Hinkley Point C: Electricity from new British nuclear power plant costs over 15 cents per kilowatt hour

by andulomitorus

20 comments

  1. Cheapest clean energy when considering wind and solar need energy storage systems that almost reside in the realm of science fiction.

  2. Unlike wind and solar which sometimes isn’t available at all.

  3. Nuclear power has been consistently the cleanest, most efficient energy we have had. Seems to be a lot of negativity surrounding it, that defies its science and stability. We are completely missing the mark.

  4. It is almost double per kW on average of what is being paid in Portugal in December (0.07Kwh or 68.41Mwh).

  5. Best is its able to be throttled so when cheaper electricity is avaible you can make less from the nuclear plant.

    Base electricity

  7. Shocking another German article attempting to justify a poor national policy decision. There are evident reasons many people are embarking on nuclear power programmes, Germany stubbornly choses to ignore them.

  8. ITT: Nuclear enthusiasts coping hard.

    Amusing, how the nuclear crowd likes to denounce people as science deniers only to cover their ears in face of data showing that nuclear has its drawbacks too.

  9. I guess what justifies the higher price is that it is available 24/7/365. Solar and wind are cheaper when it’s available.

  10. The UK government agreed on a “strike price” with the developers, which is the guaranteed price that the electricity generated by Hinkley Point C will be sold at. This price is considered high compared to current electricity market rates and other forms of generation. The purpose was to make the project viable and attractive to investors, but it means higher costs are passed on to consumers. It’s not representative for nuclear power in general.

  11. Imagine being able to fill up those batteries or produce that hydrogen whenever you want, instead of when mother nature tells you yes sonny boy, today i will allow you some energy production

  12. Just to point out. This isn’t the cost of producing electricity, but rather a guaranteed price promised by the government regaldless what the production costs are.

    Similar prices are paid to some wind power projects

    [https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/britain-boost-offshore-wind-auction-power-price-guarantees-by-66-2023-11-16/](https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/britain-boost-offshore-wind-auction-power-price-guarantees-by-66-2023-11-16/)

    >While floating wind projects, whose technology is at an earlier stage of development, will be offered 176 pounds per MWh up from 116 pounds in the previous auction.

  13. 15 cents seem quite good. The average price of a kWh in the UK was 27p in 2023, which is 31 cents / kWh. That’s probably around where the sales price will land.

  14. Discuss a hot topic while assuming a nuanced position r/europe challenge: Impossible.

  16. Will cost. When it is complete. In 2028 at the earliest.

  17. One day I‘m gonna get a brain aneurysm by another Reddit discussion about Nuclear power.

    This article is talking about the wholesale cost of electricity from this plant. It’s estimated to be c. 15 cents per kWh, which is much higher than alternatives like wind, solar, even coal and gas.

    It is not the consumer end price, which will include taxes and other additional cost associated with electricity.

    It’s a really simple statement and should be the factual basis for the discussion.

  18. It’s a matter of combining power generation systems, and the tradeoffs that come with them.

    There’s way too much disinfo, fear and noise around this. Especially nuclear.

    So here’s the options we have for power generation:
    – nuclear
    – oil, gas, coal
    – wind, solar, waves
    – hydro
    – geothermal
    – storage of excess production in potential energy or some form of batteries
    (Am I missing something?)

    Not every region has all of these options. Most renewables are opportunistic, they generate when the wind blows or the sun shines, not when the grid needs power.
    Nuclear can generate a continuous base load so it’s great for the GWh that are ALWAYS consumed. Not so much for the peak loads.
    Gas, oil, coal can be used for peak loads periods, like heating during sudden cold nights. Excess production can be buffered to some extent, or consumed by turning on street lights etc.

    Then there’s this:
    These different systems come with other costs beside money. Fossil fuels fuck the climate and often means dealing with countries like Russia or the Saudis. Nuclear has hidden costs like a processing industry and cleanup of decommissioned generator sites. And a lot of unfounded FEAR. If you’re lucky enough to get hydro that’s probably still the cleanest way to generate base load power. But you may need to flood some villages with a lake. Renewables are great but can’t reliably generate base load. Then, buffering solutions for excess production are low efficiency, there’s always loss of energy in the transformation from electric to potential and back. That’s more about avoiding brown-outs than storage for later.

    So pick your poison:
    – unreliable power delivery
    – making deals with authoritarian cunts
    – clean but more expensive energy

    Or a combination of the above that you can live with.

  19. > The British government agreed an initial guaranteed minimum strike price of £ 89.50 /MWh (10.3 ct/kWh) with the French manufacturer and builder of the nuclear power plants, EDF, for nuclear power from the new Hinley Point C nuclear power plant on the basis of the Contract for Difference (CfD) model.

    [Contract for Difference Model](https://www.emrsettlement.co.uk/about-emr/contracts-for-difference/)

    > Under the CfDs, when the market price for electricity generated by a CfD Generator (the reference price) is below the Strike Price set out in the contract, payments are made by LCCC (see below) to the CfD Generator to make up the difference. However, when the reference price is above the Strike Price, the CfD Generator pays LCCC the difference.

    Soooo doesn’t this mean that the worse a job you do by having more expensive energy that requires a higher strike price, the more cash the government gives you?

    Seems like the method of incentivizing high-capital-cost projects is to just dump government cash on investors, rewarding them when they go massively over budget with even more cash. And the more you can pump the strike price by going over budget, the more cash you get! What an amazing funding model!

Leave a Reply