There have been a few headlines (e.g. here) about bids to build new nukes being withdrawn, the whole story is nigh impenetrable, but what sticks out is this, taken from Horizon's own website:
OUR SITES: WYLFA
Wylfa, on the Isle of Anglesey, has a long established history of nuclear power generation and an experienced local skills base. Anglesey has big ambitions to realise its potential as a centre of low carbon generation for the future and recognises the key role that a new nuclear power station could play.
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As well as vital infrastructure, including a connection to the national electricity grid, Anglesey has a highly-skilled local nuclear workforce and excellent access to direct sea water cooling facilities.
In total, the proposed development site comprises: 232 hectares of land secured by RWE npower in late 2008, along with a 3600MW Grid Connection Agreement and further land secured by the joint venture, now Horizon Nuclear Power, from the NDA and energy company EDF via an auction process in April 2009.
The land which surrounds the existing Magnox nuclear power station at Wylfa was nominated into the Government's Strategic Siting assessment in March 2009. After being included in the Government's draft Nuclear National Policy Statement (NPS), the site was listed in the final NPS in June 2011 along with seven other sites deemed strategically suitable for nuclear development. The Nuclear NPS was approved by a vote in Parliament on 18th July 2011.
So basically, this consortium (RWE and E.On) has been given vague outline planning permission to build nukes on land it owns, it has not invested a penny in actual generation and owns no power stations, and can now sit back and wait for some other mug to come along and first pay £ billions to buy up the outline planning permission, i.e. the now-valuable land, and then to spend yet more billions on actually building the nukes.
And Another One Gone
5 hours ago
16 comments:
There's a "libertarian" novel called "Minerva" by Bob Murphy that makes this explicit. The titular corporation wants to lease sovereign land from a failing state in order to create a libertarian society there. How do they attract investors? "Buy loads of land, and when we succeed, the land will become a lot more valuable. Then you can sell it, making shedloads of money without lifting a finger!" Rent-seeking rules OK, apparently.
RA, yup, that's where all these Faux Lib fantasies break down (including sea steaders), they always start off by saying "First we buy some land..." when the far simpler and better version is "Armed with our Citizen's Dividend, we can club together and occupy x area/value of land on which we can do what we like, completely tax-free and within the protective shield of the existing nation-state..."
For sure, on social issues like drgus, smoking in pubs, fox hunting etc the Libertarians are bang on, but that's not a tax question is it, unless of course you point out to the tax collectors that the rental value of pubs where you're allowed to smoke is higher...
To be fair to RWE, thay have just built a power station, albeit a gas-fired one.
Do they actively offer the site or are they really just holding out for a clear go-ahead to build themselves?
RA, yup, that's where all these Faux Lib fantasies break down (including sea steaders), they always start off by saying "First we buy some land..." when the far simpler and better version is "Armed with our Citizen's Dividend, we can club together and occupy x area/value of land on which we can do what we like, completely tax-free and within the protective shield of the existing nation-state..."
To be fair, some of these Lib fantasies do include that the initiators invest in something that gives the land it's value, and lease it to maintain a revenue stream. This also reminds me of the private tram-building that went on late 1800s. I'm sure this happened everywhere. In a city up here, some big landowner built and operated tramway from the city centre up towards his land, made out by selling the plots, he donated the tram to the city and the tramway ofcourse ceased operating in a few years as it didn't pay it's way. So what the MTR in Hong Kong does, by maintaining a revenue-stream that subsidize their operations, is good from the perspective of the public, not so good if it were a one-off thing where the revenue-stream is liquidated.
B, true but irrelevant.
Kj, they are just holding out for the biggest subsidies, the highest rent for the land, what's the difference? None of this generates a single kWh of electricity or benefits the taxpayer.
Kj, yes, that sort of thing happens everywhere with public transport.
What these Faux Libs can never explain is, if a latecomer wants to join the party, does he also get his land for free and just pay rent into the pot for the common good, or does he have to pay the incumbents a massive entry fee, at which stage they are just an oppressive state like any other?
I feel a bit sorry for RWE-E.On here. They genuinely intended to build nukes when they pioneered the bid, then after the Japanese scaremongering lunacy (tsunami kills thousands, failure at a badly-designed 40-year old nuclear plant kills nobody; everyone flips out about the latter because I dunno, Godzilla or something?) Merkel bans future German nuclear plants outright and has a Stern Word with German energy companies about not building any overseas either.
JB, yes agreed with all that, right up to the last bit.
DId Merkel really ban them from building nukes overseas?
Thing is, I would quite like to see a string of nuclear plants built wherever the siting is suitable (near demand, near plenty of cooling water). Sadly I am in a minority. I think that a planning permission system in this case is probably inevitable.
BE
BE, while I am instinctively anti-nuke, you can't argue with economics.
And the sad facts are, even if we have the usual British over-run of 400% on top of Westinghouse's quoted price, new nukes would pay for themselves in about ten years, I did a blog post on it. So let's just copy France (and pretend we thought of it first).
But your point is not about whether nukes are good or bad but whether there should be a planning restriction on them. I am more relaxed about land development than most, but even I can see there might be a benefit from not just allowing people to build a nuke whether they fancy because of people's irrational fears of them. The people of Witney might find they can't sell their homes, or whatever.
BE, agreed, quite where to site them is a specialist topic, we did that one to death and there is no perfect answer.
So yes, some sort of restrictions are required, but what I don't like is that people can then cash in on the planning permission without spending a single penny on building them.
So when I'm in charge, either the planning will be conditional on the applicant stumping up £4 billion into an escrow account. Or we'll just have the government run things, which saves all this worry about rent seeking - if people are overcharged for leccy, well so what, the money goes back into the national pot.
Yes I agree with some of that, or have the permission expire quite soon. To be fair getting the permission is awfully complicated and expensive, you don't just send a form in. So why should the people who do the ground work (ho ho) not be able to pass on the finished product?
Of course it would be a lot easier if the authorities just said "OK, Somerset, Anglesey, Suffolk, Kent and Cumbria are go, build anything that meets the required safety standards". But for some reason we don't do that.
BE, I like your second plan best. As long as the people who get given planning are not allowed to cash in, so ideally, HM Govt would buy up a few suitable sites (or earmark some land which it already owns), set the required specifications, set the price of electricity and then invite tenders for the construction (like with e.g. rail franchising but done properly, ha).
"HM Govt"
"done properly"
Two mutually exclusive concepts.
B, fair point.
But as a generalisation, if HM Govt gets on with it and do it, it tends to be less bad than if they sub-contract it to their mates in the "private sector".
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