EU Facing New Energy Crisis Next Year
By Paul Homewood
High energy prices are here to stay:
Europeans will pay an additional 350 billion euros ($395 billion) in energy bills next year as global demand for fuel and power threatens to keep prices elevated, according to Greece’s energy minister.
Kostas Skrekas said a new mechanism to help shield the most vulnerable citizens and middle-sized businesses from price increases should be created at the European Union level. It came as officials from Hungary and Spain voiced concern about recent volatility in carbon-emission markets at a meeting of environment ministers in Brussels.
“In the face of this extraordinary situation, we cannot remain uninvolved,” Skrekas said. Greece had estimated earlier this year that Europeans would face an increase of 100 billion euros this winter alone.
Europe’s energy crunch is straining national budgets and has become one of the EU’s biggest political challenges, fuelling inflation just as governments contend with the spread of the omicron virus variant. Member states have come forward with a number of proposals, from a redesign of how the electricity market works to caps on the bloc’s carbon trading market.
Across the continent prices per megawatt hour (MWh) now exceed €300 (£256) in most countries. With the exception of Poland and Scandinavia all countries in Europe have broken the €300 MWh barrier with France and and Switzerland nearly at €400 (£341.60). Head of Analytics at research firm Enappsys Andre Bosschaart said he’d "never seen this kind of volatility and high prices" adding that predictions for tomorrow’s prices suggested France and Germany would break past €400 (£341.60) MWh. Head of Oil and Gas Research at Investec Nathan Piper described the prices as "phenomenally high", adding that gas prices were now 10 times higher than the US in Europe.
https://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/1538805/european-energy-crisis-prices-gas-nord-stream-two
$395 billion is an incredible amount, presumably on top of this year’s price rise. It equates to $890 per capita.
It is also clear that prices wont come down anytime soon, if ever. Indeed, this is exactly the scenario that the EU has been planning – to push up energy prices so much that renewables are competitive.
The only way to get prices back down is to increase production of oil, gas and coal. Under normal circumstances, rising market prices would incentivise this. However it is EU policy which is holding this back.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The UK has it within it’s power to solve all these prob lems plus give a blow below the belt to Russia and yet we do nothing. Gas and oil are globally traded commodities and could generate a great deal of cash for a country with a £2 trillion debt.
The government still is not honest about just how rich the Bowland shale really is and the current claims that only 10% of the gas is recoverable have already been disproved by Cuadrilla (that happened before our government allowed Cuadrilla became a Chines state owned company).
The government currently cl;aims that exploiting shale risks dangerous earthquakes but does not want to hear that never in the world has a fracking event caused an earthquake that causaed structural damage or injury. Why they take this attitude shows that blonde bimbos really are that dumb.
You assume BOJO is a patriot. He isn’t, nor is Carrie Antoinette.
There is also a large gas fracking reserve under Oxfordshire.
Why don’t they prove how safe it is for property values there, before they start on Lancashire?
What difference does it matter whether it is started in Lancashire, Oxfordshire or Sussex. Given the infrastructure was furthest advanced in Lancashire (and Yorkshire) it would make more sense to initially start there.
Or are you trying to make some form of political point?san
I have land in Oxfordshire. Please come drill and frack on it. Only problem is Govt wont allow us Oxfordians to get fracking like we want too!
No need. There’s a fracked lateral under Sandbanks in Dorset, the most expensive real estate in England, which produces Wych Farm oil.
The least disruptive technology to keep our society from huge damage is fracking the Bowland shale. Better to develop it now before our energy situation becomes critical than wait for the power cuts to begin. Time to face down the Nimbys Boris.
For the last couple of days we’ve been burning coal and at the same time exporting electricity to France. Our politicians and civil service created this Alice in Wonderland situation.
JF
The profit from exporting gas (assuming it all went to the state) would not move the dial on the debt. We are at 1.5 times GDP of debt. Exported gas value-add (ignoring how exports work in terms of sterling) is never going to be more than 1% of GDP, if that.
It would be a big help if we cut the import bill. Say 400TWh at £100/MWh.
