Source: The Energy Mix
Shipping Emissions Could Rise 70% as Houthi Attacks Shut Red Sea Route
Monthly Archives: March 2024
Hurricanes are becoming so strong we may need a new scale to rate them
This is taken from an article by Michael LePage in the New Scientist, 5th February 2024:
Five storms in the past decade had wind speeds that belong in a hypothetical category 6 on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale. In the past decade, five tropical storms had wind speeds so high that they should have been classified as “category 6” storms, according to an analysis that suggests the hurricane scale may need to be updated as rising temperatures fuel stronger storms.
If carbon emissions continue at current rates, we might even see “category 7” storms. “It certainly is theoretically possible if we keep warming the planet,” says climate scientist James Kossin at the First Street Foundation, a non-profit research organisation in New York.
Officially, there is no such thing as a category 6 or category 7 hurricane. According to the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale used by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in the US, any storm with sustained wind speeds of 252 kilometres per hour and over is a category 5.
But as the wind speeds of the strongest storms get faster, the use of this scale is increasingly problematic, say Kossin and his colleague Michael Wehner at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, as it doesn’t convey the increasing risks posed by ever stronger storms.
“It’s bad and it’s getting worse,” says Kossin. “These storms keep getting stronger as the climate changes.”
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Climate records smashed in 2023, the hottest year on record
A new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) shows that records were once again broken, and in some cases smashed, for greenhouse gas levels, surface temperatures, ocean heat and acidification, sea level rise, Antarctic sea ice cover and glacier retreat.
Heatwaves, floods, droughts, wildfires and rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones caused misery and mayhem, upending every-day life for millions and inflicting many billions of dollars in economic losses, according to the WMO State of the Global Climate 2023 report.
For the first time, global warming has exceeded 1.5C across an entire year, according to the EU’s climate service.
World leaders promised in Paris in 2015 to try to limit the long-term temperature rise to 1.5C, which is seen as crucial to help avoid the most damaging impacts.
This first year-long breach doesn’t break that landmark Paris agreement, but it does bring the world closer to doing so in the long-term.
Urgent action to cut carbon emissions can still slow warming, scientists say.
“This far exceeds anything that is acceptable,” Prof Sir Bob Watson, a former chair of the UN’s climate body, told the BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme.
“Look what’s happened this year with only 1.5C – we’ve seen floods, we’ve seen droughts, we’ve seen heatwaves and wildfires all over the world.” he said.
The period from February 2023 to January 2024 reached 1.52C of warming, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The Financial Times draws an interesting comparison between reporting on the issue of climate change between climate experts and oil companies:
as follows;
“Talk about unfortunate timing. At the start of last week, the head of the world’s largest oil company, Saudi Aramco, was applauded when he told the CERA Week Energy conference in Houston it was time to abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas”. Amin Nasser said the world needed instead to invest in fossil fuels to meet demand at a time when the clean energy transition was ‘visibly failing’ on most fronts.”
Only a day later, the head of the WMO, Celeste Saulo, received no applause for issuing their report which showed that climate records had not just been broken but smashed in 2023, the hottest year on record. More than 90% of the world’s oceans suffered heatwave conditions, glaciers lost the most ice on record and Antarctic sea ice fell to its lowest ever recorded:
Antarctic Sea Ice
Increasing wildfires
And a report from the Natural History Museum confirms all of this, as follows:
Earth has already passed 1.5⁰C of warming, controversial study claims
Heathrow second-worst global airport for climate impact
A study has found that London is the most exposed city in world to air pollution from aviation.
The planes taking off and landing at London’s six airports expose the city’s inhabitants to the equivalent of 3.23m cars’ worth of harmful nitrogen oxides and particulate matter emissions every year. In Tokyo and Dubai, residents are exposed to 2.78m cars’ worth of emissions from air traffic.
These three cities are the world’s worst affected by air pollution from aviation, according to new research tracking the air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions of cargo and passenger flights from airports around the world.
