• 3 minutes e-car sales collapse
  • 6 minutes America Is Exceptional in Its Political Divide
  • 11 minutes Perovskites, a ‘dirt cheap’ alternative to silicon, just got a lot more efficient
  • 3 hours GREEN NEW DEAL = BLIZZARD OF LIES
  • 6 days If hydrogen is the answer, you're asking the wrong question
  • 2 hours How Far Have We Really Gotten With Alternative Energy
  • 10 days Biden's $2 trillion Plan for Insfrastructure and Jobs

Breaking News:

Kenya and Uganda End Oil Imports Dispute

Leonard Hyman & William Tilles

Leonard Hyman & William Tilles

Leonard S. Hyman is an economist and financial analyst specializing in the energy sector. He headed utility equity research at a major brokerage house and…

More Info

Premium Content

Is This The End Of Nuclear Power In The UK?

Nuclear

The UK’s ambitious program to build more nuclear generating stations will begin with the massive Hinkley Point units. Yet, in a recent paper, Prof. Steve Thomas, a well-known energy economist in the UK, asked a question that had been on our minds, namely is it “Time to cancel Hinckley?” The timing of the paper and ensuing editorials coincided with record low prices for off-shore wind, £57.50 per MWh to be exact. The Guardian newspaper editorialized that this figure should “blow away the UK’s nuclear plans.”

First, let’s put the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in context. The UK government first announced its nuclear power expansion program in 2006. The plan was to build five new nuclear generating stations, producing 16 GWs, to be on-line by 2030. The units planned are at Sizewell, Wylfa, Moorside, Oldbury and Hinkley.

At the time the government cited two concerns with respect to the adequacy of national electric power generation. First, that “security of supply (was) jeopardized” and second, that by 2025 there would be a need to replace aging coal-fired and nuclear power generating plants. The ensuing decade was not kind to the assumptions of UK energy planners.

The price of both renewables and natural gas dropped significantly. License extensions could keep most existing nuclear power stations running. And demand for power has fallen below expectations due to moderating economic trends and the dampening impact of conservation measures. Related: 54 Things You Didn’t Know About Natural Gas

From a UK power generation perspective, the big winners in recent years have been natural gas and renewables. Coal burn has dropped drastically and nuclear has remained stable.

On a price competition basis, the future looks like a race to the bottom between natural gas and the ever-declining costs of wind and solar technology. On a cost basis, the Hinkley guarantee of £92.50 per MWh looks rather steep compared with the £57.50 recent price for off-shore wind.

We can already hear the harrumphing from the pro nuclear contingent. But this to us is the problem of making commercial nuclear technology the Zelig of the energy world. In a world eager for low carbon, base load capacity, nuclear has attempted to re-brand itself as the low carbon option. But in countries facing stagnant or declining electrical demand, the need for new, non-intermittent base load power generating resources is diminishing as well.

You can find Leonard Hyman's lastest book ‘Electricity Acts’ on Amazon

And the other low carbon generating resources, renewables, intermittent though they may be, are now much cheaper than new nuclear construction (£57.50 vs £92.50).

At another level, electricity is a commodity. A commodity that we can’t store, but still. And in a commodity business, where the product is wholly undifferentiated, price is the only consideration. Taken in this context, new nuclear is a non-starter.

ADVERTISEMENT

By Leonard Hyman and Bill Tilles for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:


Download The Free Oilprice App Today

Back to homepage





Leave a comment
  • Jhm on November 29 2017 said:
    Actually, electricity can be stored, and this opens up a whole other set of challenges for baseload power.

    The cost of battery storage is approaching £45/MWh. Charge it up with wind at £57.5/MWh, and you've got stored, fully dispatchable power at £102.5/MWh. In actuality if you only stored half of generated wind the average combined cost would be only be £80/MWh. This easily beats Hinkley, and the costs of stored wind should continue to fall.

    So the old trope that wind and solar are only go when wind blows and the sun shines should be retired. Nuclear is too expensive to store when the wind blows or the sun shines, and you can't ramp it down at those time. Yet that is exactly when batteries will be charging, soaking up low spot prices. Those spot prices will only be pushed lower by the presence of must-run baseload nuclear, which ironically increases the value of storage.
  • BTilles on December 01 2017 said:
    Hi Jhm,

    Thanks for the comments.
    We couldn't find numbers but a Scottish floating wind project (Hywind) developed by Statoil is doing just what you propose, combining wind with battery storage, although the scale is rather modest (30 MWs of wind, 1.2 MWh storage). Tesla also has a similar windfarm-storage battery relationship with Southern California Edison in the US.

Leave a comment




EXXON Mobil -0.35
Open57.81 Trading Vol.6.96M Previous Vol.241.7B
BUY 57.15
Sell 57.00
Oilprice - The No. 1 Source for Oil & Energy News