Sorry, Dung, to bang on and on but most of what you say is inaccurate. The government didn’t ban fracking – Cuadrilla grossly exceeded the disturbance level they had agreed to and broke their agreement. OK, the government’s 0.5 mL was ridiculously low but Cuadrilla went to dangerously high 2.5 mL and sill the gas still didn’t flow. The Bowland shale is too impermeable to be viable. Its a common problem with shales. If there is a will to try a different shale it should be done properly with government’s full support to drill frack and test a well without all the drama of Preston. I’ll stake a tenner now, though, that the result will be the same.
2.5 is in no way dangerous, there have recently been quakes at 4.5 (not due to fracking) and they caused no damage, where do you get your fake info from??
Ray Sanders: yes I am. Why does Lancashire have to be the experiment and not Oxfordshire or Sussex? Could it be house prices?
Because Sussex isn’t atop a thick stratum of gas rich shale. It does however have some small accumulations of oil in sandstones which have been drilled and put into production so unobtrusively that you evidently haven’t heard about them. Oxfordshire is rather less prospective, but there has been plenty of drilling in Surrey. Here’s a map of wells drilled in England, courtesy of Dr James Verdon, now of Bristol University at his Frackland blog:
Have you ever been to Sandbanks? Some of the most expensive real estate in the UK and in very close proximity not only to Europe’s largest onshore oilfield west of Kazakhstan but also until recently near the site of a Steam Generating Heavy Water Nuclear Reactor (that most people have never even heard of).
Leave the silly political references out please. I am originally from Yorkshire the son of three generations of miners that moved down south to the Kent Coalfield. I personally would not (indeed did not) object to potential Coal Bed Methane exploration in close proximity to my home. My relatives still in Yorkshire actually petitioned in support of fracking.
Also Angela Merkel closing functioning nuclear plants, and the French committed to closing half of theirs. They are all living in a fantasy world.
The French have been building wind turbines all over the country for uite a while. They probably have about or just over 20GW by now. Theirs are about as effective as ours. They are getting 5.26GW to our 4.97GW. The plan is to replace those nuclears with clean renewable wind seems optimistic
The French politicos talk green but EdF is a long way into a massive €46 billion programme to refurb and upgrade all bar one of their nukes.
Actions speak louder…….
Look up “Grand Carenage” to read all about it (hope it’s spelt right!).
However, to add to the gloom, Belgium plans to close its nukes soon and Sweden looks likely to follow suit.
A govt not very far from the UK has recently written these brilliant words, I can’t imagine anything like it coming out of Westminster:
* The development of new conventional generation (including gas-fired and gasoil/distillate-fired generation) is a national priority and should be permitted and supported in order to ensure security of electricity supply and support the growth of renewable electricity generation
* It is appropriate that existing conventional electricity generation capacity should be retained until the new conventional electricity generation capacity is developed in order to ensure security of electricity supply
https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/a4757-policy-statement-on-security-of-electricity-supply/
We should write to our MPs and ask them to promote something similar.
Yes Absolutely !!
But Data is Essential . . .
# 1 Teach OHM’s Law to every politician At least 12 % of Electricity produced is lost as Heat from production to consumption, residentially.
# 2 Electric cars waste 16 % more charging the lithium Ion batteries – – 28 % combined !
https://www.academia.edu/62574334/Tesla_Versus_Toyota_Camry
# 3 All Electricity is Poison to Planet Earth . . .
https://www.academia.edu/52039545/All_Electricity_Poisons_Planet_Earth
# 4 Wind Turbines . . . are the ultimate in Embedded Costs and Environmental Destruction. Each weighs 1,688 tons (the equivalent of 23 houses) and contains 1,300 tons of concrete, 295 tons of steel (14.5 % Global CO2 is from concrete and steel), 48 tons of iron, 24 tons of fiberglass, and the hard to extract rare earths neodymium- Boron, praseodymium, and dysprosium. Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds and will last 15 to 20 years, at which time it must be replaced. We cannot recycle used blades.