It found the largest 20 airports, taken together, produced as much carbon emissions as 58 coal-fired power stations.
“Pollution around airports is growing year on year,” said Jo Dardenne, the aviation director at Transport & Environment, the thinktank which helped produce the research. “It affects millions of people, who breathe in toxic emissions and develop health conditions as a result, yet policymakers are brushing the problem under the carpet.
The full story, written by Damien Gayle in The Guardian can be found at:
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Carbon Brief’s emissions analysis of Trump vs Biden
The details copied below come from an email circulated by Carbon Brief.
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War, climate breakdown, and economic injustice: tackling the triple crisis
This article has been copied in its entirety from the sgr website and originally appeared in the Responsible Science Journal.
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Prof Paul Rogers, University of Bradford, examines the interlinkages between the world’s major crises, and outlines some ways forward.
Article from Responsible Science journal, no. 6, Spring 2024
Advance online publication: 21 February 2024
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More than 50 years ago, the economic geographer Edwin Brooks warned of the risk of a “crowded glowering planet of massive inequalities of wealth buttressed by stark force yet endlessly threated by desperate men in the global ghettoes”. [1] It seemed thoroughly dystopian then, but is all too believable now.
In the past four years, there has been an upsurge in war – especially in Ukraine, Sudan, and Gaza – as well as increased marginalisation stemming from a failing global economic system. The COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 15 million people [2] and exacerbated health inequalities and, above it all, we have the looming reality of climate breakdown as environmental limits to growth really do kick in. Even now though, most of society still doesn’t accept that fossil carbon as the main energy source is now obsolete.
To make matters worse, the elite response to migration and climate breakdown is to ‘close the castle gates’, while the armourers are thriving in the wake of new wars. A divided world really is facing limits to growth, but this is in a security culture of hard militarism where Brooks’s “buttress” is there to protect the wealthier elites.
This prompts three questions:
- Can we respond to climate breakdown in time?
- Can we transition to a much fairer economic system?
- Can we change from hard security to human security?
Behind all of this are three core elements that turn these challenges into an immediate triple crisis. One is that they are integrated, not separate. The second is that the current neoliberal economic system and its emphasis on the free market cannot respond to climate breakdown in time, and third, the emphasis on hard security using military force will exacerbate the crisis, not control it. [3]
The interconnections are shown most clearly with the climate challenge. In the past ten years, there has been the start of a sea change in potential for more effective responses. The scientific case for urgent action is far stronger, the public mood is more powerful, especially among younger people, and there is a near-revolution happening as the cost of energy from renewable resources – especially solar and wind – plummets.
Yet the neoliberal economic system has, over the past 40 years, put a premium on deregulated market fundamentalism that prioritises short-term gains in a shareholder-based system. This is glaringly obvious in the determination of fossil carbon industries and producer states to reap all the profits they can while they can. Leading fossil carbon producers have known for decades that fossil fuel energy sources are unsustainable, yet they persist just as hundreds of neoliberal think tanks across the world continue to argue even now for business as usual.
Rapid decarbonisation is possible and is already starting to happen but selective subsidies in many countries could have started that revolution years earlier. The UK, for example, could have been at the centre of change over the past decade if serious funding had gone into warm-home schemes, home-based solar photovoltaic systems, electric vehicle charging points, onshore wind farms and the like.
Much of this is now happening but it is very late in the day and, as challenges such as climate-related migration and violent responses to marginalisation increase, our third problem, an obsolete security paradigm comes to the fore.
Right back in 1960, US President Eisenhower – a five-star general during World War II – warned of the power and influence of military-industrial complexes which are found in most countries, especially those with large military forces. They include the military themselves, civil servants, arms corporations, intelligence agencies, private security companies, think tanks and university departments, all in a closely integrated system.
