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China To UK: 'Golden' Ties At Crucial Juncture Over Nuclear Delay (reuters.com)
mdsolar quotes a report from Reuters: China has cautioned Britain against closing the door to Chinese money and said relations were at a crucial juncture after Prime Minister Theresa May delayed signing off on a $24 billion nuclear power project. In China's sternest warning to date over May's surprise decision to review the building of Britain's first nuclear plant in decades, Beijing's ambassador to London said that Britain could face power shortages unless May approved the Franco-Chinese deal. "The China-UK relationship is at a crucial historical juncture. Mutual trust should be treasured even more," Liu Xiaoming wrote in the Financial Times. "I hope the UK will keep its door open to China and that the British government will continue to support Hinkley Point -- and come to a decision as soon as possible so that the project can proceed smoothly." The comments signal deep frustration in Beijing at May's move to delay, her most striking corporate intervention since winning power in the political turmoil which followed Britain's June 23 referendum to leave the European Union.
Greetings, Starfighter .
You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada.
Given that the wholesale price being guaranteed by the government for each kWh was massively higher than even the price consumers are expected to be paying when it was due to open I see no reason to go ahead with it. Energy prices should be dropping not climbing as we have better renewables being developed.
If you're unaware, China has made an artificial island in the South China sea, near the Philippines. It's claiming a lot of sea off Vietnam, Malasia and Phillipines waters as its own territory. It's even build an airbase on the new island and placed ground-to-air missiles on it.
It's military has targetted US spy planes flying over the islands, despite those planes having permission from the Philippines to fly over its sea.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/30/world/asia/what-china-has-been-building-in-the-south-china-sea.html?_r=0
UN has already adjudicated on this, and ruled the island as fake and the Chinese claim as false.
Do you really want their nuclear power plant in a western country? They seem to want to stir up a war.
The various unions at EDF have been less than happy with the terms of the deal for ages and have seized on this as grounds for EDF to invalidate their current agreement and re-negotiate their end of the deal on more favourable terms. Unions being what they are in matters like this, they'll probably be quite happy to sour the entire deal in the hope of getting a better deal for their members, and if a major deal between the UK and EDF goes south then that's almost certainly going to have a knock-on effect on the relationship with the French government. Yep, the same French government that is going to be taking a lead role in the Article 50 negotiations governing Brexit, already seems to be taking a hardline stance on the potential terms and, like all other members of the EU, has the ability to veto any deal that might be negotiated over Brexit. That all bodes well for a better Brexit deal with lower trade tariffs than the WTO default, doesn't it?
Meanwhile, having annoyed the Chinese, Theresa May is now apparently trying to improve relations with Russia which, while it definitely needs to happen in its own right, doesn't exactly scan well in connection with alienating the Chinese the week prior.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Given that the British economy is mostly based on people sitting in office chairs surrounded by imported Chinese goods and that the British are already completely dependent on China for the most basic of everyday products it is in the interest of the Chinese to further nurture this culture of dependency on China. The British are deluded to think that the Chinese will continue to shower them in iPhones and PC's while they pump out nothing but intangible financial services. The Chinese are already realising they don't need the Western business suit middleman, having already made their way into the smartphone industry with completely domestic models and taken over the drone industry almost completely. Soon the Brits will have to start selling out to the Chinese bigtime if they want to continue their office chair based lifestyle for longer. I'd be very worried about the Chinese attempts to strong arm their way in and would be trying to keep them at bay and reduce dependency on imports from that country
The Chinese will be investing money AND reactor parts. I'm all for giving them the middle finger and telling them to piss off.
Liu: Well suppose some of your power plants was to get broken and power lines start getting cut, er, power outages could occur during general inspection, like.
Xi: It wouldn't be good for business would it, Ma'am?
May: Are you threatening me?
Xi: Oh, no, no, no.
Liu: Whatever made you think that, Ma'am?
Xi: The Prime Minister doesn't think we're nice people, Liu.
Liu: We're your buddies, Ma'am.
Xi: We want to look after you.
May: Look after me?
https://youtu.be/pm5mtpPtW1Q?t...
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
Hinkley was not only criminally expensive, it was a nuclear disaster waiting to happen.
UK steel workers (or their Indian owners) how beneficial and fair trade with China is.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Was a propaganda piece.
Remember, culturally, China takes the long view, and that includes fucking you over until you are their vassal.
Who would let the chinese build a nuclear powerplant in their country? Wow. Just wow.
The Chinese government's reaction to the delay could be construed as rather hypocritical, in view of its present action in claiming territorial rights over almost the whole of the South China Sea - in flagrant disregard of international law.
The British government is, in my opinion, quite right to pause and consider the full ramifications of the Hinkley Point project, including the reliance on Chinese investment on such a massive scale. Britain must not make itself a hostage to fortune.
