Hinkley Point

[MrCarPark]

So with the EU nearly getting to the point of letting us build a power station,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/en...

my question is: Why is it so bloody expensive?


£16bn vs. £4bn for the original 90s British design, at original costs, say £8bn now adjusted for inflation.

So it's twice the price for a simplified design. Can anyone shed any light?

[Einion Yrth]

We're being ripped off by the French having squandered all our home grown expertise over the last 40 years.

[jmorgan]

Thought the Chinese were sold a big chunk as well. We might own the security fence outright.

[Rovinghawk]

MrCarPark said:

So it's twice the price for a simplified design. Can anyone shed any light?

Risk assessments, impact assessments, coordination assessments, investigations, additional safety regulations, increased oversight. Basically red tape.

I've long been a believer that if all those involved in examining, criticising & similar all got involved in actually helping then this world would be a very different place.

[greygoose]

jmorgan said:

Thought the Chinese were sold a big chunk as well. We might own the security fence outright.

I think we've given the fence away to Calais port.

[100SRV]

Rovinghawk said:

I've long been a believer that if all those involved in examining, criticising & similar all got involved in actually helping then this world would be a very different place.

Yep, be part of the solution. Helps both sides understand the problem better and formulate a better design.

[Digga]

greygoose said:

jmorgan said:

Thought the Chinese were sold a big chunk as well. We might own the security fence outright.

I think we've given the fence away to Calais port.

If we can get it there before travellers exert their "yoomun right" to cart it away in non-roadworthy goods vehicles, unhindered by VOSA and recycle it for cheques they can cash (so might as well still be allowed to be paid in cash).

[kingofdbrits]

The while industry is so scared they have experts on everything, and it's very well paid. All I can say on that.

Having worked on a nuclear site for a few years I can best describe the spending as a Daily Mail journalists wet dream. In some cases it's just obscene.
I can't really go into detail, but what I will say is the project I ran cost £4.1M, but by the time the final bill hit the taxpayer is swelled to over £12.2M.

Just think about your job, whatever it is, and take your due diligence to the extreme and you'll need a sizeable workforce.
Example being, we had to prove where the raw materials came from and we had to prove the QA throughout the entire chain of custody for the element we were actually using.
You put those kinds of demands on businesses and just watch the costs rocket.

[ralphrj]

MrCarPark said:

So with the EU nearly getting to the point of letting us build a power station,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/en...

my question is: Why is it so bloody expensive?


£16bn vs. £4bn for the original 90s British design, at original costs, say £8bn now adjusted for inflation.

So it's twice the price for a simplified design. Can anyone shed any light?

When you say £4bn for the original 90s design are you referring to Sizewell B? If so, construction actually commenced in 1987 so allowing for inflation from then to now the cost would be £10bn today. When you consider that Hinkley Point C is a twin reactor plant rather than a single reactor then that probably accounts for a lot of the extra cost.

[rhinochopig]

kingofdbrits said:

The while industry is so scared they have experts on everything, and it's very well paid. All I can say on that.

Having worked on a nuclear site for a few years I can best describe the spending as a Daily Mail journalists wet dream. In some cases it's just obscene.
I can't really go into detail, but what I will say is the project I ran cost £4.1M, but by the time the final bill hit the taxpayer is swelled to over £12.2M.

Just think about your job, whatever it is, and take your due diligence to the extreme and you'll need a sizeable workforce.
Example being, we had to prove where the raw materials came from and we had to prove the QA throughout the entire chain of custody for the element we were actually using.
You put those kinds of demands on businesses and just watch the costs rocket.

And of course the other high hazard sectors, which have a fraction of the red-tape and regulatory oversite, have an exemplar track record when it comes to keeping nasty stuff where it should be.

If the UK had the same number of nuclear accidents to the same level of plant damage that Petro-chem and O&G have suffered it would be a rather unpleasant place to live.

Yes costs are high, but then so is the hazard. Could it be done cheaper - probably yes - but a lot of costs come from expensive learning. We haven't designed, built or assessed plants from scratch in 25 years, which means that all those that could have either died or retired.

[MrCarPark]

ralphrj said:

MrCarPark said:

So with the EU nearly getting to the point of letting us build a power station,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/en...

my question is: Why is it so bloody expensive?


£16bn vs. £4bn for the original 90s British design, at original costs, say £8bn now adjusted for inflation.

So it's twice the price for a simplified design. Can anyone shed any light?