They are mostly very profitable systems replete with multiple revolving doors, especially between the military and the corporations, and able to use well-funded lobbying pathways to maintain their necessity in the public eye. Any critics are all too easily labelled unpatriotic.
If faced with challenges to elite security stemming from climate breakdown or deep socioeconomic divisions, the security response is to try to maintain stability, if necessary by the threat or use of force, rather than addressing the underlying causes of the problems. This is ‘Liddism’, keeping the lid on the pot not turning down the heat, an approach which is doomed to failure.
Take the response to the 9/11 attacks more than two decades ago. The US and its supporters went to war four times, Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), and Iraq/Syria in 2014. The result? In Afghanistan, the Taliban took back control after 20 years of bitter war, Iraq remains deeply troubled, as does Libya which also acts as a conduit of arms and movements for paramilitary wars across the African Sahel region.
A root and branch rethinking of security is needed, but it must start by recognising that the post-9/11 wars have been abject failures and the challenges opened up by an unjust economic system exacerbating climate breakdown cannot be suppressed by military force. It will also require substantial cuts in the current $2 trillion a year global military budget.
The immediacy of climate breakdown means that we must move rapidly to radical decarbonisation. The current targets to reach net zero emissions by 2050 are far too distant. [4] The richer states should aim for 2035, as well as providing the funding for much of the Global South to help achieve net zero worldwide by 2040 at the very latest. States such as the UK, with its impressive renewable energy potential, should be at the forefront of this decarbonisation.
In parallel with this, the deepening wealth disparities are nothing short of obscene. According to Oxfam’s January 2024 report, Inequality Inc., the world’s five richest people more than doubled their wealth to $869 billion in the previous four years, hugely outstripping inflation while the world’s poorest 60%, close to five billion people, lost money. Overall, the world’s dollar billionaires controlled $3.3 trillion and grew their wealth by three times the rate of inflation over the same period. [5]
Radical decarbonisation will require heavy expenditure, and this could come in part from a much fairer sharing of the wealth within the UK and at the global level. The need for a new economics to enable this transition is essential and it will also hasten the market-driven system on its transition to a fairer and much sustainable economic future.
What makes such radical action essential is impending climate breakdown, with the need to be well on our way by 2030. It can be done given public and political will, and the role of organisations such as Scientists for Global Responsibility is clear enough. People with science and technology backgrounds have a particular role to play in staying up-to-date and, as ever, speaking truth to power. Indeed, in one specific sense time is on our side.
That seems a strange comment at a time of rising climate breakdown concern and a lot of near-despair around but look at it this way. It is surely clear enough, from an SGR perspective, that we are seeing the actual effects of climate breakdown happening right now, and increasingly so. As people, especially younger people, see it happening, along with more wars and more marginalisation, a major task for SGR and science-based organisation like it, is to keep making the connections especially as society becomes more receptive to progressive solutions.
Paul Rogers is Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, UK. He has written/ edited 30 books on international security, arms control, and political violence.
References
[1] Brooks E (1973). In: Vann A, Rogers P (eds). Human Ecology and World Development. London: Plenum Press.
[2] Msemburi et al (2023). The WHO estimates of excess mortality associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Nature, vol.613, pp.130–137. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05522-2
[3] Rogers P (2021). Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (4th edition). London: Pluto Press. https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745343679/losing-control/
[4] Anderson K (2023). Getting real: what would serious climate action look like? Responsible Science, no.5, May. https://www.sgr.org.uk/resources/getting-real-what-would-serious-climate-action-look
[5] Neat R (2024). World’s richest five men double their wealth as poor get poorer. The Guardian, 15 January. https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2024/jan/15/worlds-five-richest-men-double-their-money-as-poorest-get-poorer
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Nuclear power and net zero: Too little, too late, too expensive
This complete article has been copied from Responsible Science Journal No. 6, which inturn was copied into the SGR Newsletter.
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Prof Steve Thomas, Greenwich University, assesses the considerable obstacles to the UK government’s target for new nuclear power.