The nuclear business in China is state owned and supported by goverment sponsered industrial espionage. It is unsurprising that it would get diplomatic assistance as well. The forcefulness of that aid may only confirm the UKs concern over their involvement.
When shrub made a mess of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty by trying to sell uranium to India, he opened a Pandora's box of which this mess is perhaps the smallest misfortune. The man had no foresight whatsoever.
You forgot that it's actually about ethics in Slashdot journalism
...to see that a nuclear plant built in your country by a state which has shown: ...might be a colossally bad idea, strategically.
- complete disregard for international norms,
- a callous disregard for its own citizens lives (to say nothing of others)
- a cheerful disregard of international commitments
- policy goals inimical to the general goals of Western powers
-Styopa
"But Nick Timothy, May's influential joint chief of staff, also said last year that security experts were worried the state-owned Chinese group would have access to computer systems that could allow it to shut down Britain's energy production.
"Rational concerns about national security are being swept to one side because of the desperate desire for Chinese trade and investment," Timothy wrote in October 2015 in a column for a conservative news and comment website. " http://www.reuters.com/article...
Sorry China not everyone's your bitch....
You can obviate China's "one-child-policy" by paying a fee|tax for the second+ child. I'm also fairly sure the fee is less than the hospital fees for a single child in an American hospital.
"Kowtow, bitches!" Karmic payback for the Opium Wars. But if the money is right, the money-grubbing Tories will rollover and take a big old puff off their masters' pipe.
This deal has long attracted criticism from the usual suspects, how ever the Chinese reaction to this delay, speaks volumes.
20 billion dollars would buy, today, a LOT of solar panel capacity - no point in even building nuclear installations - especially one constructed and controlled by a enemy state intent on dominating everyone around it.
I really wonder if May is trying to sabotage the whole thing. She put the worst of the Brexiters in charge of our negotiations and forging new deals with the rest of the world, making what was always going to be a difficult task doomed to utter failure.
The worst of the Brexiters were the UKIP folks, and they've jumped shit (like rats, to use Christoph Waltz's phrase) a few days afterwards.
Hopefully history will put the blame on them in time, but I think the folks that were brave (foolish?) enough to stick around will get flamed by the general public.
Dear China,
The Customer is Always Right. Even when they are annoying, contrary, indecisive, ask for too much, pay too little, keep odd hours, or wear weird shoes.
Remember, The Customer is Always Right.
http://www.economist.com/news/...
That's those well-known green activists at the Economist.
As there are no working EPRs out there, I don't want to pay EDF's dev costs. I like to technology like work first before I buy it. Kind of like a car :) Give the wheels a good kicking.
Given the uptick on global warming and the fact we're running out of time if we want to move to a zero-fossil fuels economy, I'd prefer a plutonium-recycling CANDU if at all. It works. It's there.
As the economist says, all available research and capital should be targeted at any non-fossil fuels. We should outlaw all fossil-fuel driven devices, as of yesterday.
"We must never stop at all until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of this earth." -- Ro
How much cheaper would it be to install the equal to Hinkley C via wind or even solar?
Given we're having to double the HVDC link to France AND installing a huge new backup capacity to handle an outage, AND we're producing a HVDC link to the Netherlands because of Hinkley C, how much is Hinkley C ACTUALLY costing us?
This is mostly correct, and in particular it corrects the GP on an important point. It makes no difference whatsoever, what currency an independent Scotland would adopt. Not in relation to the debt load they would have to take on.
The splitting of the debt is a political question. It would be up for negotiation how that debt would be split and yes, splitting it based on population is a reasonable outcome. It's not the only possible outcome however. The leaving entity frequently wants to get a smaller debt load and the left-behind entity frequently wants them to take a larger debt load. The reasons are not important at this juncture.
The Quebecois nationalists in Canada made a related mistake. Not a huge one, but a mistake nonetheless. They issued a policy statement that, should Canada block or interfere with their independence in any way, and by the sole judgement of the Quebecois, then they would unilaterally separate and take on the debt they decided upon. The reason this is a mistake is that it is provocative. Separation must be negotiated, full stop. Neither party gets to have unilateral terms. To do otherwise is an act of war and hugely dangerous. Sometimes war is necessary but not in these circumstances and it's foolish to flirt with it even tangentially.
So what mitigated the Quebecois mistake? They said they would take on debt, not walk away.
No, Scotland does not get to abrogate it's debt responsibilities by adopting the Euro. The presumption is that national debts are carried by the entire nation, and for the benefit of all it's citizens. They are incurred in the citizens' names for goodness sake! This is not changed one iota by the official references to the Crown, by the way.