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Late Lessons from Fukushima: UK Energy Policy

A comprehensive look at the UK's energy policy and the risks associated with nuclear power, including the high cost, safety concerns, and environmental impact. Includes information on the legal challenge, EDF's financial difficulties, and the potential liability of a nuclear accident.

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Late Lessons from Fukushima: UK Energy Policy

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  1. UK Energy Policy: Late Lessons from Fukushima Westminster, 28.1.16 Dr Paul Dorfman

  2. 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.

  3. Legal Challenge • Austria, Luxembourg and 6 German Stadtwerke have launched a legal challenge through the EC Courts.

  4. 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.

  5. EDF Finances • ‘EDF shares sink to all-time low as nuclear waste cost estimate soars’. • ‘Areva bonds lead junk decline’.

  6. 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.

  7. UK Parliamentary National Audit Office • New nuclear at Hinkley Point C is 'undeliverable’.

  8. 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…

  9. 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.

  10. 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).

  11. 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’.

  12. German Federal Office forRadiation 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’.

  13. 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’.

  14. Current UK Energy Policy • Levy Control Framework. • Nuclear will ‘eat all the pies’. • Renewables on a cliff-edge.

  15. 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.

  16. Thank You Dr Paul Dorfman www.ucl.ac.uk/energy

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