NEI Nuclear Notes

Honestly, we come not to ding wind power : One of the firms participating in the London Array project, under which the world's biggest offshore wind farm would be built in the outer Thames Estuary, has questioned the scheme's economic viability. The Financial Times reported at the weekend that Paul Golby, chief executive of E.ON UK - which owns 30 per cent of the Array venture - says that "the economics [of the Array] are looking pretty difficult". This is due to the extra expense of setting a wind farm off shore. Naturally, this caught our eye: The FT quotes energy major Centrica as estimating the cost of offshore capacity at £3m per megawatt, more than double what it costs to build nuclear stations. Once you’ve got a nuclear plant built, the running costs are relatively minimal. Nuclear energy can generate power nearly all the time while a wind farms tops out at about 30% of the time. (This fact musters this comment: “Thus, it costs more than...