"Hinkley is set to be the most expensive object on Earth… best guesses say Hinkley could pass £24bn ($35bn)," said the environmental charity Greenpeace last month as it launched a petition against the project.
This figure includes an estimate for paying interest on borrowed money, but the financing arrangements for Hinkley C are so opaque that it is impossible to calculate exactly what the final cost will be.
Even if you stick with the expense of construction alone, though, the price is still high - the main contractor, EDF, puts it at £18bn ($26bn).
For that sum you could build a small forest of Burj Khalifas - the world's tallest building, in Dubai, cost a piffling £1bn ($1.5bn). You could also knock up more than 70 miles of particle accelerator. The 17-mile-long Large Hadron Collider, built under the border between France and Switzerland to unlock the secrets of the universe, cost a mere £4bn ($5.8bn).
The most expensive bridge ever constructed is the eastern replacement span of the Oakland Bay Bridge in San Francisco, designed to withstand the strongest earthquake seismologists would expect within the next 1,500 years. That cost about £4.5bn ($6.5bn).
"Nuclear power plants are the most complicated piece of equipment we make," says Steve Thomas, emeritus professor of energy policy at Greenwich University.
"Cost of nuclear power plants has tended to go up throughout history as accidents happen and we design measures to deal with the risk."
In comparison, the UK's newest nuclear power station, Sizewell B, which was completed in 1995, only cost £2.3bn ($3.4bn), or £4.1bn ($6bn) at today's prices.
No nuclear power plants have been completed in Europe this century - those that have been built in recent years are in countries such as China or India, and Thomas believes figures for these, where they exist, are not reliable.
Working out the cost of something built more than 4,500 years ago presents numerous challenges, but in 2012 the Turner Construction Company estimated it could build the pyramid for between £750m ($1.1bn) and £900m ($1.3bn).
That includes about £500m ($730m) for stone and £40m ($58m) for 12 cranes. However, it projected that a mere 600 staff would be necessary - it took 20,000 people to build the original pyramid at a time when the only cranes in sight were the winged, feathery type.
And the cost to Pharaoh Khufu? For two decades, workers are believed to have laboured on the pyramid for four months a year, during the annual Nile flood when the fields they normally tended were submerged. That amounts to 48.4 million days of labour. A further 4,000 people are thought to have worked year-round, giving a total figure of 77.6 million days' labour. Using the current Egyptian minimum wage of £3.93 ($5.73) a day, that gives a labour cost of £305m ($445m).
Using modern labour rates is not as strange as it might seem. A contemporaneous inscription reveals labourers received 10 loaves of bread and a jug of beer per day. Archaeological evidence suggests the pyramid builders also received meat and fish, and in modern Egypt 10 loaves, a can of Coca-Cola, and a portion of beef or fish costs about £4 ($5.80).
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"Hinkley is set to be the most expensive object on Earth… best guesses say Hinkley could pass £24bn ($35bn)," said the environmental charity Greenpeace last month as it launched a petition against the project.
This figure includes an estimate for paying interest on borrowed money, but the financing arrangements for Hinkley C are so opaque that it is impossible to calculate exactly what the final cost will be.
Even if you stick with the expense of construction alone, though, the price is still high - the main contractor, EDF, puts it at £18bn ($26bn).
For that sum you could build a small forest of Burj Khalifas - the world's tallest building, in Dubai, cost a piffling £1bn ($1.5bn). You could also knock up more than 70 miles of particle accelerator. The 17-mile-long Large Hadron Collider, built under the border between France and Switzerland to unlock the secrets of the universe, cost a mere £4bn ($5.8bn).
The most expensive bridge ever constructed is the eastern replacement span of the Oakland Bay Bridge in San Francisco, designed to withstand the strongest earthquake seismologists would expect within the next 1,500 years. That cost about £4.5bn ($6.5bn).
"Nuclear power plants are the most complicated piece of equipment we make," says Steve Thomas, emeritus professor of energy policy at Greenwich University.
"Cost of nuclear power plants has tended to go up throughout history as accidents happen and we design measures to deal with the risk."
In comparison, the UK's newest nuclear power station, Sizewell B, which was completed in 1995, only cost £2.3bn ($3.4bn), or £4.1bn ($6bn) at today's prices.
No nuclear power plants have been completed in Europe this century - those that have been built in recent years are in countries such as China or India, and Thomas believes figures for these, where they exist, are not reliable.
Working out the cost of something built more than 4,500 years ago presents numerous challenges, but in 2012 the Turner Construction Company estimated it could build the pyramid for between £750m ($1.1bn) and £900m ($1.3bn).
That includes about £500m ($730m) for stone and £40m ($58m) for 12 cranes. However, it projected that a mere 600 staff would be necessary - it took 20,000 people to build the original pyramid at a time when the only cranes in sight were the winged, feathery type.
And the cost to Pharaoh Khufu? For two decades, workers are believed to have laboured on the pyramid for four months a year, during the annual Nile flood when the fields they normally tended were submerged. That amounts to 48.4 million days of labour. A further 4,000 people are thought to have worked year-round, giving a total figure of 77.6 million days' labour. Using the current Egyptian minimum wage of £3.93 ($5.73) a day, that gives a labour cost of £305m ($445m).
Using modern labour rates is not as strange as it might seem. A contemporaneous inscription reveals labourers received 10 loaves of bread and a jug of beer per day. Archaeological evidence suggests the pyramid builders also received meat and fish, and in modern Egypt 10 loaves, a can of Coca-Cola, and a portion of beef or fish costs about £4 ($5.80).
Explanation:
Please mark me as the brainliest if it has helped you.