told of mass quislingery though.
March 21, 2023
You only have to look at the extinction clock website and all the climate predictions fall away https://extinctionclock.org/ …evidence that climate crusaders canât counter
March 21, 2023
When will sensible MP’s make a stand in parliament against the risible claims of anthropogenic climate change? The wild claims from the UN need to be trashed, they are after all repeats of previous claims made going back decades.
Each time predictions of doom and catastrophe fail to materialise, they come back with more, and politicians around the world agree, then devise more ways of punishing people.
As Covid19 policies were built on lies, so is CC and NZ policy.
March 21, 2023
This is a bit of a joke really that we are effectively asking the French Government about two nuclear power stations in the UK.
OK for the French to have state own power stations but not the UK.
If the UK state owned our elecricity industry would there have been a need for subsidies to compensate for the high cost of Energy ?
March 21, 2023
@John McDonald +1 and you dont know who they will have in power next and on what terms the UK will have to bow down and submit. Its this UK Conservative Government that after knowing the situation for the last 13 years still doesnt believe in energy security and resiliance – they have achieved nothing
March 21, 2023
I am concerned that this government and successive administrations will pursue this green madness. I am more concerned with the end result. The flooding In Pakistan has been caused by deforestation further upstream. Not by the climate.
March 21, 2023
I study this every day on gridwatch. org.uk (Look it up!)
While wind is unreliable – very unreliable – and solar doesn’t work when you need it – or almost at all in winter, good old nuclear keeps the lights on steadily all the time. There have, I understand, been several useful developments here and these should, as a matter of urgency, be exploited to the full.
Personally I have doubts about global warming, but all Caroline Lucas could find to criticise in nuclear was the waste problem which is vastly overrated. Expensive, maybe, but the fear of power cuts is much more scary. Crime loves them. Industry grinds to a halt and then moves out to nicer places (aluminium/steel?). Shops close as the tills collapse. And forget all forms of travel.
March 21, 2023
Guterres, head of the UN, has demanded we beggar ourselves on the altar of Net Zero, 10 years earlier than is already planned.
And no doubt 645 idiots in the Commons will do their best to speed up our economic destruction by closing down our 3 remaining coal-fired power stations and making us entirely reliant on intermittent wind, solar ….. and imports.
The Dutch have the right idea ….. vote against Net Zero.
March 21, 2023
“We” apparently do not have the capacity to build major nuclear installations, nor to manufacture PPE during a health emergency, nor to make much else, it appears.
But hey, didn’t the Thatcher governments celebrate this great shift towards the service sector in the economy?
The problem here for the Tories is that the production of high quality, high tech goods requires intelligent and skilled people in proper jobs, and they tend to vote to protect those jobs, pay, and conditions – not Tory, that is.
March 21, 2023
Maggie should have ensured that we had plentiful coal, iron, steel, tin, oil, fish, arable, cattle, sun heated greenhouses and our young people taught that ‘Arbeit macht frei’ is the mantra to live by.
She has a lot to answer for!
Isn’t that right Martin?
March 21, 2023
I see that the ever-watchful, brave and resourceful British govt. has banned a Danish/Swedish MP from entry to the U.K.
For his political views!
At what point do they scrutinise the political views of our lavishly-welcomed new-comers?
March 21, 2023
So nothing linked to the fact that the Indian Ocean in its Arabian Sea and Gulf of Bengal areas had never been as warm in 2022 than in its previous 50 years (for which there have been satellite measurements of the sea surface temperature). Nothing either linked to higher temperature over the Himalayan Plateau increasing the seasonal melting of glaciers. Deforestation obviously played a role but if a slightly warmer atmosphere had not been able to carry more moisture (Clausius-Clapeyron, basic physics) precipitation that has been between 1.5 and 7 higher than a thirty year climatology would indicate would not have happened (rgs.org âThe 2022 Pakistan floodsâ).
Similarly a deforested area is less likely to absorb water coming from melting glaciers (more run-off, less soil moisture retention).
