Nuclear thought experiment

UPDATE: Neil Craig in the comments points out that somebody did this thought experiment years ago and came to the same conclusion. The Russkies are already building floating nukes. Cost £160 million for 70 MW electricity, amortise over 40 years = £9/MWHr.
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From FT Blogs:

As the smoke of briefings from the government PR machine clears, the shape of the deal to secure the development of the new nuclear station at Hinkley Point in Somerset is becoming clearer. As mere consumers we are not allowed to know the full facts – that privilege is given, it seems, only to the companies involved and the French and Chinese governments. But we can piece the story together.

The deal sets a price of £90-92 per MWhr – twice the current wholesale price for 35 years – regardless of any technical advances which might offer lower prices from other sources.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that nuclear power is the cheapest form of reliable electricity generation, but as we know, a large part of that £90-£92/MW cost is ransom payments to land owners, be they to the lucky owners of a site which happens to have permission to build a new nuke or bribes to the local NIMBYs and feudalists - often masquerading as greenies.

So for comparison, how much does nuclear power cost if you don't have to pay anything for the land? What if they build nuclear generators on floating platforms a bit like with offshore windmills connected to the mainline with big fat cables, how much do they cost..?

From Wiki:

Marine-type reactors differ from land-based commercial electric power reactors in several respects.

While land-based reactors in nuclear power plants produce thousands of megawatts of power, a typical marine propulsion reactor produces no more than a few hundred megawatts.

And from the BBC:

The BBC has been given exclusive behind-the-scenes access as the Royal Navy built its latest nuclear-powered Astute submarines. The submarines, which cost more than £1bn, take years to design and build, with the first of class taking 14 years to complete.

OK, we could halve that £1 billion per sub cost if the reactor were just on a waterproof platform, it doesn't need the full functionality of a nuclear submarine or the extra cost of the weapons system etc, so that's maybe £500 million for "a few hundred megawatts" capacity.

i) "A few hundred megawatts" x 18 hours per day x 365 days a year = 2 million MWHr.

ii) The annualised cost of that is £20 million (£500 million over 25 years useful life).

iii) £20 million divided by 2 million MWhr = £10/MWHr.

iv) That's a ninety per cent cost reduction right there.

v) We can afford expensive undersea cables for windmills and for the various cables under the North Sea, so let's ignore that bit.

vi) Another bit of good news is that if the shit hits the fan and the thing goes critical, we just unplug it, tow it as far as away as we can get and sink it beneath the ocean before it blows up, that'd be a fraction as bad as the nuclear bomb tests we were doing in the Pacific until the 1990s.

Sorted.

"Heizen oder essen?"

From Bild Zeitung:

War widow Brigitte Haselbach is one of millions of elderly Germans who will have to choose between heating and eating this winter as greedy energy companies hike their prices.

Brigitte, 83, was 15 when World War II ended. She later married Gerhard, who had defended his country against the Russian Communists during World War II and went on to defend East Germany against American imperialists as an officer in the NVA.

The native Berliner has seen her gas and electricity prices soar by €350 - nearly a quarter - over the last year.

"Helen Fielding modelled grumpy shop keeper on real-life grumpy shop keeper"

From The Daily Mail:

Bridget Jones fans indifferent to learn that Mark Darcy is dead have a new anti-hero in the latest instalment: taciturn corner shop owner Mr Patel.

And, even better for those who prefer their supporting characters to be two-dimensional, Mr Patel, from whom Bridget Jones buys a pint of milk and a packet of Marlboro Lights in the third Bridget Jones' Diary, is based on a real-life shop keeper who runs Fags'N'Mags on the high street near her London home.

In a move destined to embarrass Mr Patel's family but give the small, local retailer worldwide kudos, the bit part player in Mad About The Boy shares the same name as his real-life counterpart.

Both the real and the fictional shop keepers are married with several adult children and both, says the author, are of Indian appearance.

Reader's Letter Of The Day

From the FT:

Sir, Martin Wolf strikes the right note of resignation in " Buyers beware of Britain's absurd property trap" (Comment, October 11). With all three political parties dedicated to the homeownerist (1) policy of maintaining property prices at all costs for fear of losing elections, the situation looks terminal.

