The well known Japanese corporation Hitachi just made an announcement that six new nuclear power plants will be developed in the United Kingdom after the recent acquisition of the Horizon Nuclear Power venture, former property of RWE and E.ON, the deal worth £697 million.
With this new nuclear capacity project, enough electricity will be generated to provide around 14 million private residences for the next 6 decades. The Japanese from the Hitachi corporation will continue the former plan of Horizon Nuclear Power, to invest in the construction of nuclear power plants in Wylfa on Angelsey, Wales and Oldbury, Gloucestershire in the near future.
Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron was very pleased by Hitachi's project, and mostly by the economic impact of such nuclear investments, he stated:
“This is a decades-long, multi-billion pound vote of confidence in the UK that will contribute vital new infrastructure to power our economy. It will support up to 12,000 jobs during construction and thousands more permanent highly skilled roles once the new power plants are operational, as well as stimulating exciting new industrial investments in the UK’s nuclear supply chain. I warmly welcome Hitachi as a major new player in the UK energy sector.”
This grandiose project will provide about 1 000 permanent jobs in the nuclear facilities from now on, also Hitachi promised to source 60% of the required equipment for building the nuclear plants from within United Kingdom, British manufacturers like Rolls Royce and Babcock International have just signed a MOU (memorandum of understanding) with Hitachi.
The UK's Energy Secretary, Mr. Ed Davey, told John Humphrys on BBC Radio 4’s Today show, that Electricity Market Reform helped in cementing this deal by providing Hitachi and other investors with long term investment clarity. He stated that :
“International investors looking at our energy policy have a huge amount of confidence in it.”
He was cornered by Humprys about the real cost of these projects, both in terms of money and environmental issues, Mr. Davey replied:
“What would really be expensive for the UK consumer is if we were over-reliant on gas. What’s been pushing up people’s energy bills in recent years has been the increasing price of global gas. We’re having to import far more now as the gas in the North Sea declines in volume and that’s very expensive.”
These comments seem to be rather unorthodox, they actually go against the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s (DECC) view, that gas related energy production will :
"play an important role in the energy mix well into and beyond 2030...[not] restricted to providing back up to renewables”.
It is mainstream news already that George Osborne convinced the energy department into publicly declare its support for the gas/shale gas industry, actualy pitting the Liberal Democrat-led Department of Energy and Climate Change against the Conservative-led Treasury.
According to Hitachi, their first nuclear power plant in UK will be operational in 8 years, in 2020 to be more precise, when the UK Horizon will begin to feed electricity into the national power grid.
Renewable UK made a research which indicates that renewable energy will take over nuclear power until 2018, if the current rate of growth is maintained, one in 10 households in UK will draw energy from renewable sources in the next 6 years. Well, that's the theory, let's see what the future brings.
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