When you say £4bn for the original 90s design are you referring to Sizewell B? If so, construction actually commenced in 1987 so allowing for inflation from then to now the cost would be £10bn today. When you consider that Hinkley Point C is a twin reactor plant rather than a single reactor then that probably accounts for a lot of the extra cost.

IIRC Sizewell B was £1.6bn before the costs for the other cancelled stations were lumped onto it giving a final cost of £2bn. Sizewell C, a twin PWR like Hinkley Point C was budgeted at £3.6bn. All at 1989 costs I think (could have been '87) so I guestimate £8bn now for an equivalent station.

[MrCarPark]

kingofdbrits said:

Just think about your job, whatever it is, and take your due diligence to the extreme and you'll need a sizeable workforce.
Example being, we had to prove where the raw materials came from and we had to prove the QA throughout the entire chain of custody for the element we were actually using.
You put those kinds of demands on businesses and just watch the costs rocket.

It was the same for Sizewell B though. I'm not aware anything has fundamentally changed in nuclear QA since then, but if it has then maybe that's part of the answer.

[JuniorD]

When you consider that the poxy Millenium Dome cost £700million, and Wembley staduim cost £1 Billion in 2006, £16 Billion for a nuclear power plant today is a bloody bargain. (Of course it won't be more like £25 B when it's all done).

[kingofdbrits]

MrCarPark said:

It was the same for Sizewell B though. I'm not aware anything has fundamentally changed in nuclear QA since then, but if it has then maybe that's part of the answer.

You could be right, i don't know the full history of Nuclear QA, all i have seen are how they're doing things now.

i think much of the quoted £16Bn are all the legal and eco challenges that have been on-going for years. That's years & years of prelims of A LOT of highly paid people & lawyers. If we really want to see value for money on next gen nuclear plants we should be building 3 or 4 over the next few years, not just 1.

Something i was told by a person in the industry with an IQ up in the stratosphere, is that we really should be building 2 nuclear power stations with them planned to come on line at similar times. The reason being is that HPC will put a huge amount of electricity into the grid and there will be, at some point in time through regular maintenance/unforeseen outages, a time when HPC will be putting enough power into the grid that should (as they say in the industry) 'lose grid' (which will happen, like if a pylon gets hit by lightning) the entire grid could collapse as there isn't anything else that could be ramped up quick enough, especially if the wind isn't blowing on an overcast day.
Should that happen, it'll take 1 week to get back up and running.

Now imagine the anarchy should the country be without power for a week. So while it's great we're finally building a nuke, we really need another one to build in some much needed redundancy/backup which will also give us all better value for money on the build costs.

[wombleh]

There are a few planned, I believe at present EDF doing another at Sizewell, Horizon are building at Oldbury and Wylfa and someone else (Nugen?) is building at Sellafield. I suspect all of those will be 2 x PWR reactors.

I'm not convinced they will go ahead if we start fracking as the finances may be difficult to justify.

[eldar]

wombleh said:

There are a few planned, I believe at present EDF doing another at Sizewell, Horizon are building at Oldbury and Wylfa and someone else (Nugen?) is building at Sellafield. I suspect all of those will be 2 x PWR reactors.

I'm not convinced they will go ahead if we start fracking as the finances may be difficult to justify.

The Toshiba/GDF SUEZ Nugen new Moorside site will be 3 x AP1000 reactors with about 3.4GW total output, assuming they decide to build, which will be 2018.

They also need to but in some big wires to connect it (and all the windfarms) to the grid. Still arguing about the route for those.

Power should start to come from the 1st reactor 2024, 2nd 2026, 3rd 2028.

[V8 Fettler]

Sizewell C twin reactor costed at approx £3.5 billion in 1992

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/sizewell-is-t...

The construction of Sizewell B was in the final phase in 1992, the logical process was to maintain the same design and project management team for Sizewell C.

[MrCarPark]

The price has doubled again in a fortnight!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/en...

Starting to look a bit fishy...

[IainT]

MrCarPark said:

The price has doubled again in a fortnight!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/en...

Starting to look a bit fishy...

...and reading beyond the headline sheds some light on that claim.

Still looks b*d expensive though, how much coal could we burn for that much money?

[Professor Barney]

Could some of the cost increases be down to making parts of the operation resistant to fast moving airborne objects carrying large quantities of kerosene?

And extra-strong gates? SAM launch sites? Radar? Extra sea defences against tidal surges?

Andy B