EDF Energy to launch major PR campaign to sell nuclear energy to the British public

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/8514233/EDF-Energy-poised-to-begin-nuclear-push.html

EDF Energy poised to begin nuclear 'push'
EDF Energy, the nuclear giant, is to launch a major campaign to sell nuclear energy to the British public in the wake of the Fukushima incident in Japan.

By James Quinn, and Rowena Mason 9:10PM BST 14 May 2011

The French-owned company, which bought British Energy in 2009 and is the UK's largest nuclear generator, will begin a large-scale push in the second half of the year to highlight the benefits of the power source and the growing need for it.

The charge will be led by Vincent de Rivaz, chief executive, who is leading the company's focus on nuclear, not least its commitment to invest in up to four new nuclear plants, with the first operational by 2018. However, The Sunday Telegraph understands that Mr de Rivaz is on the verge of admitting publicly that the 2018 date has slipped, possibly by a year or more, due to delays in legislation, partly caused by the Fukushima explosion.

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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x77100

http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectionCode=132&storyCode=2040766

No new nukes for UK
07 December 2006

Clare Spottiswoode, deputy chairman of British Energy, has said that no new nuclear generation capacity can be expected in the UK or much of the the rest of Europe before 2020.

The comments came at a Platts energy security forum in New York where Spottiswoode was quoted as saying that, apart from France and Finland, it is "highly unlikely" that any plants will be built in the rest of Europe before 2020.

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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x109378

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20070820/tuk-uk-britain-nuclear-report-fa6b408_1.html

No new nuclear plants likely before 2020

Reuters - Monday, August 20 06:26 pm
By Daniel Fineren Reuters - Monday, August 20 06:26 pm

LONDON (Reuters) - No nuclear power plants are likely to be built in Britain before 2020, if they are built at all, which will be too late to fill the country's looming power generation gap, according to a report published on Monday.

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"Despite the rhetoric, it is difficult to see much new nuclear capacity coming into the market before 2020," Poyry director Andrew Nind said.

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Government support still necessary

It is clear from the graph above that were power plants of today’s specifications operating during the past decade, they would have only generated a competitive return to equity investors for a period of only 20 months in the last 115.
In recent months, several industry players, including Vincent de Rivaz (EDF Energy CEO), have commented on the need for the UK government to provide some formal support to the projects to build new nuclear power stations in the UK given the low power prices and weak economics of the projects at current price levels.
We believe that if governments want new nuclear to be part of their energy policy, they will need to provide some support as either these plants will not be built or once they are, won’t be economically viable. Such steps could include a regulated CO2 price or a fixed-price off-take contract for the output of the plants or guarantees/subsidies on the financing side.

...under very conservative assumptions on renewables, we can reliably expect an extra 330TWh of electricity to be generated by 2020, leaving a shortfall of 16TWh to be made up by either energy efficiency or new nuclear.

There are currently 10GW of nuclear capacity under construction/development, including the UK proposed plants that should be on operation by 2020. If we assume that energy efficiency will not contribute, that would imply a load factor for the plants of 18%. Looking at the entire available nuclear fleet that would imply a load factor of just 76%. We do believe though that steps towards energy efficiency will also be taken, thus the impact on load factors could be larger.

Under a scenario of the renewables target being fully delivered then the load factor for nuclear would fall to 56%.