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Survey Results Show Tremendous Dissatisfaction with Nuclear Waste Project and Proponent.

We the Nuclear Free North  12 June 25

Dryden – A not-for-profit organization that tracks a nuclear waste burial project proposed for northwestern Ontario has released the results of a recent survey gauging public attitudes towards the Nuclear Waste Management Organization and its project. We the Nuclear Free North‘s survey results  show an overwhelmingly negative response to the NWMO’s project and communications.

An invitation to complete the survey was distributed by email and through social media on a wide variety of sites. Over 300 responses were received in the ten-day survey period. Just under 60% of respondents were from northern Ontario (northwestern and northeastern), 36% were from the rest of Canada, and the remainder international or unknown. Respondents include nuclear industry employees, Indigenous people, residents of Ignace and members of Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, and residents from across northern Ontario and across Canada.

Overwhelmingly, respondents expressed a negative view of NWMO operations:

  • 94% were not confident that the NWMO’s safety culture would keep Canadians safe.
  • A very large majority found that NWMO communications were not transparent or honest.
  • 93% were not confident in the NWMO’s ability to implement the safe, long-term management of nuclear fuel waste.
  • 94% were not confident that NWMO’s work aligned with Reconciliation or Indigenous Knowledge.
  • 96% were not comfortable with the nuclear industry being in charge of the NWMO
  • 92% did not believe that the siting process was fair or gained the necessary consent

Every year the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) releases their annual report and a five year “implementation plan” which – according to the NWMO – sets out what the nuclear waste corporation will be doing over the coming years. The NWMO also invites feedback through a survey. WTNFN has heard from many that they are reluctant to provide the NWMO with their personal information, and they are uncertain how the NWMO will use their responses. Providing an alternative means for Canadians to express their views motivated the deployment of an alternate survey.

“We think it’s important to hear the views and responses of Canadians to the NWMO’s plans and proposal to transport, process, bury and then abandon the high-level nuclear fuel waste from all Canadian reactors at the NWMO’s selected site in the heart of Treaty #3 territory in northwestern Ontario”, explained Brennain Lloyd, project coordinator with Northwatch and a volunteer with We the Nuclear Free North.

Lloyd explained that potential respondents were invited to take five minutes and complete the simple survey, with the assurance that their personal information would be used only to verify responses and would not be shared with the Nuclear Waste Management Organization or government, or any other parties.

The results of the survey have been reported by We the Nuclear Free North to the federal Minister of Energy and Natural Resources and the Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, along with a letter summarizing key messages from the survey results and providing backgrounders on the NWMO project, site selection and public and Indigenous opposition. A copy of the survey report has also been provided to the NWMO.

In writing to the federal Ministers, the group also conveyed that throughout the NWMO’s lengthy siting processes there have been many expressions of opposition to and rejection of the NWMO’s siting process and their project.

“These expressions have come in many forms, including resolutions passed by Grand Council Treaty #3 just weeks before the NWMO announced the selection of the Revell site – in the heart of Treaty #3 territory – in November 2024. More recently, Eagle Lake First Nation has initiated legal action against the NWMO’s site selection. Earlier resolutions have been passed by Nishnawbe Aski Nation, Anishnabek Nation, and many First Nations and municipalities” commented Wendy O’Connor, a volunteer with Nuclear Free Thunder Bay and We the Nuclear Free North.

The group has requested to meet with the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources and the Minister of Environment and Climate Change and will be seeking meetings with Members of Parliament who represent northeastern and northwestern Ontario ridings throughout the summer break.

June 15, 2025 Posted by | Canada, public opinion, wastes | Leave a comment

Scotland to prioritise renewable energy over nuclear power

 The Scottish government will focus on renewable energy not nuclear power,
a government minister has said following confirmation of significant
funding for nuclear power plants in England. Scotland has an effective ban
on new nuclear facilities because the SNP has a long-standing commitment to
block projects through devolved planning powers. Acting Energy Secretary
Gillian Martin told BBC Scotland News they would “capitalise on renewable
energy capacity” rather than “expensive new nuclear”. Scottish Secretary
Ian Murray said a Scottish Labour government in Holyrood would reverse the
SNP’s block on nuclear power stations being built.

 BBC 10th June 2025,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgr82vqdvzo

June 15, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Great British Energy’s budget has been nuked

Nils Pratley 12 June 25,
https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2025/jun/11/great-british-energys-budget-has-been-nuked

Ed Miliband’s vehicle for investing in renewables lost 30% of its pot to small modular nuclear reactors in the spending review

 GB Energy’s promised £8.3bn budget raided to pay for small nuclear reactors

There was a weirdness in the government’s welcome announcement this week that Rolls-Royce SMR had been selected as preferred bidder to build the UK’s first small modular nuclear reactors, and that £2.5bn of public money would be thrown behind the project. The government body backing the project was something called Great British Energy – Nuclear.

This, it turned out, was the new name for Great British Nuclear, the unit set up in 2023 by the last government to oversee delivery of the nuclear programme. But why risk confusion with Great British Energy, Ed Miliband’s publicly owned company for investing, we thought, in renewables projects such as wind, solar and hydro with a side-mission to ensure that lots of the kit is manufactured in the UK?

The confusion, it seems, was deliberate. The chancellor’s spending review revealed that every penny of the £2.5bn for SMRs is coming from GB Energy’s £8.3bn budget. That is 30% of the pot to SMRs in one gulp.

One could argue, as Labour folk did, that nuclear and renewables are all part of the same low-carbon clean energy mix, so they go hand in hand and were always intended to do so. It’s true that past descriptions of GB Energy’s role have sometimes mentioned nuclear, but never as the headline act. It was never spelled out, for example, that the entirety of public support for SMRs would come from GB Energy’s budget, which would be a relevant fact to mention if you were worried that the Tories had set up Great British Nuclear but not given it funding. It rather looks as if GB Energy’s budget has been nuked by the Treasury.

“Labour will capitalise Great British Energy with £8.3bn over the next parliament,” said the manifesto and, strictly speaking, that pledge is still being honoured. It’s just that GB Energy will be directing almost a third of its allocation to the nuclear body that we had previously regarded as a separate unit.

