10 March

This is the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station, under construction in the UK. (Actually a model, it’s years away from being finished.) Keep this one in mind as the debates around nuclear power heat up here. When finished it will only produce about as much electricty as two coal-fired power stations in Australia. It will take about 20 years to build the station. A solar farm of the same capacity would take less than a year to build. The final cost is estimated to be $90 billion. That’s about 10 times more expensive than a coal-fired power station. And 30,000 times more expensive than building a solar farm with the same capacity.