However, there is some faint hope for the site value, aka land value, taxation he mentions favourably – if it is in the "from here on" form of LVT which he proposed himself in "Why we must halt the land cycle" (Comment, July 9, 2010).

A "from here on" land tax sets a datum line and taxes any land price inflation from thence on, leaving the property owner in possession of the existing value and the banks with their collateral for mortgages.

Any demand stimulus from thence on would go into the general consumption of goods and services rather than being top-sliced by a household's rent and mortgage obligations as land, then house prices, stabilise. Homeowners won't lose anything except the "something for nothing" of house price inflation.

Politicians have to take one of the fabled tough decisions, if necessary by forming an all-party pact to defeat the menace of deliberate house price inflation.

Alternatively, there are well-placed land taxers of cabinet rank in two of the main parties who should be combining (possibly through an all-party parliamentary group) for a coalition.

DBC Reed, Northampton, UK.

1) Extra bonus points for using the H-word.

Fun Online Polls: Ralph Miliband & Harry Potter films

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Did Ralph Miliband 'hate Britain'?
Yes - 33%
Oh come off it, he was just gorging at the taxpayer funded trough just like the rest of them - 25%
I'd never heard of him before David Miliband became Foreign Secretary - 18%
Depends what you mean by 'Britain' - 15%
No - 9%

So now we know. Or we know what people think, at least.
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Prompted by The Stigler's post yesterday: which is your favourite Harry Potter film?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Harry Potter Marathon

Over the last couple of weekends, I've watched all 8 Harry Potter films.

And there's a lot to like in the films. I think there's a lot of imagination in the characters, how things look and the spells and artefacts. The first film is rather dull, but after that it gets better. And towards the end when we get into the moral choices of some characters, that's quite interesting.

But I do have a couple of problems (maybe spoilers ahead)...

The main problem I have with Harry Potter is that he's really Magic Superman. The parallel being that he got his talents at birth, and is a moral good guy from the start. And at almost every point, he can do the magic he needs, much like the way that Superman kept on pulling new powers out of his arse whenever a plot point needed it. He never feels the temptation to use magic to get hot muggle chicks, or to join Voldemort, despite all the power he could get from it.

The other problem I have is how magic is used and never used again with no explanation. Something that got used to fix something doesn't get used again, with no explanation as to why.

Anyway, they're quite entertaining, the blu-ray transfers are very good and for £25 for all 8 is a bit of a bargain.

Will Young and the Use of Language

From the Swindon Advertiser

Chart star Will Young has said more should be done to clamp down on homophobic language and the use of the word "gay" as an insult in schools.

The Leave Right Now singer said he had even taken up the issue with Education Secretary Michael Gove who he said had been "encouraging".

Thing is, other than the "happy and carefree" use of the word, the word "gay" has been, for decades, used as an insult or slang (and probably slang simply to cover up illegal acts). From Wikipedia

• Gay—Originally meant (13th century) "lighthearted", "joyous" or (14th century) "bright and showy", it also came to mean "happy"; it acquired connotations of immorality as early as 1637, either sexual e.g., gay woman "prostitute", gay man "womanizer", gay house "brothel", or otherwise, e.g., gay dog "over-indulgent man" and gay deceiver "deceitful and lecherous". In America by 1897 the expression gay cat referred to a hobo, especially a younger hobo in the company of an older one; by 1935, it was used in prison slang for a homosexual boy; and by 1951 and clipped to gay, referred to homosexuals.

So, from that, we can see that what was used as an insult was subsequently embraced by the gay community. Which is fair enough. It's a good way of disarming the insult. You call yourself a dyke, someone calling you a dyke loses it's power.

But if you're going to embrace a street slang insult, it seems a bit off to complain that people people are using it as a street slang insult.

The Heroic Property Developer & Land Value Tax

Originally posted in the comments here:
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OK, we are hot shot property developers and a vacant site comes up for auction at the edge of town where we can build a shopping centre or something.

The vendor is a pension fund. The pension fund manager doesn't have much of a clue about local land values so he just goes to a local estate agent who touts it round and offers a thirty year lease. The pension fund manager lets us know that he is best mates with people in the council, so we will get just about any planning permission we apply for and that the land is in a special Enterprise Zone so will be exempt from Business Rates for thirty years.

