{"id":7330,"date":"2016-11-18T17:12:34","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T16:12:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7330"},"modified":"2016-11-18T17:12:34","modified_gmt":"2016-11-18T16:12:34","slug":"one-thing-learnt-week-nuclear-power-shutdown-power-cuts-electricity-price-increases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7330","title":{"rendered":"One thing we have learnt this week – nuclear power shutdown, power cuts and electricity price increases"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Power<\/a><\/p>\n

Could a nuclear power shutdown in France lead to power cuts and price increases in the UK?\u00a0 At the moment France has shut down a third of its reactors and facing a very real possibility of an energy crisis with power cuts.\u00a0 Why has this nuclear power shutdown taken place?\u00a0 The disastrous way behind schedule way, over cost construction of the new reactor at Flamanville in Normandy has opened some very serious cans of worms.\u00a0\u00a0 Problems have been found in the containment vessel with too much carbon in the steel, this weakens it.\u00a0 Its thought this fault might be replicated in a third of the existing nuclear fleet as well and so a nuclear power shutdown has taken place whilst checks are made.\u00a0 Its worse than this though, since at the same time falsification of safety documents relating to a variety of other components has been discovered to have taken place.\u00a0 Documents are being checked all the way back to 1943 and other countries reactors maybe involved if the French provided components.\u00a0 A Japanese company is also implicated in falsification of safety documents on its nuclear components and has provided parts for the French Nuclear industry.<\/p>\n

So why would this effect us?\u00a0 UK power prices have been under pressure for a number of reasons before this.\u00a0 First, no one is investing much in new large scale kit (except for off-shore wind).\u00a0 Second, other renewables have been hit by cuts in support.\u00a0 Third, all the coal fired plants are closing.\u00a0 And lastly Brexit has pushed up the cost of imported fuels (gas\/coal\/uranium) due to the fall in the pound.\u00a0 The latest problem is that we import electricity from France through the 2GWp cross channel.\u00a0 This makes up about 5% of UK electricity.\u00a0 Whilst its not true to say it as they did on the radio this morning it was explicitly built to import French nuclear electricity, over the years the proportion we import over what we export to France has risen.\u00a0 That is to last month.\u00a0 Then France has been desperately importing our power.\u00a0 So why can’t the French buy power from elsewhere?\u00a0 Well they can and are buying coal fired power from Germany but they are going to have to buy one heck of a lot.\u00a0 Also one source of potential power is down, that is Scandinavian hydro.\u00a0 There has been a severe lack of rain and so output is way down.\u00a0 Another potential source is Spain which has a great solar and wind and has bailed the French out of lesser problems in the past.\u00a0 Spanish solar insolation in winter is the same as the UK’s in Summer.\u00a0 However the Spanish government is taxing its solar output so presumably people are trying to hide their output.\u00a0 So wholesale prices in the UK, France and the rest of Europe have soared.<\/p>\n

What are the implications?\u00a0 First all the above means we will see electricity cost increases this winter.\u00a0 There probably will not be power cuts in the UK if there is no major bit of kit that goes down.\u00a0 France however must be lucky to get away without some.\u00a0 Lastly this vindicates all the criticisms we made of nuclear power in our book.\u00a0 It raises real questions over the honesty of the nuclear power industry.\u00a0 If you look on our book’s Amazon page there is a criticism of our stance by someone from the World Nuclear Association.\u00a0 With everything that has happened since then (disasters\/delays\/cost overuns and now this) I am struggling to work out what we wrote that was wrong?<\/p>\n

Neil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Could a nuclear power shutdown in France lead to power cuts and price increases in the UK?\u00a0 At the moment France has shut down a third of its reactors and facing a very real possibility of an energy crisis with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,25,17,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-costs","category-nuclear","category-one-thing-we-have-learnt-this-week","category-renewables"],"yoast_head":"\nOne thing we have learnt this week - nuclear power shutdown, power cuts and electricity price increases - The oil lamp - shining God's light on peak oil<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7330\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7330\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=7330\",\"name\":\"One thing we have learnt this week - 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