Article from Responsible Science journal, no.6
Advance online publication (original article): 9 January 2024; update published: 9 February 2024
Original article (9/1/24)
Introduction
In October 2023, the British government reaffirmed the 2022 Boris Johnson target of bringing online 24 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear capacity, eight stations the size of Hinkley Point C, by 2050. [1] As we wait for more details to be published on how the government intends to try to meet this target, this article critically considers likely proposals. While there is talk about Small Modular Reactors making a significant contribution, as I argued in my article on these in Responsible Science, no.5, [2] their rationale is based on some highly suspect assumptions about cost-savings from reducing reactor size. At most a few demonstration SMRs might be built, demonstrating only that they are far from being competitive with other options for low-carbon generation.
So, if the 24 GW target is to be met, most of the capacity will have to be in large (1.2 GW-plus) reactors. The government seems determined to drive through the Sizewell C project whatever the cost. This would comprise two reactors of the EPR-1 design used at Hinkley Point C, but that would leave a further seven to build.
To achieve the 24 GW target, at least four conditions must be met:
- The equivalent of eight new nuclear projects must be completed by 2050.
- Mature, commercial, large reactor technologies must be available.
- Seven sites beyond Sizewell, suitable for 3 GW stations, must be approved.
- Owners and financiers for eight stations, expected to cost about £250bn, must be found.
1. When could new capacity come online?
Ambitious nuclear programmes are always accompanied by the same tired rhetoric offered for more than 50 years – of cutting red tape, streamlining planning and regulatory processes, learning from past mistakes, and taking advantage of new technologies. This has never worked in the past, not because we were not trying hard enough, but because nuclear power stations intrinsically take a long time from start of planning to first power, and new technologies have proved expensive and bring their own problems. The government acknowledged this in its Impact Assessment for the Regulated Asset Base (RAB) legislation which stated that it typically took 13-17 years from a Final Investment Decision (FID) to first power. [3] It could have added that most announced projects do not make it as far as FID. The Impact Assessment also stated that nuclear projects typically cost 20-100% more than the estimate at FID. Adding in a few years to get from project inception to FID and it is clear the whole process is likely to take 15-20 years. The Flamanville (France) and the Olkiluoto (Finland) projects will take longer than 20 years and with at least four years of construction left at Hinkley Point C, that project will take nearly 20 years if there are no more delays. Flamanville [4] and Olkiluoto [5] are about 300% over budget. Planning for any capacity that will be online by 2050 must be started by 2030.
2. Which technologies?
The EPR-1 design supplied by the French nationalised utility, EDF, is not credible for further orders. A former CEO of EDF described EPR-1 as “too complicated, almost unbuildable”. [6] Design work has been in progress for more than a decade on its replacement, EPR-2, which is claimed to be cheaper and easier to build. EDF plans to build six EPR-2s in France, the first coming online in 2035-37. EDF has said it would not try to sell the design until an EPR-2 was operating in France. Whether the EPR-2 will live up to the claims made is irrelevant. If we must wait till the after 2035 for it to be available, EPR-2s cannot be online in the UK by 2050.
Assuming designs from Russia and China are not acceptable, that leaves us with the other two designs meant to make up the Blair programme of 16 GW by 2030, the Hitachi-GE ABWR and the Westinghouse AP1000. While these have been approved by the UK safety regulator, they are not attractive. The three reactors of the ABWR design operating in Japan use a 1986 version of it. No orders for the updated designs are in prospect and the vendor appears not to be offering it for sale.
The record of the AP1000 is almost as bad as that of the EPR with all eight orders going badly wrong. The history of the ‘AP’ designs illustrates the nuclear industry’s duplicity on reactor size. Initially it was the AP600 (about 700 MW), but this was found to be uneconomic. It was scaled up to the AP1000 (1170 MW) and this was built in China and in the USA, but to improve the poor economics, China has scaled it up to 1550 MW (CAP1400). In March 2023, Westinghouse announced its new design would be a scaled down AP1000, the 300 MW AP300.