When the leasehold expires, the pension fund will buy the building for an agreed % of its original construction cost as agreed between the parties (like they do in Switzerland).

As a special favour, the estate agent puts us in touch with an investment fund manager who is prepared to lend us cheap money, a hundred per cent of the land price, 5% fixed for thirty years.

As aspiring capitalists, we do our sums (estimates of annual rents we can collect minus running costs and amortisation of bricks and mortar) and put in the winning bid of £10 million for the land (we have to pay our minimal search costs ourselves, as did all the other bidders - it is the searcher who pays for this, not the landowner, you do your searching before you buy the land) and we have to repay £650k a year for the amortising loan, at the end we get our construction costs back, ignore those.

So we all meet up to sign the paperwork, the Town Mayor turns up with a photographer from the local newspaper, the investment fund guy hands us a £10 million cheque (the loan) which we hand over to the pension fund guy (the purchase price), champagne corks are popped, secretaries' bottoms are patted and we all feel very pleased with ourselves..................

Alcohol flows and tongues are loosened and the pension fund and investment fund managers come over and tell us that we have been scammed.

They both work for the council, there was no pension and no investment fund. The land belonged to the local council in the first place and the money they "lent" us never existed, it was magicked into creation when we signed the purchase agreement - they return us the shredded cheque as proof.

What is "real" is the fact that we have to get on with building and maintaining the shopping centre and getting retailers and customers in (as planned) and that we have to pay £650k a year in quasi-LVT to the local council each year for the next thirty years.

- How is that any different to buying the land from a private purchaser and borrowing the money from a private bank?

- Why would it be any different if the land "belonged" to somebody not using it and the council pays a developer to work out how much he would be prepared to pay and for what type of planning, and then grants planning for whatever use is best and slaps it with the corresponding LVT or Business Rates?

- Why is it in any different if the owner of a nearby existing shopping centre already has an annual BR bill of £650k?

In all cases, the same value is released or created, the same activities take place, builders get work, retailers get premises, local people get job and shopping opportunities.

So where is the difference?

"Cyclops Phailin: Mass evacuations in eastern India"

From the BBC:

More than 400,000 people in India have been evacuated as a massive cyclops sweeps through the Bay of Bengal towards the east coast.

Cyclops Phailin, categorised as "big and one-eyed" by monster forecasters, is expected to hit Orissa and Andhra Pradesh states on Saturday evening. The Monsterological Department has predicted the giant will bring winds up to 220 km/h (136mph).

A deadly super-cyclops in 1999 killed more than 10,000 people in Orissa. But officials say this time they are better prepared, the BBC's Sanjoy Majumder in Delhi reports.

However, the US Navy's Joint Titan Warning Center in Hawaii is forecasting even stronger and faster mythical beings, predicting sustained speeds of up to 269 km/h (167 mph).

"That thing is scary", says man paid to make us scared about that thing.

From the BBC:

"Dark scary" things used by frightening people will continue to evolve in an attempt to evade the people who can never quite manage to prove their existence, let along track them down, the UK's thought crime boss has claimed.

Last week, a notorious market place for very worrying things, the Silk Road, which most people had never heard of before, was shut down after a months and years had been wasted on investigation.

Andy Archibald, interim head of the National Troubling Things Unit (NTTU), said his officers were busy inventing new bogeymen who would be used to sustain a climate of fear. But he said new methods were needed to keep up the illusion that the general public is constantly at risk.

"A service used by office workers to circumvent their employers' firewalls evolves and will resecure itself, probably becoming self-aware and launching a pre-emptive nuclear attack on humanity in the next few years,," Mr Archibald told the BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones.

"The success we've had in making people feel slightly uneasy all the time may not necessarily mean that by the same routes and same approaches we can sustain the myth that we live in a world full of hidden dangers.

"We have to continually probe and identify people's phobias and then to reinforce them using other tools.

"It's not simply a case of because we were able to successfully launch a myth into the public consciousness on this occasion that we'll be able to do it next time around as well.

"But simply sticking the word "dark" or "shadow" in front of otherwise entirely neutral things seems to help.

"We based that one on Gordon Brown's idea that there is a vast but invisible 'shadow banking system' as well as an actual banking system which is already sinister enough."