But it does make GB Energy a strange beast if it is now the main government vehicle for investing in SMRs, a cutting-edge technology that tends to involve permanently big numbers and follow-on rounds of funding. GB Energy’s initial adventures, note, have been low-key and local – funding for installing solar panels on schools and hospitals, for example. Worthy stuff, but a million miles away from the development of next-generation nuclear technology.

GB Energy will be expanding into new and exciting areas later this year, say Labour insiders. We’ll see what that brings. The company’s core mission seems to be a work in progress.

June 15, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, politics, UK | Leave a comment

GB Energy’s promised £8.3bn budget raided to pay for small nuclear reactors

 Rachel Reeves has effectively cut £2.5bn from the government’s national
energy company by sharing the £8.3bn it was promised with a separate
nuclear power body set up by the Conservatives. The Labour manifesto had
pledged the full amount to Great British Energy to invest in clean power
projects. However, the chancellor’s spending review said the company
would share this funding with a separate body tasked with spearheading
Britain’s nuclear renaissance. The Treasury’s spending plans said the
“two allied publicly owned companies with a shared mission” would spend
the £8.3bn on “homegrown clean power” including £2.5bn to help the UK
develop a new generation of small modular nuclear reactors.

 Guardian 11th June 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jun/11/gb-energy-83bn-of-funding-raided-to-pay-for-small-nuclear-reactors

June 15, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

It’s austerity from Reeves

There is no strategy apparent in it at all except to make the UK a defence industry superpower, which was what Rachel Reeve says she wishes to do, as if confirming the military-industrial complex has finally defeated democracy.

the whole of East Suffolk has already been scarred with building works to facilitate the Sizewell C programme

What this so-called spending review admits is that there is no prospect of finding any foreign funding for Sizewell C, which was this government’s quite absurd hope. It has therefore, to fund this white elephant itself.

This power station and the others to which the government has committed will cost at least £1,500 per household in the UK, and that might at best result in power for 6 million households.

However, the actual cost of this energy is the highest that we can produce, and that is before taking into account decommissioning costs. Those at Sellafield now amount to £136 billion, and no one thinks that this is the total sum involved.

Reeves is delivering austerity for the UK, unless you’re wealthy, when it’s still bonanza time.

 June 11 2025 https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/06/11/its-austerity-from-reeves/

It has to be said that Spending Reviews are like New Year’s resolutions. They seem like a good idea at the time. Then they are quietly forgotten. I have a very strong feeling that Rachel Reeves will hope that this is what will happen with today’s spending review.

The big news here is quite simple. Reeves decided that if she changed the fiscal rules so that she could borrow more for investment, she could appear to be a big spender, whilst at the same time trying to meet her current fiscal rule that desperately attempts to make current year government spending match current year tax revenue.

To put this in context, what this means is that while she has supposedly promised around £113 billion of additional capital expenditure in the spending review. Much of it is going to take place in the dim and distant future when she will be long gone from the Treasury and probably as an MP, given Labour’s current state of political fortunes.

And just to contextualise this £113 billion, the Tories had planned to spend £90 billion . What she’s adding is only £23 billion. That might be called the square root of didley squat in the grand scheme of things, when the government spends well over £1,000 billion a year.

Elsewhere, the reality is that there will be cuts in real government spending. Austerity is, in other words, continuing despite what Reeves had to say.

……………….. There is also good reason why all the announcements about capital expenditure came out early and in advance of this spending review. They were the only good news. Everything else is something that Rachel Reeves does not really want to talk about.

And let’s be clear that some of this capital expenditure also makes no sense at all. For example, one of the biggest items of expenditure will be on nuclear power stations, where supposedly at least £30 billion is to be spent, although everybody in reality knows that this will turn into a sum of well in excess of £100 billion, given the cost overruns that always occur in nuclear power budgets.

Starmer has claimed that the government has now decided that Sizewell C will be built. But as everyone in Suffolk knows, that decision was made long ago because the whole of East Suffolk has already been scarred with building works to facilitate the Sizewell C programme.

So what Stamer is saying is complete nonsense. What this so-called spending review admits is that there is no prospect of finding any foreign funding for Sizewell C, which was this government’s quite absurd hope. It has therefore, to fund this white elephant itself.

And now Reeves actually wants more investment at Sellafield, which is only going to make things worse, but is part of her plan to apparently make us a nuclear superpower. So, if you want to know what leaving a debt for future generations to pay really looks like, building Sizewell C and other power stations is all that you need to do to ensure that this outcome will become a reality.

In contrast to all this emphasis upon nuclear power, there was none at all on renewable energy in this statement. There was a mention of £2.5 billion for carbon capture and storage, but that is another white elephant.

There was no commitment to renewable energy, to battery technology, or even things as basic as insulating houses and fitting proper triple glazing, although a nod perhaps to the last was included without any mention of the sums involved being made.

What is clear is that Starmer and Reeves would rather lumber generations to come with the cost of nuclear power rather than invest in renewable energy now, when that is the lowest cost of energy that we have available to us.

And let’s also be clear about the significance of this £113 billion worth of investment, which is supposedly going to transform our future, which is supposedly going to transform our fortunes over the next 10 years, most of it, by simply funding projects that others are refusing to undertake.

Over the same 10-year period, the UK government will, in current prices, subsidise pensions through income tax, national insurance, and corporation tax relief by about £700 billion. The vast majority of the benefit of which will go to the top 10% or so of the UK population because they are the people who own the vast majority of UK pension wealth.

At the same time and at current prices, the UK government will spend approximately £95 billion subsidising the untaxed income of those who save in ISAs, who are, again, in the vast majority of cases, the wealthiest people in the UK because by definition they own the savings that are held in those accounts.

In other words, over the 10 year period during which the government has said it is willing to spend around £40 billion a year to buy up existing housing stocks so that it might be used as social housing, thereby providing maybe 130,000 new houses in total, which does little to solve the problem of 1.3 million people being on council house waiting lists, they are going to spend approximately 20 times that amount subsidizing the tax-free incomes and increase in wealth of those who are already amongst the wealthiest in this country.

If you want to understand where the focus of Labour’s priorities are, then this contrast explains them.

This government has absolutely no vision for the future.

At the same time, and when Labour is desperate to increase its poll ratings to ensure that it can fight off Reform and others, it is planning to cut most types of government spending.