The other candidate is the South Korean APR1400. Like the ABWR, this has been built but using a design that did not take account of the lessons from the Chernobyl disaster (a means of preventing a molten core getting into the environment) or from the 9/11 attack (a need to toughen the shell enough to absorb a hit by an aircraft). It seems unlikely that an updated design could complete the required safety review in time for an FID to be taken on a project using this technology until after 2030. The record of APR1400 projects is problematic with long delays due partly to falsification of quality control documentation in South Korea and quality issues in the UAE.
3. Where would they be built?
Eight sites were identified as suitable in the government’s siting decision of 2010. [7] With Hinkley and Sizewell already under some sort of development, this leaves Moorside, Wylfa, Oldbury, Bradwell, Heysham and Hartlepool. There are concerns about the impact of sea-level rises for all the sites. [8] A project for the Wylfa site underwent review by the Planning Inspectorate which recommended the project not be consented because of its environmental impact. Moorside, Oldbury and Bradwell have undergone some investigations for new nuclear capacity for projects now abandoned and this preparatory work could be utilised to speed things up.[9] Heysham and Hartlepool would need detailed assessment to determine their suitability before any project could be proposed, so they might not be available by 2030. If eight projects (including Sizewell C) need to be completed by 2050, then either the planning advice at Wylfa would need to be ignored or at least one new site would be needed – and this also assumes all planning issues at the other sites could be adequately dealt with by the end of this decade and none of these locations would be earmarked for SMRs.
4. How would they be financed and who would own them?
When electricity utilities could pass on whatever costs they incurred, they enthusiastically supported nuclear projects. Now, if nuclear projects go wrong, it will be their shareholders who bear some of the costs, so interest from utilities, particularly investor-owned ones, has evaporated. Direct government ownership is an option, although it would be an extraordinary decision to invest taxpayers’ money in nuclear projects on the basis that no other investors would be willing to take this risk. So, innovative methods of finance are required.
The finance model used for Hinkley Point C, the Contracts for Difference (CfD) model, was both a poor deal for consumers and the plant owner, EDF. The power purchase price was set in 2013, three years before the investment decision, at £92.5/MWh in 2012 money, indexed to inflation (about £124/MWh in 2023 money) with cost overruns falling on EDF. This price is more than double the price for new offshore wind. [10] In 2013, the expected construction cost was £16bn but the latest estimate is £26bn (both in 2016 money). [11] So EDF will have to absorb the cost overrun of at least 60% but with no increase in the price it will get for its output. This form of CfD is not an option any sane investor would back for nuclear even though, for offshore wind, it is producing impressive results and will continue to be used.
The UK government is now proposing the Regulated Asset Base (RAB) financial model. The main architecture of the scheme is known although crucial details have not been published. How far this lack of information is down to the government leaving these open for negotiation, to the government not having decided on them yet, or to the government not being willing to admit the details, is difficult to determine. There is brave talk of risk-sharing but the reality is that it will not be the government that sets the terms, it will be investors unless the government is prepared to walk away with no deal. But the government seems likely to agree to whatever it takes to lure investors in. Deepa Venkateswaran, an analyst at Bernstein, said would-be investors in Sizewell needed to be “assured a return” that was locked in at the point of investment rather than subject to change. [12]
Under RAB, it would be the investors’ income that would be fixed, not the price paid for power. The power price would be whatever it took to generate the guaranteed annual income to the owners. All electricity retailers and therefore all consumers would be required to buy their share of the output. With the Hinkley Point CfD, the owner took the risk; with Sizewell RAB, consumers take the risk.
