Mrs May has lifted the pause on the construction of the new nuclear power station of untried design. Some marginal legal ownership conditions have been added to the agreement, but, as the Guardian reports:
The government is keeping a guaranteed price of £92.50 to EDF for every megawatt hour of electricity generated, despite concerns that is far higher than the market rate.
This was justified by some wonk on the radio this morning on the basis that the spot price of electricity hit £200 per MWh in Tuesday's heatwave in England (the wholesale price is currently around £30 per MWh). But surely the point of new nuclear capacity is that it provides basic routine power? Moreover, I fear that there will either be an inflation cause regarding the guaranteed price or that it will be expressed in non-sterling terms, so that we will not even be able to take advantage of the decline in sterling's value as exit from the EU approaches.
I also wonder how the decision to go ahead with a Trident replacement, whose only logical targets can be China and North Korea in support of the USA, influenced the negotiations with the Chinese.
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