No one will see the benefits of increased defence spending in their pockets. There is none.

No one will sense the benefit of increased NHS spending because the amounts being committed are insufficient to keep up with growing demand for NHS services, as is well known, based upon past patterns of health economic performance.

And on child benefit, the big issue was ducked. There was no mention of ending the two-child benefit cap. Free breakfasts are meant to do instead.

Everywhere else, there would appear to be cuts. The government might claim otherwise, arguing over the odd decimal point of a percentage here or there, and that there are real cash increases, which is totally misleading because of inflation, but that is what the reality will feel like. Austerity is definitely Rachel Reeves’ game.

Meanwhile, we know that taxes have risen.

We know that businesses are suffering because of national insurance hikes, falls in demand, and the fallout from Trump.

And we know that children are living in poverty and their parents are suffering massive stress and have no idea whether there is anyone who really cares about them. No wonder they fall for the false promises of Nigel Farage.

Economically, this spending review was a sham. It confirms decisions already taken. It is an exercise in financial shuffling. It creates little added value in the economy. It addresses no fundamental policy need. It does not tackle inequality. It does not solve the problems of most people in the UK.

There is no strategy apparent in it at all except to make the UK a defence industry superpower, which was what Rachel Reeve says she wishes to do, as if confirming the military-industrial complex has finally defeated democracy.

Rachel Rees might be presenting it to the world with her usual Rictus smile, but the reality is that she has now been to the House of Commons dispatch box on three occasions since becoming Chancellor to deliver major economic policy proposals. And every time she has done so, she has made a complete and utter mess of the job. To be blunt, not only has she not delivered; her strategies are actually making things worse.

Today’s spending review falls fairly and squarely into that category. It answers no known questions.

It preserves the status quo on behalf of the wealthy middle-class elite who wish to maintain their prosperity at cost of everyone else.

This is the politics of failure.

Rachel Reeves’ time in office is now, I think, decidedly limited and if she goes, so will Starmer.

There is no other way in which Labour might now get out of the mess that they are in, but the problem is they’ve already got rid of any other talent that they once possessed. We really are in a total mess.

June 14, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

The Spring Statement Combines Austerity with Dangerous Military Spending

“In effect, a rising military budget and a nuclear waste is being paid for by sick and disabled people.”

, https://labouroutlook.org/2025/06/12/the-spring-statement-combines-austerity-with-dangerous-military-spending/

by Michael Burke

The Chancellor has delivered a Spring Statement for the medium-term where the big winners were arms’ manufacturers and the builders of nuclear power stations, both of which specialise in cost overruns. But the economy will not get the public investment it needs and once again the most vulnerable are being attacked.

As a result, which is admitted in the detail of the Statement, spending on services and social support will not be rising in line with needs. They will cut further by over £6bn. More than half of that will come from welfare cuts. The Universal Credit health element will be cut for new claimants by 50% and then frozen.

The overall package will increase spending and investment in total. Some will want to welcome it as a result. But economic policy should be judged in comparison to what the economy requires to support it and to lift living standards. The Spring Statement does not do any of that.


It is quite right that investment is crucial to the future growth of the economy. Investment properly understood means expanding the means of production, the basis for future prosperity.

But the Chancellor has applied the term to a variety of areas which are not investment at all. These include military spending, subsidies to nuclear power builders and others which add up to more than half the investment total. The consequence is that the increase in actual investment which can add to the means of production will add up to much less than 1% of GDP over the next 5 years. It will not shift the dial on growth or prosperity at all.

Military spending, creating weapons, missiles and armaments, cannot add to the means of production – only to the means of destruction. If they are ever used at all, they can only destroy lives, as well as cities, transport and factories which are part of our shared prosperity.

n a different way, nuclear spending is also hugely wasteful. It is one of the most expensive energy sources of all, even typically huge budget over-runs, and unknown clean-up costs, even if nothing goes disastrously wrong.

This is a huge, missed opportunity. Spending on services and welfare will be cut again, while most of the investment total does not fit the bill and will not add to prosperity or lift living standards at all. In effect, a rising military budget and a nuclear waste is being paid for by sick and disabled people.

It is morally, politically and economically wrong.

June 14, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

China banned from investing in Sizewell C, energy secretary Ed Miliband vows

 China will be blocked from investing in the new Sizewell C power station,
the energy secretary has said. It comes as the chancellor announced plans
to pump billions of pounds into Britain’s nuclear energy sector, putting
£14.2bn towards the new plant’s construction. Asked whether China would
be able to invest in the new power station in Suffolk, Ed Miliband told BBC
Radio 4’s Today programme: “No.”

 Independent 10th June 2025,
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/sizewell-c-nuclear-plant-china-investment-ed-miliband-b2767038.html

June 14, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Six years late and £28bn over budget, this project signals disaster for Ed Miliband’s nuclear plans

Labour is banking on Sizewell C to deliver the net zero goal – but its blueprint was fraught with problems.

Eleanor Steafel, Telegraph, 10 June 25

“Build and repeat.” That is the plan for Sizewell C, the nuclear plant on the Suffolk coast which Ed Miliband has announced plans to pump billions of pounds into. Writing in The Telegraph, he hailed a new “golden age” for the British nuclear industry, pledging £14.2 billion for two reactors at Sizewell which will, eventually, provide six million homes with electricity.

Eventually being the operative word. News that the Government is throwing its weight behind nuclear in the midst of the Energy Secretary’s pursuit of net zero was met with relief by some campaigners …. But concerns have been raised about the modelling. Sizewell is to be a rinse and repeat of Hinkley Point C, the two-reactor power station in Somerset which has been beset with problems from the moment EDF first broke ground there in early 2017.

The Government says it’s to be almost an exact replica. Meanwhile on its website, Sizewell C points to “the benefits of replication”. “Sizewell C will use the same design as Hinkley Point C,” it adds.

It says Hinkley has already “created a huge workforce and supply chain” and that replication “means Sizewell C will benefit from all the efficiencies and expertise learnt by our sister project”.

Efficiency and expertise. It’s one way of summing up Hinkley, though it does rather overlook the £28 billion it has gone over budget to date, the endless delays and challenges from environmentalists, not to mention the international political tensions.