The selling point for the RAB model has been the claim that it would reduce the cost of finance and therefore the cost of power. RAB reduces financing costs in two ways. First, because the risks will fall on consumers and taxpayers, the project would be seen by financiers as low risk to them and would attract a low interest rate. Second, the finance charges would effectively be paid by consumers as a surcharge on their bills payable from the date of FID to completion of the plant, expected to be about 15 years. Finance costs savings would be paid for by consumers as a surcharge on bills and by them, not the project owners, assuming the project risk.
Despite this, the government is struggling to find investors. It has said there are at least four companies that have pre-qualified as potential investors, [13] although pre-qualifying commits them to nothing. EDF has been forced to offer to take about 20% of the project ownership, while the government has said it would take an unspecified stake but it will be at least 20%, but probably more, enough to fill any funding gap.
The original target for RAB was UK institutional investors but given lack of interest from this source, government now seems to be relying on more controversial sources such as Middle East investment funds. [14] It will be difficult to explain to the public why, if the Bradwell project was politically unacceptable because of the presence of Chinese money, a RAB project with, say, Saudi money is acceptable.
The government may be able to offer enough sweeteners to allow the Sizewell C project to proceed but replicating it will be more difficult. For each project, a technology, a site, and investors will have to be found. Politically it will be difficult for the government to keep taking expensive stakes in nuclear projects just because nobody else will. The scale of investment is huge, and, for example, Sizewell C alone is expected to cost about 10 times the cost of the Thames Tideway ‘super-sewer’ water project, the first major project to use the RAB model.
Conclusions
The electricity sector ought to be one of the first sectors to be decarbonised because of the availability of a range of viable technologies available to replace fossil-fuel generation. Boris Johnson set a target of decarbonising electricity by 2035 [15] while Keir Starmer has set a target of 2030. [16] Given that even Sizewell C is unlikely to be online by 2035, the nuclear programme is an irrelevance in achieving net-zero. The only justification is if nuclear was the cheapest way to meet electricity demand growth by the time the first capacity could come online and the current chasm in cost between nuclear and renewables or energy efficiency measures suggests this is implausible. Judged by the requirements of time, technology availability, sites and availability of finance, the programme will fail badly. In doing so, large amounts of government time and taxpayer money will, as with previous UK nuclear programmes, be diverted away from the options that have a much higher success probability, are more cost-effective and can be deployed much quicker.
Since the original article was finalised, the UK government published its delayed Roadmap to achieve its target of 24GW of new nuclear capacity by 2050. [17] This contained little of new substance and did not address the barriers to achieving this set out in my article above. It also made new announcements of further spending: an additional £1.3bn on the Sizewell C project; £300m on new nuclear fuel facilities for High-Assay Low-Enrichment Uranium (HALEU); [18] and £64m on Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). [19] A new estimate for the completion cost and date of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station was also published by Electricité de France (EDF).
The scale of the new estimates of cost and time overruns for Hinkley Point C was a shock. In the 20 months since the previous announcement, [20] the estimated completion cost had increased from £25-26bn to £31-35bn (all in 2015 money) and the completion date for the first of the two reactors had been delayed from 2027-28 to 2029-31. So expected completion is further away, and the costs and time are subject to greater uncertainty than they were in May 2022.
Apparently oblivious to this renewed demonstration that the EPR technology being built at Hinkley Point and proposed for Sizewell was “almost unbuildable” (see main article), the government announced further taxpayer support for Sizewell. It committed to increase its contribution to bring the plant to the point of Final Investment Decision (FID), projected for 2024, from £1.2bn to £2.5bn. [21] By the end of 2022, EDF had also spent £700m on this process, [22] so adding in its contribution (assuming some further spend in 2023) might take the total to about £3.5bn. The original budget to get to an FID, set by EDF in 2016 when the agreements were signed, was £458m, less than one seventh of the latest expected cost: just to get to a position when an investment decision might be taken. This begs the question how many homes could have been insulated and how much offshore wind capacity could have been built and operational in a period of eight years with a budget of £3.5bn.
Steve Thomas is Emeritus Professor of Energy Policy at Greenwich University, UK. He has researched and written on nuclear power policy issues for 40 years.