# 5 Human contribution to atmospheric CO2 is 3 %, Nature is 97 % annually. The Paris Accord reduces Human CO2 by 20 % or 0.6 % . . . A 1% increase in natural CO2 of .97%, is 3 times more than a 10% increase in Man-Made inputs or .3%. That same 1% increase from Nature is 16 times more than the 20% reduction or 0.6% proposed by the Paris Accord.
https://www.academia.edu/49537285/Climate_Change_A_fresh_Perspective
# 5 The Modern Warming Period is the 9th time Planet Earth has warmed in the last 8,000 years. There have been 9 cooling periods in between. All except our current warming period have had CO2 at 280 PPM except now. Why did the other 16 periods NOT follow CO2 ?
https://www.academia.edu/49421861/CO2_Cradle_of_Life_on_Planet_Earth
Better to Teach than ‘brow beat’ . . . So much Propaganda comes from ‘The Big Green Propaganda Machine’ . . . Time to turn the tide with solid facts of our own !!
My thoughts . . .
Here is the text of an email sent to my MP a lame git by the name of Kwasi Kwarteng
I hope that you can now see clearly what a ghastly mess your government is making of the energy sector.
Wind power today and for most of the last 2 weeks a measly 1 GW out of a nameplate capacity of 24 GW. It is only expensive gas that keeps us warm and you have squandered every opportunity to explore for, and develop our indigenous resources.
The situation is catastrophically bad and set to get immensely worse.
Honestly Corbyn could not have done a worse job.
I enclose a little Christmas card. Pass it round your sorry party
Happy Christmas but don’t rely only vote next time round
Alastair
Fun & games on the natural gas front too.
Today’s FT:
“European natural gas prices rise further as freezing weather arrives”
https://www.ft.com/content/aa51e2fe-3da1-47cb-aa88-61f92e954e41
The Green Propaganda machines are claiming record gas prices, but omitting salient historical context.
They conveniently forget (or are oblivious to the fact) that when global Nat Gas prices were twice as high as today’s prices, Britain was insulated from them because we had our own North Sea & Morecambe Bay fields. We could be similarly insulated today if we exploited our own shale gas reserves.
” calls for additional gas deliveries from Russia went unanswered”. I wonder what would happen if Nordstream2 was available instead of being stalled by the EU.
And Putin pointed out back in 2011 the folly of shutting down coal and nuclear power stations in Germany. He asked what would heat their homes and suggested wood – from Siberia.
How were we insulated from market prices if they supplied at market prices?
If we produce our own gas, and the market price is above the cost of production, then there will be tax revenue on the profits which will mean lower taxes elsewhere in the economy. When the prices fall, so do the taxes on gas production, but the economy benefits from the lower prices. North Sea taxes have had some very high marginal rates at times – as much as 90%+.
The other way on was what happened to begin with when North Sea gas was first developed. British Gas was by law the monopsony buyer and offered only very low prices to third party producers. In fact, they sold gas to consumers for substantially more than they paid for it, and there was a gas levy paid out of their profits to the Treasury. That was how Labour set things up in the 1960s – bypassing the market entirely.
That graph is for us
You want this for uk
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/uk-natural-gas
Or for eu
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eu-natural-gas
Dramatic stuff!
And if you want the futures prices Joe, then this
https://www.theice.com/products/910/UK-Natural-Gas-Futures/data
The jan22 to mar22 spread currently 419 to 392
But it’s not just The EU. We (The UK) are about a week behind them.
Europeans will pay an additional 350 billion euros ($395 billion) in energy bills next year as global demand for fuel and power threatens to keep prices elevated, according to Greece’s energy minister.
Totally ignoring the costs to our Industry that permits our profligate life choices.
Kostas Skrekas said a new mechanism to help shield the most vulnerable citizens and middle-sized businesses from price increases should be created at the European Union level.
So, convince ‘The EU’ that their plan to rid themselves of said groups that these five year plans were specifically designed to rid us of … Then?
I’m sure ‘The EU’ and HMG don’t want you dead and no longer a burden to their ‘Utopia’.
In other words the Greeks want the Germans to subsidise Greek OAP energy costs.
Here in the US we have a coming Governor of Virginia who is trying to kill these insane alarmist energy policies. Worth watching.
See my https://www.cfact.org/2021/12/21/how-and-why-youngkin-should-quit-the-rggi/
Just what we need right now.
Meanwhile in the alternative universe that the Guardian lives in, apparently Nuclear power is a really bad thing!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/21/eu-in-row-over-inclusion-of-gas-and-nuclear-in-sustainability-guidance
Incidentally does anyone give a toss what a mentally ill Swedish teenager thinks?