China’s General Nuclear is a significant shareholder in the project, but in 2023 halted funding for it as relations between London and Beijing worsened; the same year the UK government took over the country’s stake in Sizewell C.

Meanwhile, work at the site crawls on, its deadline shifting and bill expanding………………………………………..

At Sizewell, many question how possible it will be in practice to shift operations from one side of England to the other. Alison Downes, of the campaign group Stop Sizewell C, suspects the idea that you can simply move teams and processes without a hitch is unrealistic. “The company want people involved in Hinkley Point C to come over and do what they’ve done there again at Sizewell C, but unless there’s a seamless transition and the roles that they’re just finishing at Hinkley start at Sizewell, then the likelihood is those people will go off and find other jobs and then are lost to the supply chain,” she says.

“Hinkley has been delayed, yes, but Sizewell has also been delayed. It’s very difficult to get two projects of this size to perfectly dovetail.”

Even if they do manage to bring some of that infrastructure across, it’s hard to make the case that Hinkley has been a poster project for Britain’s nuclear prowess.

Last February, EDF said it had taken a near £11 billion hit amid delays and overrunning costs on the project. The month before, it said the plant was expected to be completed by 2031 and cost up to £35 billion. Factoring in inflation, the real figure could be more like £46 billion.

It was, let’s not forget, initially supposed to have started generating electricity in 2017 and cost £18 billion. When construction finally began the same year, it was expected that the plant would be completed by 2025.

It will now come online six years later than that and at more than double the cost of the initial estimate. So not, it would be fair to say, an unmitigated success as major infrastructure projects go………………………….

Downes points out the last update on Hinkley came in January last year, “when there were still five or six years to go, so there was plenty of time for things to get even worse”. That same month, EDF said further delays were in the offing because of a row about fish. The energy company was struggling to agree protection measures for fish in the River Severn. Fears thousands could be killed in water cooling intakes had “the potential to delay the operation of the power station”.

…………………………..campaigners are less optimistic, pointing out the significant geographical differences between the sites. “I get the principals behind replication – but the thing you can’t do is replicate the site,” says Downes, who understands Sizewell is set to be a more expensive site to develop than Hinkley.

“There are very specific complexities around the Sizewell C site… It’s quite likely that any savings they might expect to make through replication will be absorbed in the more complex groundworks.”

While Hinkley is “a dry site”, Sizewell C is by the sea. “It’s going to need huge sea defences. They’ve got to build a crossing over a Site of Special Scientific Interest. They’ve got to build a deep cut-off wall. There’s a lot of associated development that’s needed because there’s less infrastructure than there is down at Hinkley Point C. These are the sorts of things that concern us.”………… https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/10/hinkley-point-c-blueprint-for-sizewell/

June 14, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Greens react to plans for new nuclear plant at Sizewell

  by Green Party, https://greenparty.org.uk/2025/06/10/greens-react-to-plans-for-new-nuclear-plant-at-sizewell/

Responding to news that EDF will build a new nuclear power plant at Sizewell at an estimated cost of over £14bn, co-leader of the Green Party, Adrian Ramsay MP, said: 

 “Nuclear power is hugely expensive and far too slow to come on line. The only thing delivered by EDF so far at Hinkley Point in Somerset is overspend and delay. Electricity was promised by 2017 with a price tag of £22bn but this has mushroomed to 40bn and Hinkley is still producing no power.  

“The money being spent on this nuclear gamble would be far better spent on insulating and retrofitting millions of homes, bringing down energy bills and keeping people warmer and more comfortable. We should also be investing in genuinely green power such as fitting millions of solar panels to roofs and in innovative technologies like tidal power. All this would create many more jobs than nuclear ever will.”   

June 14, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

UK taxpayers to spend billions more on Sizewell C nuclear plant.

Ministers have agreed to take a £17.8 billion stake in the Sizewell C
­nuclear power plant in a move that they claim will reduce carbon
emissions and even make money for the taxpayer. Under plans announced by
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, the government will increase its investment
in the project by ­£14.2 billion over the next three years on top of £3.6
billion of public money committed under the Conservatives.

Further funding will come from the French energy group EDF, which is building the plant, as
well as private infrastructure investors. Whitehall sources said ministers
decided to take a larger stake because they were confident it would provide
a significant return to the taxpayer.

Under the funding model, investors
carry all the risk of cost overruns but are paid back through consumer
bills and can make more money if the project comes in on time and on
budget. The company said it had learnt ­lessons from Hinkley, in Somerset,
and can build Sizewell C, in Suffolk, faster and more cheaply.

However, it is still likely to cost much more than the estimated £20 billion in 2020
and will not produce power for at least another decade. The total cost will
be set out this summer when external private investors are announced.
Ultimately, the project will be paid for via consumers’ electricity bills,
adding about £1 a month to the cost of power over the 60-year lifespan of
the plant.

The announcement is among investments in nuclear at the spending
review as part of the government’s pledge to decarbonise electricity
supplies and cope with growing demand.

Alison Downes, of Stop Sizewell C, the campaign group, said ministers had not “come clean” about the full cost of the project, which the group previously estimated could be as much
as ­£40 billion. “Where is the benefit for voters in ploughing more
money into Sizewell C that could be spent on other priorities, and when the
project will add to consumer bills and is guaranteed to be late and
overspent, like Hinkley C?

Times 10th June 2025,
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/sizewell-c-nuclear-power-plant-3z7jlqdd6

June 13, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Sizewell C nuclear plant gets £14bn go-ahead from government

Alice Cunningham, BBC News, Suffolk, 9 June 25

The government has committed £14.2bn of investment to build the new Sizewell C nuclear plant on the Suffolk coastline, ahead of the Spending Review.

Sizewell Cwill create 10,000 direct jobs, thousands more in firms supplying the plant and generate enough energy to power six million homes, the Treasury said.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves saidthe “landmark decision” would “kickstart” economic growth, while Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said the investment was necessary to usher in a “golden age of clean energy”.

However, Alison Downes, director of pressure group Stop Sizewell C, said ministers had not “come clean” about Sizewell C’s cost, because “negotiations with private investors are incomplete”.

Once construction work begins, Sizewell C will take at least a decade to complete.

Reeves said it would be the “biggest nuclear building programme in a generation”.

Ms Downes added she believed the investment could be spent on other priorities and feared the project would “add to consumer bills”……………………………………………………..

