Wow – I wonder what HK Govt is intending for Tuen Mun and Tseung Kwan O??
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jul/17/hinkley-nuclear-power-community-benefits
Hinkley nuclear power station community ‘could receive £128m’
Government announces package of financial benefits for eight sites earmarked for new nuclear plants
- Will Nichols for BusinessGreen, part of the Guardian Environment Network
- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 17 July 2013 12.22 BST
- Jump to comments (54)
Communities surrounding Hinkley point in Somerset could be in line for £128m under planned government benefits. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images
UK communities could be paid millions of pounds to host nuclear power plants, the government announced on Wednesday.
Eight sites in England and Wales could be in line to receive benefits of up to £1,000 per megawatt hour of electricity produced for up to 40 years after the reactors come online.
The funds will be tailored to the areas and focus on ensuring a local economic legacy from the projects, the government said. Overall payments to an area such as that surrounding Hinkley Point in Somerset, earmarked for two reactors, could reach £128m.
The move follows similar schemes for communities hosting shale gas rigs or onshore wind farms, which were unveiled earlier this year. Under the proposed community benefit schemes wind farms will generate benefits of £5,000/MWh over 20 years, while shale gas operators will have to pay £100,000 for each well site, as well as 1% of production revenues.
Business and Energy Minister Michael Fallon said: “It is absolutely essential that we recognise the contributions of those communities that host major new energy projects. This package is in the interests of local people, who will manage it to ensure long-term meaningful benefit to the community. It’s proportionate to the scale and lifespan of new nuclear power stations and it builds on the major economic benefits they will bring in terms of jobs, investment and use of local services.”
The package builds on a business rates retention scheme introduced in April this year that allows local government to keep half of the business rates it collects from nuclear projects for up to a decade. By contrast, local authorities can retain all of the business rates from land based renewables that have come online after 1 April this year.
The government said any new nuclear plants will provide a significant boost to council funding through this scheme for the first 10 years of operation, after which they will receive additional funding from central government. However, this funding will end in 2060, so if a plant came on line in 2025, after 10 years of receiving business rates, councils would only receive 25 years of central government payments.
The government regards nuclear as an essential component of the UK’s future low-carbon energy mix and has identified Hinkley Point, Sizewell, Wylfa, Oldbury, Sellafield, Bradwell, Heysham, and Hartlepool as appropriate potential sites for new nuclear plants.
But the government has been struggling to agree a guaranteed price for electricity with developer EDF, which the French company deems essential before it will build the first new reactors at Hinkley Point.
Campaigners have argued that using such agreements vastly inflate the cost of nuclear power, while adding to the nuclear fleet will only create further problems around the disposal of nuclear waste, which already takes up over half of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) budget.