Warning on winter power shortages:
Problems with five ageing nuclear power stations, including Hunterston B in Scotland, combined with a cold winter would put the country's energy supply "at risk". Six gigawatts of electricity could be lost to the National Grid - equivalent to the amount used by Greater London. The National Grid said the report by energy analysts Wood Mackenzie had "raised some issues" and would be examined, while the regulator Ofgem warned the industry against complacency. Yesterday's report, entitled A Nuclear Winter for the UK?, said three gigawatts provided by two power stations, Hinkley Point B and Hunterston B, would "probably" be unavailable this winter. In addition, supply from Dungeness B, totalling 1.1 gigawatts, was "probably unreliable" and it was "possible" that two further plants, Heysham 1 and Hartlepool, would not be operational, bringing the total loss of power to six gigawatts. If this was to happen, the analysts raised the prospect of shortages. "The short-term impact for the winter ahead includes: less-than-comfortable power-generation reserve margins, potential upwards pressure on power prices, especially during cold weather, and an increased call on gas-fired power plants and thus increased gas demand with consequent upwards pressure on gas prices, too," the report said. It added: "There could even be risks to security of supply for both gas and power, although this would require a fairly unlikely 'worst-case' combination of plant outages [on top of problems at the five nuclear plants] and extreme cold weather." Graham Tyler, a senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie, said: "The worst-case scenario is a worst-case scenario but it just shows the vulnerabilities. Our power-plant margins are getting tighter. The problem is the nuclear plants are getting old and they provide a lot of power. "It's the sheer size of nuclear stations that makes this an issue. The government, if it wants to be serious about carbon abatement, needs to draw some conclusions about [the energy supply] post-2010. Nuclear should be one of the options they are considering and we really need to be making decisions soon." He said a more likely scenario was that three gigawatts of nuclear-generated electricity would not be available, potentially delaying expected price cuts. Before last winter, Sir Digby Jones, the then director-general of the CBI, warned that a cold snap could see "businesses shut down , people lose their jobs" and called for action to "sort out our decrepit supply system". And the energy minister Malcolm Wickes also raised the prospect of power-supply problems for industry. British Energy, which produces a fifth of the UK's electricity, described the Wood Mackenzie report as "obviously speculation" and said it was "their own interpretation of the situation". "It is challenging for us to be running ageing plants, but we want to reassure the public and the communities around our stations that safety is the No1 priority. We'd never run the stations in an unsafe manner," a spokeswoman said. She added both the Heysham 1 and 2 plants were operating and there were no planned shutdowns for maintenance this winter. Hunterston B and Hinkley Point in Somerset have both been hit by serious cracks in boiler pipes, dealing a blow to First Minister Jack McConnell's plans to extend the lifespans of nuclear power stations rather than build new ones. A spokesman for the National Grid said if there was a danger to the security of the power supply, suppliers would reopen mothballed plants. "We're not panicking, but we're not being complacent - you never know what could happen. The report has raised some issues and we'll have a look at it," he said. The spokesman said there were other measures that could be taken if increasing supply did not deal with the problem, such as an "imperceptible" decrease in the brightness of motorway lighting before anything like a return to the three-day week of the 1970s became an issue. Ofgem issued a cautious statement: "Even though there have been more positive developments on the gas market, we are still warning the industry against complacency for this winter." But Duncan McLaren, of Friends of the Earth Scotland, claimed the report showed a fundamental flaw in using nuclear technology to make electricity. The Department of Trade and Industry said: "As far as electricity is concerned we have spare margin of capacity exactly because generators do become unavailable from time to time. This means there should be no threat to supply." 26.10.06