Hinkley Point C in Somerset, the other new plant of which Sizewell C is a copy, will switch on in the early 2030s – more than a decade late and costing billions more than originally planned.

The Sizewell C investment is the latest in a series of announcements in the run-up to the government’s Spending Review, which will be unveiled on Wednesday……………………….

In the 1990s, nuclear power generated about 25% of the UK’s electricity. But that figure has fallen to about 15%, with all but one of the UK’s existing nuclear fleet due to be decommissioned by 2030.

The previous Conservative government backed the construction of Sizewell C in 2022.

Since then, Sizewell C has had other pots of funding confirmed by government, and in September 2023 a formal process to raise private investment was opened.

Ministers and EDF – the French state-owned energy company that has a 15% stake in Sizewell C -have previously said there were plenty of potential investors and they were close to finalising an agreement on it.

The final investment decision on the funding model for the plant is due later this summer.

The Sizewell C project has faced opposition at thelocal and national level from those who think it will prove to be a costly mistake.

“There still appears to be no final investment decision for Sizewell C but £14.2bn in taxpayers’ funding, a decision we condemn and firmly believe the government will come to regret,” she said.

“Starmer and Reeves have just signed up to HS2 mark 2,” she added, referring to the railway project mired by years of budget disputes and delays…………..

On Saturday about 300 protesters demonstrated on Sizewell beach against the project, with many concerned about how the plant would change the area’s environment………………..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gr3nd5zy6o

June 13, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Another delay for Sizewell C nuclear despite Government 14bn pledge

ITV News. 10 June 2025 

The government has confirmed a £14.2bn investment to build the Sizewell C nuclear plant – but still cannot confirm the project is fully funded.

Ministers claim the reactor – the third to be built on the Suffolk coast – will create 10,000 jobs, 1,500 apprenticeships, and generate enough “clean” energy to power millions of homes.

It will be part of a “golden age of clean energy abundance” which will pave the way for household bills and help tackle the climate crisis, according to Energy Secretary Ed Miliband.

But the government has had to stop short of issuing a “Final Investment Decision”, which can only be given once full investment has been secured.

Opponents insist the government “will come to regret” this latest backing for Sizewell C, claiming the project “will add to consumer bills and is guaranteed to be late and overspent”, comparing it to Hinkley Point C, the nuclear plant under construction in Somerset.

Sizewell, which sits just a few miles south of celebrity hotspot Southwold and borders the former Springwatch base at RSPB Minsmere, was first identified as a potential site for a new plant back in 2009.

The project was granted development consent by the then-Conservative government in July 2022 and Sir Keir Starmer made a further £5.5bn available to the project last August.

Preparatory work has already been started by French energy firm EDF and contracts worth around £330m have already been signed with local companies.

The government said Tuesday’s announcement would end “years of delay and uncertainty”.

“We will not accept the status quo of failing to invest in the future and energy insecurity for our country,” said Mr Miliband.  

“We need new nuclear to deliver a golden age of clean energy abundance, because that is the only way to protect family finances, take back control of our energy, and tackle the climate crisis. 

“This is the government’s clean energy mission in action – investing in lower bills and good jobs for energy security.”

The joint managing directors of Sizewell C, Julia Pyke and Nigel Cann, said: “Today marks the start of an exciting new chapter for Sizewell C, the UK’s first British-owned nuclear power plant in over 30 years.”But with an estimated cost of at least £20bn – and some experts predicting it could exceed £40bn – EDF continues to seek investors in the project.

The government said it expected to issue a Final Investment Decision in the summer.https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2025-06-09/another-delay-for-sizewell-c-despite-governments-14bn-pledge

June 12, 2025 Posted by | environment, politics, UK | Leave a comment

Lincolnshire council pulls out of nuclear waste disposal siting process

Lincolnshire County Council has decided to withdraw from the geological
disposal facility (GDF) siting process – ending plans to potentially
store nuclear waste in the county. The council’s new executive voted to
withdraw from the Nuclear Waste Services’ (NWS’s) Community Partnership
on 3 June.

A Community Partnership in Theddlethorpe had been established by
the NWS as part of its search to find a GDF site with suitable geology for
storing higher activity radioactive waste underground. The council’s vote
means that it will no longer be a member of Theddlethorpe GDF Community
Partnership. The GDF siting process cannot continue without the support of
the council as the relevant principal local authority, and the Community
Partnership closed with immediate effect.

 Ground Engineering 09 June, 2025 By Thames Menteth, https://www.geplus.co.uk/news/lincolnshire-council-pulls-out-of-nuclear-waste-disposal-siting-process-09-06-2025/

June 11, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Trump’s Nuclear Power Obsession

He failed to mention the “nuclear clause” in all homeowners insurance policies in the U.S. which states: “This policy does not cover loss or damage caused by nuclear reaction or nuclear radiation or radioactive contamination.”

Karl Grossman – Harvey Wasserman, June 6, 2025, https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/06/06/trumps-nuclear-power-obsession/?fbclid=IwY2xjawKxt5pleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFvTWNBeXVHWThCTEtyczlZAR4Wy4zp3k26LXBFk9nJmvu3gAlxlzaxf_bLpDX3vn4MeB8PdK4OTy_hrIw0-Q_aem_GM2n7mrZ43KodEXQfa0ZsA

Donald Trump on May 23rd declared nuclear power to be “a hot industry.” Nuclear power plants are “very safe and environmental,” he said. He made the claims as he issued executive orders to quadruple nuclear energy capacity in the United States.

He failed to mention that nuclear power plants are subject to catastrophic accidents—such as the Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island disasters. And in routine operation, they release deadly radioactive emissions. Also, the nuclear fuel cycle—including mining, milling, enrichment of nuclear fuel—is highly carbon-intensive.

He missed the fact that in pure economic terms they portend the largest economic debacle in human history. He omitted mention of who would pay for 300+ new nuclear plants in the U.S. to be built under his executive orders. (There are currently 94 nuclear plants operating in the U.S.)

Trump didn’t say why the nation would quadruple nuclear power capacity when renewables—primarily wind turbines and solar panels—account for more than 80% of the world’s new electric generating capacity and are coming in at up to 90% cheaper than nukes and years faster to deploy.