All already massively out of date. Today NBP gas settled above 450p/therm, with TTF over €180/MWh. Target for NBP is now 600p/therm. February baseload electricity for France actually hit €1,000/MWh. These prices are simply unaffordable. There will be severe demand rationing. It risks bankrupting even the largest suppliers, and doing more to shut down economic activity than covid ever achieved. Enough I think to cause severe social unrest, and to topple governments. Still, better sooner than later, giving time for screeching U turns before too many assets are destroyed.
UK reliance on interconnectors is going to look utterly stupid as we enter a bidding war for supply to keep the lights on.
Which really does make me wonder, will Germany really close down Grohnde, Gundremmingen C and Brokdorf at the end of the year? Surely someone will wake up and realise the implications.
Not when you are in a coalition with Greens.
Ray – same question for coal in the UK. Will Ratcliffe, West Burton and the two remaining Drax coal units be closed?
The Clean Dark Spread has been two to three times the Clean Spark Spread for months now. This is the market’s (all-too-slow and belated) way of valuing coal fired generation in preference to gas.
A problem with keeping these ageing coal fired units open will be their position on a “glide path” towards closure. Very large plant upgrade costs will be needed to get them back into reasonable condition for a statutory inspection. It will be tens of £millions for each unit. These costs are avoidable, if the units close, so an investment case will be needed by their owners to keep them open. Plus, these stations will be suffering skills shortages as people walk away from (what is seen as) dead end jobs.
The only thing needed to achieve this is a complete change of mind from politicians (a face-losing U turn for some) and for environmentalists to take their medicine quietly.
Yes, that means subsidies, but its the way of the power generation sector. The market (investors) will not do it without some level of assurance on return.
So the sector needs a major injection of confidence so investors and skilled workers are satisfied there is a future in it.
But why stop at the ageing coal fired generating units. Once the case has been made for coal in the UK generating fleet, attention should (and will) turn to the possibility of a new fleet of 2GW coal fired generating stations.
This might sound ridiculous today. But I see it as inevitable. It’s only a matter of time, experience (what the alternative feels like) and education (informed view of costs versus benefits).
Nicola Sturgeon appeared on TV blowing up a Power Station, in a few years time this will be thought of as extraordinary but such is the delusional consensus atthis point in time, that our elected leaders are competing to put us in the dark.
All the power stations are gone.
Omicron reigns supreme and the village idiot has not got any idea what to do!
How little things have changed since 2016 — UK was in the destructive EU club and electricity was forecast to cause problems for manufacturers, especially the steel and metal working industries.
Comparison Of Industrial Electricity Prices In The EU (https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/04/06/comparison-of-industrial-electricity-prices-in-the-eu/). Note most links are broken, however the link to _https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/international-industrial-energy-prices is still there and has much of interest.
http://energodock.com/united-kingdom/actual-load shows what ‘net-zero’ truly means. Try flipping the chart to ‘Total Generation’.
The WHO warn the EU and UK face a collapse of their health care systems due to Omicron.
In response to this Boris has counterintuitively cut the isolation time for those infected from 10 days to 7, on condition you get 2 negative lateral flow tests. We are recommended to do lateral flow tests before doing anything.
Result is you cannot get any lateral flow test kits anywhere. The, test and trace system
Quite how is a mild virus and the vast majority of the vulnerable being vaccinated going to “collapse” our health system?
At worst we may have a few days when we are short of a few ICU beds. Everything else will still be working.
The NHS is never going to “collapse” (a stupid word) nor be “overwhelmed” (another stupid word). It may have short periods where demand is higher than capacity. But with Omicron that requires it to be more virulent than Delta AND to have a high level of vaccine evasion. Neither look likely.
The pandemic ends with cases rising exponentially, somehow this doesn’t seem quite right.
If you think cases are rising exponentially you don’t know what exponential is nor how viruses work. I can assure you infections are not rising exponentially. Virtually all csuch claims are based on large underestimates of starting infections. I saw one yesterday that had “one” as its start point. There is literally no way that’s correct. We didn’t look for Omicron so amazingly we didn’t find it.
