Series of company pullbacks puncture UK’s nuclear power dream

There is now a question mark over who will ultimately foot the bill for what are expected to be massively expensive infrastructure projects

How lights dimmed on UK’s nuclear vision, FT.com By Guy Chazan, October 5, 2012 In 2009, Ed Miliband, the then energy secretary, unveiled plans for the most ambitious expansion of nuclear power in Europe.
It was a bold vision. Britain would build up to 12 new reactors, he said, on 10 sites stretching from Somerset to Cumbria. By the late 2020s about 30 per cent of its electricity would come from nuclear power – up from 18 per cent now

That prediction is now looking wildly optimistic

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“The race for new nuclear in this country is at serious risk of unravelling,” says Tony Lodge, a research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies think-tank.
Nuclear is widely seen as one of the great panaceas for Britain’s looming energy problems….

But recent events have conspired to puncture Britain’s nuclear dream. Last year’s Fukushima disaster in Japan, combined with the lingering effects of the global economic slowdown and rising costs in the industry, have deprived atomic power of much of its lustre.
The result is a growing sense that the nuclear ambitions set out by Mr Miliband three years ago may have to be scaled back drastically

The latest troubling news came from the sale of Horizon, a joint venture owned by the German utilities RWE and Eon that had plans to build nuclear reactors at sites in Anglesey and Gloucestershire and which was put up for sale in March. Areva and Westinghouse Electric were expected to submit bids – by a September 28 deadline – backed by Chinese state energy groups. This week it emerged that had failed to happen . Areva pulled out and Westinghouse ended up going it alone. They are now up against another consortium led by Japan’s Hitachi ……

There is now a question mark over who will ultimately foot the bill for what are expected to be massively expensive infrastructure projects: the most advanced of them, EDF Energy’s plan to build a new plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset, could cost as much as £14bn, according to some industry estimates.
“We need people with big balance sheets to take that construction risk and we can’t work out if the companies still in the bidding have deep enough pockets,” the insider says. “There is a worry that there may not be enough equity being offered.”…..

The peeling away of the Chinese is the latest of a series of pullbacks. Last year, Scottish and Southern Energy withdrew from NuGen, a consortium led by Iberdrola of Spain and GDF Suez of France, which is seeking to build two reactors at Sellafield in Cumbria….. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3fca7f88-0ece-11e2-ba6b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz28TALGaCP