He failed to mention the “nuclear clause” in all homeowners insurance policies in the U.S. which states: “This policy does not cover loss or damage caused by nuclear reaction or nuclear radiation or radioactive contamination.”

That’s been the situation since 1957 when, with the insurance industry refusing to cover nuclear plant disasters, the Price-Anderson Act was enacted limiting liability in the event of a nuclear plant catastrophe. Congress passed it to jump-start the “Peaceful Atom” program of seven decades ago. The Price-Anderson Act has been extended and extended and Congress recently renewed it for another four decades to cover the untested “Small Modular Reactors” now all the rage in the latest ultra-hyped so-called “nuclear renaissance.”

Trump was surrounded at a signing ceremony in the Oval Office of The White House by executives of the nuclear power industry, including Joe Dominguez, president and CEO of Constellation Energy, the largest nuclear power plant operator in the U.S., Jake Dewitte, CEO of Oklo Inc., and promoters, including Maria Korsnick, president and CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the main nuclear power lobbying organization in the U.S.

Also present was U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum who said: “This is a huge day for the nuclear industry.”

It was a flip from Trump’s comments on the Joe Rogan podcast last year in which he said: “I think there’s a little danger in nuclear.” An article about this on the E&E energy website of Politico said his reservations “seem to qualify his campaign promise to ‘unleash energy production from all sources, including nuclear.’”

But it was a total nuclear advocacy declared by Trump in his executive orders.

One of the four, titled “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” notes that since 1978 “only two reactors have entered into commercial operation….Instead of efficiently promoting allegedly “safe, abundant nuclear energy,” the NRC has instead tried to insulate Americans from the most remote risks without appropriate regard for the severe domestic and geopolitical costs of such risk aversion. The NRC utilizes safety models that posit there is no safe threshold of radiation exposure and that harm is directly proportional to the amount of exposure. Those models lack sound scientific basis and produce irrational results.”

“Beginning today,” said this order, “my Administration will reform the NRC, including its structure, personnel, regulations, and basic operations. In so doing, we will produce lasting American dominance in the global nuclear energy market…”

The order then says: “It is the policy of the United States to: Reestablish the United States as the global leader in nuclear energy” and “Facilitate the expansion of American nuclear energy capacity from approximately 100 GW [gigawatts] in 2024 to 400 GW by 2050.”

To avoid a politically suicidal brush with economic reality, Trump ducked this simple calculation: the most recent new U.S. reactors, at Vogtle, Georgia, have come online seven years late, at a price of $18 billion each. (They were originally estimated to cost $7 billion each.) Meanwhile, the other two reactors, the construction of which began also this century, an expected $9.8 billion project at the V.C. Summer nuclear plant site in South Carolina, was abandoned when its estimated cost increased to $25 billion, having generated no electricity at all,

Today there are no large reactors under construction in the U.S. Based on the Vogtle/Summer experiences, to build another 300 nuclear power plants from scratch would cost a “base price” minimum of $5.4 trillion, though the historic likelihood is that they would cost at least double or triple that. Each would likely require 15 years or more to build.

A parallel and thus far theoretical fleet of the much-hyped Small Modular Reactors (“silly mythological rip-offs”) is certain to cost more. Their development has been plagued with soaring price projections, lagging production schedules and a series of cancellations. SMRs produce more radioactive waste per kilowatt-hour than the older, bigger nukes, nuclear proliferation concerns, and there are other problems.

Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in an article last year titled “Five Things the ‘Nuclear Bros’ Don’t Want You to Know About Small Modular Reactors” on its publication “The Equation” starts off with: “1. SMRs are not more economical than large reactors.” He said, “According to the economies of scale principle, smaller reactors will in general produce more expensive electricity than larger ones,” and he elaborates. He further exposes other SMR issues.

Of the Trump order to “reform” the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in an article published last week in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Lyman wrote it “mandates that the NRC fundamentally change its mission to support the absurd and reckless goal of quadrupling of U.S. nuclear energy capacity to 400 gigawatts by 2050—which would, if achieved, add the equivalent of 300 large nuclear plants to the U.S. fleet—by prioritizing speedy licensing over protecting public health and safety from radiation exposure. This would effectively make the NRC a promotional agency not unlike its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, thereby undoing the NRC’s 51-year history as the independent safety regulator established by the 1974 Energy Reorganization Act.” The piece was titled: “NRC’s new Mission Impossible: Making Atoms Great Again.”

Another Trump executive order, specifically on “advanced reactors,” was titled “Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies for National Security” and say they “have have the potential to deliver resilient, secure, and reliable power…”

The nuclear industry in recent years has been touting what it calls “advanced” nuclear power plants—which include the SMR—claiming they are safer than current designs.

However, the Union of Concerned Scientists conducted extensive research on the “advanced” plants and its 140-report, authored by Lyman, a physicist, “found that they are no better—and in some respects significantly worse—than the light-water reactors in operation today.”

Another Trump order, “Reforming Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy,” directs “the Department of Energy, the National Laboratories, and any other entity under the [Energy] Department’s jurisdiction to significantly expedite the review, approval, and deployment of advanced reactors.”

And a fourth executive order, “Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base,” states: “Swift and decisive action is required to jumpstart America’s nuclear energy industrial base and ensure or national and economic security by increasing fuel availability and production, securing civil nuclear supply chains, improving the efficiency with which advanced nuclear reactors are licensed, and preparing our workforce to establish America’s energy dominance and accelerate our path towards a more secure and independent energy future.”

A former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Dr. Gregory Jaczko, a physicist, commented that the Trump orders show that “he is committed to further lawlessness, more nuclear accidents, and less nuclear safety. This guillotine to the nation’s nuclear safety system will only make the country less safe, the industry less reliable, and the climate crisis more severe….The executive orders look like someone asked an AI, ‘how do we make the nuclear industry worse in this country?’”

Lyman in a statement distributed by the Union of Concerned Scientists said: “Simply put, the U.S. nuclear industry will fail if safety is not made a priority. By fatally compromising the independence and integrity of the NRC, and by encouraging pathways for nuclear deployment that bypass the regulator entirely, the Trump administration is virtually guaranteeing that this country will see a serious accident or other radiological release that will affect the health, safety and livelihoods of millions. Such a disaster will destroy public trust in nuclear power and cause other nations to reject U.S. nuclear technology for decades to come.”

Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Oversight Project of the organization Beyond Nuclear, said of the order on “reform” of the NRC, that it “most explicitly exposes the Trump Administration’s deliberate attack upon the public’s democratic due process regarding undisputably still hazardous nuclear power and strips away the appearance of maintaining an ‘independent’ federal regulatory agency exercising its due diligence in the interest of public health, safety, security and environmental protection.”

Gunter cited the 1974 Energy Reorganization Act, as did Lyman in his article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was abolished by Congress” by the act “precisely because it could no longer maintain the façade of being both the chief promoter and regulator” of nuclear power, said Gunter. This Trump order, said Gunter, “illuminates the obvious 50-year throwback to AEC and its abolition by Congress in 1975 for its blatant ‘conflict of interest’ as simultaneously a promotional agency for atomic power and supposedly an unbiased regulator.”

Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said: “After 70 years of promoting nuclear power, it is still too expensive and produces radioactive waste that will be dangerous for over a million years. President Trump’s executive orders will not fix those problems….There is no ‘fixing’ or ‘reviving’ nuclear energy. The orders are a shortsighted, wasteful effort that will only make nuclear power less safe and more polluting. They will further weaken the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and forever sabotage its already dubious ability to protect public safety and national security.”

Judson said, “One order ignores decades of scientific findings and thousands of families’ tragic experiences with radioactivity, directing the NRC to reduce radiation protections. The National Academy of Sciences has repeatedly found that radiation increases the risk of cancer and other diseases. Only kooks and crackpots under the spell of a Dr. Strangelove-like infatuation with nuclear power say otherwise.”

“Another order,” Judson continued, “will slash the NRC’s staff and subjugate the agency to White House approval of its regulations and licensing decisions, ending even the pretense that an independent regulator will be there to protect the public health and safety. The root of the Fukushima Daichi nuclear meltdowns in 2011 was found to be the subjugation of a nuclear safety regulator to politicians and corporations. The disaster displaced over 100,000 people, shut down the whole nuclear industry, and will cost Japan up to $700 billion. President Trump’s executive orders will increase the changes that could happen here.”

And Judson, like many others, concludes: “The truth is, we can meet all of our energy needs, safely, securely, and affordably, with renewable energy sources that are ready to deploy today. In the last two years alone, the world brought online as much new wind and solar as the entire nuclear industry worldwide can generate after 60 years.”

The Trump pro-nuke executive orders have sparked immediate stock market jumps for Trump’s insider atomic cronies while promising almost incomprehensible losses for the rest of us which includes the spread of atomic machines prone to catastrophe, regularly spewing lethal radioactivity, producing unmanageable waste and this funded by trillions of public dollars.

It further will sink us all into what Forbes Magazine in 1985 described as “the largest managerial failure in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale,” in a lead article titled “Nuclear Follies.”

Meanwhile, renewables are more than ready now, safe power which we can live with. Yet while prices and production times for renewable sources plummet, Trump and his anti-green minions have been vigorously assaulting the wind, solar and other green energy technologies. Trump has attacked not only tax breaks and clean energy grants for the clean energy movement, he has also assaulted the permitting process for renewables, at the same time pushing to expedite it for nuclear power.

He has been joined by California’s “Green Democrat” Governor Gavin Newsom, who has showered subsidies on two decrepit reactors at Diablo Canyon while slashing permits and rate and tax supports for renewables and forcing California ratepayers to fork over $11 billion for the Diablo reactors which are near multiple earthquake fault lines and slated to now be closed, Diablo Canyon is the last nuclear plant running in California. Newsom has devastated the state’s once-booming rooftop solar industry, destroying at least 17,000 green jobs, while sticking California with the continental U.S.’s highest electric rates.

Democratic governors in Michigan, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois and elsewhere have also boosted nuclear power while assaulting renewables.

Led by Trump and Newsom, the corrupt corporate leadership of both political parties thus seems bound and determined to bankrupt and irradiate us all with deadly, “nuclear-clause”-covered atomic reactors that can’t compete with the otherwise vibrant, fast-evolving renewable revolution which they are so cynically aiming to kill.

Harvey Wasserman wrote the books Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth and The Peoples Spiral of US History. He helped coin the phrase “No Nukes.” He co-convenes the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition at www.electionprotection2024.org  Karl Grossman is the author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power and Power Crazy. He the host of the nationally-aired TV program Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman (www.envirovideo.com)

June 9, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear power: a dream not worth having

The Government wants more nuclear power stations, but renewable energy is cheaper, safer, and more sustainable.

by Steve Dawe,  7 June 2025, https://westenglandbylines.co.uk/business/energy/nuclear-power-a-dream-not-worth-having/

Labour is committed to building new nuclear power stations on eight coastal sites. Margaret Thatcher was also an enthusiast for nuclear power. She wanted one new nuclear power station built each year in the UK during the 1980s. Only one, Sizewell B, was built. Why? Because it cost too much, as was obvious in 1990:

Mr Illsley: “The Secretary of State must be aware that recent estimates have put the final cost of Sizewell B at about £3.8 bn, taking into account the cost overruns, delays and lack of economies of scale… £2bn can be saved by cancelling the project now. Does the Secretary of State agree that the time to cancel Sizewell B is right now?” 

(House of Commons Debates, 25 June 1990).

Renewables are cheaper

Sizewell B did not come online until 1995. The Government admitted in 2020 that renewables can be cheaper than they thought. Given decades of nuclear industry propaganda intended to obscure the deficiencies of this sector, support for nuclear appears less about stating a technology preference than an indirect political statement in favour of nuclear weapons.

We need electricity; we don’t need it to come from nuclear. But successive UK governments have used public money to subsidise the industries involved, instead of using it for things actually sustainable, cost-effective, and with minimal pollution. Keir Starmer has even ignored the nuclear watchdog when he blamed regulations for implementation delays.

The extensive range of reasons to oppose nuclear power

Here is a short list of some of the reasons to oppose new nuclear power stations, and phase out existing ones:

  • Nuclear power is too slow to implement to be relevant to the climate emergency. Construction times are an average of 10 years per nuclear power station.
  • Nuclear power stations are at risk of terrorist sabotage or attack in war, as has been demonstrated in Ukraine.

