nuclear-news

Hinkley Point the only UK nuclear plant that is likely to go ahead

The head of one of Britain’s top utilities said on Monday that EDF’s
planned nuclear power station at Hinkley Point is likely to be the only one
to go ahead in the UK.

Alistair Phillips-Davies, chief executive officer of
SSE – an energy supplier and a former investor in new nuclear plants – said
that nuclear power has a role to play in reducing carbon emissions, but
that existing technologies may not be the right ones. “The bottom line in
nuclear is that it looks like only Hinkley Point will get built and
Flamanville needs to go well for that to happen,” Phillips-Davies told
Reuters at the Eurelectric utilities conference in Estoril.

French nuclear regulator ASN is set to give a provisional ruling next month on whether
Flamanville can start up as planned in 2018, despite potential weak spots
in its reactor vessel.

In an opinion piece published last year, Phillips-Davies said Britain does not need EDF’s Hinkley Point C nuclear
plant to ensure the lights will stay on because alternative projects like
new gas plants will be able to fill the gap. Asked whether the Toshiba-led
NuGen and Hitachi-led Horizon consortia, which also plan to build nuclear
power stations in Britain, would go ahead despite the bankruptcy of
Toshiba-owned reactor builder Westinghouse, Phillips-Davies said “just
looking from the outside, it looks tricky”. “Toshiba looks like it has a
lot of problems and whether Hitachi will view that as meaning that they do
not want to have a go either, I think that is quite likely. I would not
expect them to get done any time soon,” he said.

New York Times 19th June 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/06/19/business/19reuters-britain-nuclear.html

City AM 19th June 2017

http://www.cityam.com/266971/sse-boss-hinkley-point-likely-uks-only-nuclear-new-build

Reuters 19th June 2017

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-nuclear-idUKKBN19A2KF?rpc=401&

June 21, 2017 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, UK