References
[1] Science, Innovation and Technology Committee (2023). https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/41818/documents/207526/default/
[2] Thomas (2023). https://www.sgr.org.uk/resources/small-modular-reactors-last-chance-saloon-nuclear-industry
[4] The cost estimate for Flamanville 3 at start of construction was €3.2bn, the most recent estimate (December 2022) was €13.2bn (2015 money). EDF hopes the reactor will go online in 2024. https://www.edf.fr/en/the-edf-group/dedicated-sections/journalists/all-press-releases/update-on-the-flamanville-epr-0
[5] The cost estimate at start of construction was €3bn. The final cost has been estimated to be nearly €11bn. https://yle.fi/a/3-12356596
[6] Hansard (2023). https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2023-09-07/debates/A29C6747-0A3A-4AEA-83FB-D75EE1892C29/NuclearEnergy
[8] See, for example: Institution of Mechanical Engineers (2009). https://www.imeche.org/policy-and-press/reports/detail/climate-change-adapting-to-the-inevitable; The Guardian (2012). https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/mar/07/uk-nuclear-risk-flooding
[9] The Bradwell project to be built by the Chinese company CGN has not been formally abandoned but EDF’s most recent annual report stated: “The project to build a nuclear power plant based on the UK HPR1000 technology reactor is unlikely to be implemented.” https://www.edf.fr/sites/groupe/files/2023-04/edf-urd-annual-financial-report-2022-en.pdf
[10] BEIS (2022). https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6318a01cd3bf7f77d5f2c6bb/contracts-for-difference-allocation-round-4-results.pdf
[11] EDF (2022). https://www.edf.fr/en/the-edf-group/dedicated-sections/journalists/all-press-releases/hinkley-point-c-update-0
[12] The Times (2023). https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/centrica-sizewell-c-nuclear-power-plant-stake-263rj5r2c
[13] TASC (2023). https://tasizewellc.org.uk/sizewell-228/
[14] This is Money (2022). https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-11472637/UAE-wealth-fund-invest-Sizewell-C.html; i news (2022). https://inews.co.uk/news/sizewell-c-nuclear-power-energy-money-funding-investment-boris-johnson-1831509
[15] BEIS (2021b). https://www.gov.uk/government/news/plans-unveiled-to-decarbonise-uk-power-system-by-2035
[16] Politico (2023). https://www.politico.eu/article/united-kingdom-labour-party-keir-starmer-net-zero-decarbonize-power-electricity-green-policy/
[17] DESNZ (2024a). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-nuclear-roadmap-to-2050/civil-nuclear-roadmap-to-2050-accessible-webpage
[18] The announcement on HALEU, heavily couched in anti-Putin rhetoric, is even harder to comprehend. Worldwide, HALEU is used for reactors producing medical isotopes and a small number of prototype reactors. The government acknowledges that it will be difficult to deploy the type of power reactors that would need HALEU before 2050 in the UK and the outlook is no better elsewhere. So why we need to bring the new facility on-line in the early 2030s is incomprehensible. DESNZ (2024b). https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-invests-in-high-tech-nuclear-fuel-to-push-putin-out-of-global-energy-market
[19] The government also announced it was commissioning the Office of Nuclear Regulation to carry out Generic Design Assessments (GDA) for the Holtec and GE-Hitachi Small Modular Reactors. Holtec was given £30.05m and GE Hitachi £33.6m to pay for the first two of the three of the stages of the GDA. DESNZ (2024c). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/future-nuclear-enabling-fund-shortlisted-applications/future-nuclear-enabling-fund-successful-applicant
[20] EDF (2022). https://www.edf.fr/en/the-edf-group/dedicated-sections/journalists/all-press-releases/hinkley-point-c-update-0 ; EDF (2024). https://www.edf.fr/en/the-edf-group/dedicated-sections/journalists/all-press-releases/hinkley-point-c-update-1
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