Not to mention the vast majority of people even before the coercing of vaccinations and the invention of “variants” don’t get infected anyway. And even of the few who do get infected, the vast majority recover. But the politicians conveniently “forget” to mention these things.
Omicron is a non-issue. Get it, get a box of tissues, get some cold tablets, get over it, get on with life. Worked for me and my family. We all thought it was just a common cold until silly son took a test. Rest of us just kept calm and carried on working.
Yesterday It was reported 14 people were in Hospital in England with Omicron – probably more in hospital with sprained ankles.
There are probably over 500,000 with a Cold virus at the moment – how many in Hospital – how many lockdowns needed to eliminate the common cold?
If we stop the world everytime someone gets a runny nose i guess civilisation is over.
Somebody is making a lot of money out of “tests”. And those costs don’t get refunded despite extortionate social security contributions.
This is my letter to Trudy Harrison my local MP pointing out the problems I see with our governments Green Energy policy. Which is already having a huge negative impact on the whole of the UK
Hello and good morning
I hope you don’t mind but I am forwarding this blog for you to consider.
Obviously the author is a climate sceptic but many of his posts are really pertinent
in these times when our economy is so struggling.
He is not alone in thinking that the BBC and much of our press are not politically correct
and seeks to pursue interests that are not even handed and stifle debate on anything not on their agenda.
If nothing else it gives a perspective of how many people here think that pursuing this
current green agenda is crazy when as a nation we contribute so little to the current fixation
on global warning. And to the extent that the competitiveness of UK Ltd is being eroded by
the extra costs being heaped on UK businesses by these policies.
For example subsidising the burning of wood as a fuel is the most nonsensical thing I have heard of, if trees are the lungs of the planet why on earth would you want to raze them to the ground many forest have taken decades even centuries to grow yet they are being chopped down in vast quantities that are impossible to replace adequately in any given timescale.
Not to mention the on cost to the cardboard and paper industry to house building and all things that require a plentiful source of wood.
Thankfully I am of an age where the long term future is of little concern but I worry for my
children, grandchildren and future generations as to how they will manage when our leaders
seem bent on destroying a well managed and working society to the god of zero emissions.
When the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine how will we heat our homes, run our
businesses because you can’t store enough electricity to power all but a few hours at most
without nuclear or fossil fuel back up.
In our own business we recycle everything we can, we store and use rainwater on our nurseries, re-use pots, seed trays, pallets and packaging, prunings, weeds and other plant debris is composted and comes back into the potting compost.
Isn’t she the one who wants you to give up your car?
Slightly off topic, Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers Union, commenting on Lord Frost’s departure cites his concerns over “colossal costs of net zero”.
It’s strange she quotes such concern when the NFU’s own website boasts about being the world’s first farming union to aim for net zero. That must make the NFU the only union working to reduce its own members’ incomes when we consider the fertilising benefit of higher CO2 levels.
Like our own Business Secretary, they keep saying “volatility” but it’s not that volatile and that’s not the problem. It’s simply a very high price. And it’s staying high, which means low volatility. Once again we have the marvels of government in action:
1. Have a policy you claim has to be done to solve a supposed problem.
2. Ignore all the advice that the “solution” will be worse than the problem.
3. When confronted with the consequences, blame everything but your policy.
4. Put in place a new policy to solve the problem created by your old policy.
5. Repeat ad infinitum.
“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” – Ronaldus Magnus
Exactly. I’m pretty sure I could show that virtually all our problems are caused by government! The vast loss of wealth and opportunity we have all suffered is quite depressing.
If transport fuel is included as “energy”, the cause is the extortionate amount of TAX. Look at the tax element of the actual price at the pump. The politicians can fix that very easily, but it seems they hate their own populations..
The hatred by politicians of things that actually work, i.e. coal, nuclear and gas is the cause of the problem.
‘Europeans will pay an additional 350 billion euros ($395 billion) in energy bills next year as global demand for fuel and power threatens to keep prices elevated’
It’s not their fault. It’s ‘demand.’ (Your fault.)
‘Kostas Skrekas said a new mechanism to help shield the most vulnerable citizens and middle-sized businesses from price increases should be created at the European Union level.’
“We need to introduce a welfare state. It’s the only fair thing to do. It’s okay if we screw over the marketplace, as long as we help the most vulnerable.”