So linking the Pakistan floods uniquely to deforestation, and therefore for some in the public, to the behaviour of the deforesting Pakistanis is a bit short âŠ
And BTW I didnât link anything to climate change just to rather basic meteorology (for which I expect the usual climate skeptics to keep shtum).
March 21, 2023
We can stop a lawful Danish MP from travelling to the UK but we canât stop illegal immigrants. âŠSomethingâs wrong
March 21, 2023
Perhaps the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero has been briefed that the Department lights might go out if they let EDF close as originally planned.
March 21, 2023
For âEDFâ please read the French Government. If only Gordon Brown(Labour) hadnât decreed the UK would never Nuclear Power, so sold all UKâs World leading Nuclear Energy capability, we wouldnât have been beholden to the Political whims elsewhere.
Labour was desperate for âcashâ to get past their failings in creating a World financial crisis that we are still paying for. (Edited) we are now paying twice over something we had already had. Its the same old lunacy of UK Governments(Labour, Conservative) toeing the line of their Socialist overlords. The UK people needed freedom from this nearly a quarter of a century of tyranny â but all that happens is more and more Socialism, more and more unrelenting control. In a nutshell stupidity
March 21, 2023
(investmentmonitor.ai, 25/05/2022 âA history of radioactive decay: who really messed up the UKâs nuclear industry?)
In 1996 eight nuclear energy plants, ie seven Advanced Gas Reactors and one Pressurised Water Reactor were moved from state ownership to the new private British Energy. Then once privatised, âhigh payments to shareholders rather than adequate investmentâ resulted in several unplanned outages. In parallel the âdash for gasâ initiated from the end of the â80s by the Conservative government led to a drop in the wholesale electricity price in the UK creating further difficulties for British Energy. And by 2002 British Energy had been sold to EDF.
In 2008, Westinghouse the power plant construction arm of state-owned British Nuclear Fuels was sold to Toshiba.
So responsibility for the present dearth of UK-based nuclear capabilities should be put at the doors of both successive Conservative and Labour governments.
March 21, 2023
The answers to these two questions demonstrate why government decision making in the UK is a lesson in paralysis.
We will have a shortage of reliable power in less than three years, yet, I suspect, the civil service will not even have decided by 2028 which horse to back, if any, to build us a fleet of SMRs.
Sometimes we need to take a risk and back a horse to deliver for us. In this case, it should clearly be Rolls Royce.
Why not ask the chinless wonders how quickly the first RR SMR could be in operation if the government backed it to the hilt starting NOW ? !!!!
March 21, 2023
Chris S
They have got confused and think that the R for renewable also means reliable.
With the speed of things I think your 3 year assumption is pushing it a bit.
March 21, 2023
c3newsmag.org âFive of the worldâs leading Small Modular Reactor companiesâ, 09/01/2023.
Interestingly rools-royce-smr is not among the five in this article.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has certified the first US SMR design (NuScale) on 20/01/2023.
It seems that RR SMR design has been (stuck?) in the Generic Design Assessment phase 1 since 01/04/2022. (onr.org.uk) it sounds fishy âŠ
Contrary to what some people think, the RR SMR will not be the same type of reactors as what is embarked on UK nuclear submarines, therefore the need for a thorough assessment.
âRolls-Royce mini-nukes project at riskâ, telegraph.co.uk, 10/03/2023.
cityam.com, 17/03/2023 âRolls-Royce wins funding to develop nuclear reactor for ⊠Moon explorationâ.
March 21, 2023
Even having a Department of Net-Zero shows the stupidity of our MPs. Do none of them read & educate themselves when the consequences of the drive to net zero being wrong are horrendous?
Our MPs seem to have lost the ability to think, to question, to do their job.
Energy & Food security should be their top priority now, but it is as if they are all asleep in an increasingly dangerous world.
March 21, 2023
K f L
The situation is normal mate. Incompetence, driven by Ignorance protected by Arrogance.
March 21, 2023
That departmental name is surely a classic example of an Oxymoron, there can be no Energy Security and Net Zero (and yes I do understand what Net Zero theory is, before the alarmists pile in).
Good news that those nuclear power stations can remain operational for a few more years, but we still need to halt any more closures or mothballing of hydrocarbon generation.
