Hinkley is stupidly expensive and I doubt the capacity factor will turn out any better than wind and batteries, but I still think we should build a few more nuclear power stations - the public will turn hard against renewables at the first sniff of power outages being caused because the wind wasn’t blowing, and we’re less likely to run into that with some nuclear baseload in the mix.
People don't talk about it much, but CfD has killed nuclear. It lays the long term costs and risks bare.
Hinckley is going to overrun it's already high cost, and France will be left picking up the tab for any cost overruns.
I wonder if their contract lets them just build the equivalent wind power to save money? Or just shut it down and walk away.
At some point the cost of subsidizing expensive energy for another country is going to become untenable.
Not sure the contract would allow for it though.
But everyone else has responded by accelerating the renewable plans that those same Putin and Fossil apologists kept blocking for whatever reason, so it might work out okay in the end.
Would have been nice just to have 4 decades of sensible climate action, cleaner air, healthier citizens, less terrorism, cheaper energy, warmer homes and no-one threatening to nuke Europe when they lose an Illegal war of conquest of part of it though.
money is not an issue when building energy such as nuclear. you'd need to price all the outcomes a nuclear reactor would bring to your economy and trust me no industry will want to rely on wind to meet their production goals.