Suddenly, as impotence looms, Labour have gone nuclear in a major way. They aren't really making a decision, they're just clearing the way for the Tories to do so, and guaranteeing that Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition will sit idly by after the election.Nuclear remains, of course, uneconomic, which is why no stations have been built here since the dog days of the last Tory administration. If Ministers want it, we'll have to pay. The Telegraph confirms that: an average household bill will go up by £227 if this goes ahead.
Meanwhile, over at the Times, they're telling us we'll also be soaked for the £9.5bn cost of carbon capture and storage, which currently doesn't work anywhere. That's just a starting estimate based on 15 years' worth of levy, but the final figure could be twice that over 30 years.
If we're going to pay out massive sums to support our future power needs, why on earth won't Labour, the Tories or even the Lib Dems push effective clean energy rather than these costly technological dead ends?
Isn't it interesting that some services - The Post Office, the railways - (several pages of examples edited out here) are expected to make a profit - irrespective of whether or not a profit motive is in the best interests of the general population, while others - (NUCLEAR POWER!) are shielded from that glare?
Public services which can't make a profit are being harassed for not doing so, meanwhile the energy market - a near perfect example of free-market economics at work, is to be subsidised, presumably because the powers that be are not about to let a little thing like facts get in the way of the opportunity to hand out government money to their friends.
To jump scandals momentarily, Poor Professor Nutt clearly never stood a chance if he expected science to be respected by politicians, just because it happens to be true. After all, we wouldn't want to let little things like facts and common sense get in the way of policy making would we?
James,
Could you provide a link to where your evidence is that you based the assertion that nuclear is uneconomic? I'd especially be interested to see the comparison of nuclear vs win vs wave vs solar type comparison if you have one available?