March 21, 2023
We have a committee for climate change âŠ.why not have a committee for the sun rising everyday
March 21, 2023
The Met Office should be forced to provide an estimate of sunshine minutes for every county – every day.
Then report on how accurate yesterday’s estimates were!
March 21, 2023
Gets my vote
March 22, 2023
That assumes that devices for measuring solar insolation at ground level are available for each county.
Although âThe UK land observation networkâ for synoptic observations (metoffice.gov.uk) is pretty dense, it does not routinely measure surface radiation (solar, infrared) but only visibility (for fog warning).
The Public Health Solar network has nine stations: Belfast, Camborne, Chilton, Inverness, Leeds, Lerwick, London, Glasgow, Swansea, monitoring solar radiation with emphasis on UV radiation.
So your request (sunshine, every minute, for every county) is still some way in the future before it is fulfilled.
But you can get a map of the forecast of solar duration over 24 hours from weatheronline.co.uk.
Youâll have to click: World -> UK, then Table, Sun(day) and youâll get the number of hours of sunshine at 46 UK stations.
March 21, 2023
Why is HMG dragging their collective feet when the old nuclear stations will not be her for very long (2028).
How can they say they want the UK to be one of the best places in the world to invest in new nuclear, when they are not making corporation tax so unattractive.
Have they done anything to attract investors in nuclear?
No matter what it is, HMG says one thing and does the opposite — The days of double speak are certainly with us, for the government is expert at it!
March 21, 2023
Government? Do you mean that empty chamber after the walkout when they might have had their intelligence challenged?
March 21, 2023
SirJ could you ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero the Rt Hon Grant Shapps, to look outside his window and to explain how nothing has changed in the past century, and yet they pushing at a pace the policy of net-zero – the winter is still cold the summer still hot, the air is the cleanest since 1970 and the rivers and coastline around the UK isn’t rising …..just look outside the window
March 21, 2023
I see the UN is calling for countries to bring forward their Net Zero plans by 10 years, because of the “existential threat” we face. I agree about the existential threat, but the cause is harmful and unnecessary Net Zero policy, not anthropogenic climate change.
March 21, 2023
The correct solution, once the CCA legislation had been enacted back in 2008, would have been to start a new nuclear program as nuclear is the only low carbon technology which is affordable, reliable and capable of providing sufficient power without consuming vast amounts of space and mineral resources. The fact that the only nuclear new build since 2008 is Hinkley Point C, a poor choice technically and expensively financed by the Chinese, is proof that the energy policymakers do not believe that increasing levels of CO2 will result in a climate emergency/crisis.
Even now, the energy policymakers are not ordering the only technology which can provide nuclear power by the early 2030s, namely SMRs. The CEO of RR SMR at a HoL Industry and Regulators Committee evidence session in 2021 said they can start delivering in the early 2030s and at prices of ÂŁ40/MWhr for RAB funding and ÂŁ60/MWhr for CfD, which are a half to a third of current electricity wholesale prices including newly operational wind estates.
By 2035, if EDF are unable to get its EPR Hinkley Point C working (previous constructions in Finland, France and China are not (fully) working), then we will have ZERO nuclear capacity by this decarbonisation date. Unbelievable.
March 21, 2023
The regulator has delayed approval of the design of the Rolls Royce SMR while US and Canadian models are approved there and ready to go. Rolls has decades of experience of small nuclear and supplies controls to foreign nukes.
In 7 years time the UK will have only 1 nuclear station left for baseload and this will close 8 years later. In order to replace one Hinkley Point type station, 7 RR SMRs would be needed. If approval was to be given today it would stretch RR to build that many by 2030.
In the rest of the world, where no country has been daft enough to choose the failed EPR nationalised French reactor, they are building Korean, Chinese, Japanese and Russian designs, all approved and safer than our existing stations in an average time of 7 years.
Will our civil service and technically incompetent ministers order any replacement that will provide back up, whether clean coal, gas or nuclear in time to prevent the UK being a blackout zone with no investment? If Labour or Conservative governments are elected, the answer must be ‘no’.