Argumentum ad passiones.
Lawfare losers, this time.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/21/plan-b-earth-campaigners-lose-court-action-uk-climate-policies-
It’s unbelievable that these morons are able to waste court time and resources and tax payer cash on this baseless nonesense; but it’s the fault of our governments for handing them the weapons to use against society and giving apparent credibility to their stated views.
This is what really bugs me. I recently had a boundary dispute that required the services of a local small town solicitor. His consultancy rate was a mere £200 per hour. (luckily it only took a couple of hours work but the total bill still hit over a grand!)
But these sorts of cases being taken to court must be costing tens of thousands of pounds minimum. So who is funding these people because it sure as hell is not coming from their charitable status funds?
https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-details/?regid=1167953&subid=0
I have this worrying feeling that all those hedge fund managers buying up “divested” fossil fuel stocks (on the cheap) are deliberately causing pressures to actually up the value of their end products.
I could start with Chris Hohn but I guess we have to be aware of liable laws.
As Mark Steyn quipped, “The process is the punishment.”
Even more unbelievable that ANY of the “climate policies”, “net zero” and the “green” obsession are lawful and that the madness is still continuing. It should all have stopped and been reversed since the infamous “Brexit”.
I’m not sure how close to critical the German energy situation is but Russia have just closed the Yamal gas pipeline that supplied Germany according to R.T.
That’s the bit that goes across Poland.
https://transparency.entsog.eu/#/points/data?points=by-tso-0001itp-00104exit%2Cpl-tso-0001itp-00104entry
About 400GWh/day lost.
The map is a good way to find the key flows:
https://transparency.entsog.eu/#/map
Gas in storage not looking great for the time of year:
https://agsi.gie.eu/#/
Fascinating source again, thanks. The gas stores are fuller than I’d guessed, it is the quantity stored that is too low.
Why are we panicking and buying spot price gas with storage? The Russians claim that they are meeting long term supply contracts, and the European gas companies seem to agree. The problem seems to be buying on the spot market plus political anti-Russian commentary. The Nordsee 2 battle seems to be self-destructive political bureaucracy.
With more cold weather coming in February and March 2022, watch it get even worse.
As Germany is about to close its last nuclear power plants…
The EU must give green light to nuclear and gas or face disaster
Wednesday 22nd December 2021
London, 22 December – Net Zero Watch has warned EU leaders to reject last ditch attempts by campaigners to prevent the EU’s planned green taxonomy for gas and nuclear energy or face a political and economic disaster.
Despite Europe facing its worst energy crisis since the Second World War campaigners are trying to prevent the EU from easing and encouraging the investment in desperately needed new natural gas and nuclear power plants and infrastructure.
https://www.netzerowatch.com/the-eu-must-give-green-light-to-nuclear-and-gas-or-face-disaster/
– – –
Until disaster arrives few of those in power will believe there’s a horrendous problem, even as it stares them in the face.
Do Germans really think that there are too many Germans?
“planned green taxonomy for gas and nuclear energy”
Huh? Taxonomy?
n: 1 the branch of science concerned with classification, especially of organisms; systematics.
I recently flew into Athens airport… over a very mountainous country. There was a line of wind turbines on every mountain ridge for as far as one could see. They have definitely bought into the wind crusade. On the way home (to Vancouver) as we flew over Morecambe Bay in NW England, you could see a wind farm for miles and miles in the Irish Sea (wasn.t there a few years ago) – they have definitely bought into the wind crusade too. So it seems to me that politicians have bought into these schemes without all the facts. I note that tonight Ireland has 70% wind generation, but last week it had 2%……. In a recent Vancouver newspaper article (they are as green as you can get) there was a discussion about whether small nuclear reactors might be a good idea… one can only hope!
It seems the zephyrs of the βόρειας aren’t up to much.
https://windeurope.org/about-wind/daily-wind/electricity-mix?utf8=%E2%9C%93&areas=GR&commit=Apply+filters
“there was a discussion about whether small nuclear reactors might be a good idea”
What is “small” supposed to cure? The bureaucrats who make big nuclear reactors grossly over priced will make small ones grossly overpriced, too. To say it another way, big reactors don’t have to be expensive. Government makes them expensive.