There are comprehensive reasons to oppose nuclear power, based partly on the British experience and that of other states recently. These also include:


  • The radioactive waste that needs storage for at least 100,000 years makes the true costs of nuclear power incalculable.
  • Part of the reason for this storage is the known health effects of radiation.
  • Since major nuclear accidents have continued to occur and spread radioactive material into the environment, preference for other means of generating electricity and for radically improving insulation in buildings to reduce energy needs is unarguable.
  • This is especially the case when the water implications are considered: nuclear power stations require water for cooling, on a planet with increasing droughts and extreme weather events. Nuclear power stations using water from watercourses have had to shut down during periods of drought, emphasising the desirability of solar and wind power which do not require water to operate.
  • Making it easier to build more nuclear power stations on the eight coastal sites the Government prefers completely ignores the risk of sea level rise discussed below. It is extraordinary that these sites have been chosen.

Hence, to quote from one of the recent critical analyses, new nuclear power is “doomed to fail“. It is certainly prone to extreme weather events such as storms, if the proposed sites are used.

Nuclear power supports nuclear weapons

Most countries in the world do not have nuclear weapons. Today, 120 countries belong to the Non-Aligned Movement, committing themselves not to belong to alliances which perpetuate long-term confrontations between states.

The UK Government admits part of its support for existing and new nuclear power stations is to maintain essential supplies to its nuclear weapons programme. What is true for the UK clearly applies to other states with nuclear weapons.

Since nuclear weapons proliferation is against the general interest of all species on the planet, phasing out both nuclear power and nuclear weapons would be rational when alternatives exist, are becoming cheaper, and are expanding in use year after year.

New nuclear is too expensive to consider

Nuclear power is notoriously expensive. The International Energy Agency reported in 2023 that new solar and on-shore wind are cheaper than fossil fuels. Greenpeace has summarised the current situation, comparing renewables to nuclear, as follows:

“The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per megawatt-hour (MWh), the World Nuclear Industry Status Report said, while onshore wind power comes in at $29–$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189 per MWh. Over the past decade, the World Nuclear Industry Status Report estimates levelised costs… for utility-scale solar have dropped by 88% and for wind by 69%. According to the same report, these costs have increased by 23% for nuclear.”

Worse for the British Government, an authoritative report asserts that the new nuclear power in the UK would actually be the world’s most expensive. Support by political parties in the UK for nuclear power is therefore a choice of the most expensive of options under consideration.

Jonathon Porritt, former head of the Government’s Sustainable Development Commission, has indicated that the cost of Hinkley C and Sizewell C are both likely to rise to about £75bn each. Others have argued that nuclear power may simply not be cost-effective in relation to realistic cost assessments including paying for very long-term radioactive waste storage.

The toxic twins: Hinkley C and Sizewell C

“Hinkley C in Somerset will cost the energy bill payer up to £17.6bn in subsidies. The agreed price of £92.50 per MW/hour is over double the current wholesale price at just over £41 per MW/hour.” (People Against Wylfa-B)

The construction costs were already predicted to rise by a third in early 2024, illustrating the general problem of high-cost infrastructure in the UK. Sizewell C costs were also predicted to double in early 2025.

Nuclear is never ‘clean’

The UK is  going ‘all out’ to be a clean energy superpower, said Keir Starmer.  But nuclear power has never been a ‘clean’ technology. Essentially, many alleged solutions to the problem of radioactive nuclear waste need to rely on perfect storage for 100,000 years.

This is a conception worthy of science fiction. Uranium mining is known to cause health problems in proximate populations, often to indigenous peoples.   

Small modular nuclear reactors – why bother?

The nuclear industry has problems with scaling up to reduce costs. Nuclear power construction and related expense means reduced costs do not materialise.

The small modular reactor (SMR) is allegedly going to change this. However, a US Department of Energy report of September 2024 suggested a cost per megawatt more than 50% higher than for large reactors.

There are only three operating SMRs: one in China, with a 300% cost overrun, and two in Russia, with 400% cost overrun. In March, a Financial Times analysis labelled such small reactors “the most expensive energy source.” Others concur that SMRs are very expensive, and slow to construct, with negative environmental implications.

Sea level rise and nuclear sites

All eight of the Government’s preferred sites for new nuclear power development are coastal. There are concerns about the impact of sea-level rises for all the sites. There should also be concerns about storms increasing in power and frequency too as the climate changes.

Hinkley and Sizewell are already in development. Will an island be created to protect the proposed Sizewell C site from the sea? Does the Government privately think this might be necessary for all eight sites?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) may have under-estimated sea level rise up to 2100. Scientific papers have been predicting higher sea level rises than the IPCC since at least 2012. It has been suggested that:  “All energy-related infrastructure is at risk from the impacts of climate change, especially due to the changing frequency and intensity of surface water and coastal flooding.”

And the rate of sea level rise has been increasing. Very low-lying sites like that of Sizewell C should be abandoned. And back in 1981, the Hinkley Point site was flooded, forcing closure of a nuclear power station there for a week.

Communities with nuclear legacies need alternatives

Communities with declining nuclear industry work would need alternative jobs. This is a general need for all localities experiencing employment transitions.

Each district and unitary council should have its own Green New Deal to promote and directly support just transitions. This would involve re-introducing a version of the Community Programme of the 1980s to employ people in projects and programmes, in cooperation with local voluntary bodies where possible. This should both support existing sustainability initiatives and help introduce new ones.

Training on the job should feature, to provide a better range of local skills appropriate to a just transition in areas like construction, forestry and nature, gardening, agriculture, energy efficiency, installing heat pumps in homes and more.

Just transition or another failure to future-proof the UK?

The colossal financial impact of nuclear power in the past and future in the UK is difficult to calculate, especially when radioactive waste storage is considered. The repercussions of public spending on this technology and its aftermath include inadequate spending on sustainable retrofitting of the existing built environment.

We certainly need electricity. We have never needed it to be specifically from nuclear power. The scale and diversity of energy alternatives are more than enough to meet future needs, including by increasing battery storage to address any potential problems in maintaining baseload supply.

Political will is absent. The long shadow of nuclear power remains in place over the major political parties, at public expense and with zero long-term vision.

June 9, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | 1 Comment

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