nuclear-news

Growing mountain of wasted money is a radioactive prospect

Alistair Osborne: Growing mountain of wasted money is a radioactive
prospect. Rishi Sunak’s apparent determination to press ahead with
mammoth investment in new nuclear reactors, whatever the cost, might not
prove to be the best solution.

It’s only a week since he set off — again — with his uncosted “nuclear road map”: a plan to have 24 gigawatts of new reactors by 2050, or seven more Hinkley Point Cs. On
Monday, the government sank another £1.3 billion into Sizewell C, so it
could “steam ahead” with that project, too, as Andrew Bowie, the
minister for nukes, put it.

Listen to him and investors are queueing up. So
what better news to encourage them than this jaw-dropper from EDF, the
state-backed French outfit behind both schemes? Hinkley Point’s costs
have shot up by as much as £10 billion to a top-end £35 billion, in 2015
prices.

And, instead of firing up in 2027, the first of the Somerset
nuke’s twin reactors could in an “unfavourable scenario” (the likely
outcome) be delayed until 2031. This is what comes with Hinkley’s
European pressurised reactor tech, as EDF has also proved at France’s
Flamanville, Finland’s Olkiluoto and China’s Taishan.

Indeed, two years after the Chinese nuke became operational, one unit had to be taken offline for a year’s repairs. So why is the government hellbent on a re-run with
Sizewell in Suffolk? Alison Downes from the Stop Sizewell C campaign is no
neutral voice. But she’s right to say the project “epitomises the
definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a
different result”. With Sizewell, though, things would be far pricier.
Under the contracts-for-difference regime, EDF is on the hook for
Hinkley’s costs. Repeat the trick at Sizewell and, under the new
regulated asset base model, consumers would find £10 billion added to
their bills — before the nuke’s even operational.

 Times 25th Jan 2024

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/24osborne-hzs6r76nf

January 28, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, politics, UK