The construction of Hinkley Point Nuclear power plant in Somerset is at present employing about 1800 workers. At its peak that figure is expected to rise to 5600. Great if you have a job there, no doubt those workers are enjoying a period of financial stability and who would deny them that?
But do we need to build such a dinosaur in this day and age. Do we really need to increase our electricity capacity? Well the answer to the last question is probably yes. As cars move away from being powered by oil derivatives the energy needed to move them will have to come from somewhere. Homes will be still need to be heated and as fossil fuels become prohibitive in price, one of the simplest green alternatives will be electricity. So yes in the long term our demand for electricity will increase. So there is no immediate alternative to Hinkley power station, or so the government would have us believe.
Hinckley will not produce power until 2025 but in the time it has taken successive governments to deliberate on this, technology has moved on. Renewable energy from wind farms and solar voltaic cells has reduced in cost by almost 50% and is expected to fall even further by 2025. Nuclear power may be low carbon but it is not clean. Even now there is the ongoing problem of decommissioning and disposal of the plants when they come to the end of their useful life.
But perhaps the biggest innovation to hit us in the last 10 years is the advent of high output LED lighting. I can remember the BBC television programme ‘Tomorrows World’ announcing in about 1970, the biggest breakthrough in electronics since the the advent of the transistor. This was the Light Emitting Diode. A device that could produce a glimmer of light with as little as 2 volts applied. But it was not until about 2005 that LEDs were developed to produce light outputs equivalent to existing incandescent or florescent lighting.
So what is the big deal? You ask.
LED lights take typically 10% of the power required for a conventional bulb. What’s more they are extremely resilient and last almost indefinitely.
Putting some financial context on this with Hinkley Point in mind, we find there is no economic justification to build a power station that our children will have the problem of disposing of.
The governments own figures (If you can believe them) suggest the cost of Hinkley to the consumer will be about 30 billion pounds, or £28 per household per year for the next 35 years (The duration of the guaranteed wholesale price)
I counted the individual bulbs in my three bedroom semi to be 48 (actually I was astounded)
If the average price of renewing them is £3.50 each, then the cost to me would be £168.00, or 6 years in Hinkley terms. If we multiply this up by 30,000,000 (the number of UK households) we get 180 million pounds. I.e. 0.6% of the cost of Hinkley.
Further more the lighting consumption in the UK as a whole is estimated to be 18% of the total power consumption. With LED lighting everywhere this would drop to 1.8% leaving over 16% of free capacity.
This is probably over optimistic but it can be seen that the total capacity of Hinkley can easily be offset by installing LED lighting giving time for true clean and renewable power technology to be increased to provide for future needs. Just handing out 50 LED bulbs to every household in the country would save the tax payer money for electricity charges and a huge amount by not building something we do not need.
So why?
Why do we need to build Hinkley point at all? Perhaps we should ask the myriad of politicians on both sides of the house who have direct financial interests in the big energy providers. Or even ask the fifty or so energy company workers who are at present seconded to government departments to give ‘expert advice’.
The commissioning of the Hinkley nuclear plant at enormous cost to the tax payer is the direct result of lobbying from the six major energy providers.
Lobbying in the Westminster government in both houses is so prevalent that it effects all decisions made by the so called law makers. Hinkley is just one example, but for a much more in-depth exposé of the corruption of our democratic processes I strongly recommend ‘The Prostitute State’ by Donnachadh McCarthy. ISBN 978-0-9930428-0-5.