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/
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.”
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
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
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
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/
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)
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.
Secure Scotland responds to the UK Strategic Defence Review.
Time for a better conversation about what keeps us safe
The UK Strategic Defence Review 2025, published on the publications page
of the www.gov.uk website on the 2nd June, is sub-headed ‘secure at home
and strong abroad’
In this so-called defence review, the UK Government
have expressed irresponsible, opportunistic and delusional plans. The
document lays out a (hopefully) completely unachievable plan for an ever
more hostile, aggressive and colonialist set of behaviours that will do
nothing to address the climate emergency, historical transnational
ideological differences, or the starvation, homelessness and gendered
violence that offer the real threat to people. * Instead, their approach
puts all of the people that the government has responsibility to care for,
even more in harm’s way.
secure scotland, Jun 06, 2025,
https://substack.com/inbox/post/165303098
Revulsion for Israel surges worldwide, new survey finds
Ali Abunimah Rights and Accountability 4 June 2025, https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/revulsion-israel-surges-worldwide-new-survey-finds
Twenty months into its livestreamed and accelerating genocide in Gaza, it would hardly be controversial to conclude that Israel is one of the world’s most hated countries.
But a new global survey from the US-based Pew Research Center indicates just how unpopular it has become, especially in the North American and European states where Tel Aviv has always drawn its main sources of financial, military and political support.
“In 20 of the 24 countries surveyed, around half of adults or more have an unfavorable view of Israel,” Pew reported on 3 June. “Around three-quarters or more hold this view in Australia, Greece, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Turkey.”
Pew says it last asked the question in 10 of the countries included in its new survey in 2013. “In seven of these countries, the share of adults with a negative view of Israel has increased significantly.”
Israel was most unpopular in Turkey, with 93 percent of respondents viewing it unfavorably. Turkey was the only country in the immediate region of Palestine to be surveyed by Pew.
Among European publics surveyed, Israel was viewed most negatively in the Netherlands (78 percent), a remarkable fact in a country whose governments have traditionally been staunchly pro-Israel.
Even in Hungary – whose leader Viktor Orban welcomed Benjamin Netanyahu to Budapest earlier this year in spite of the international arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister – 53 percent of the public views Israel negatively.
Historic shift in US
In the United States – Israel’s biggest financier and arms supplier – 53 percent of those surveyed now have a negative view of Israel – an 11-point surge since 2022, according to Pew.
In recent years, surveys have consistently found that Israel is overwhelmingly unpopular with majorities of Democrats, younger Americans and people of color.
But it is an entirely new phenomenon for a majority of the US population overall to view Israel negatively.
The erosion of support for Israel in the United States – particularly among younger people – has long worried Israel and its lobby groups as a potential threat to long-term US support for Israel.
That likely explains why the Trump administration has focused its unconstitutional crackdown on free speech critical of Israel on college campuses, in an effort to scare the younger generation into line.
The turn to heavy-handed censorship, not just in the US but across Europe, is also an admission that efforts to equate disapproval of Israel’s crimes with anti-Semitism, or to burnish its brand with expensive PR campaigns, can do nothing against the horrific reality streamed daily from Gaza to peoples phones.
Break on the American right?
In many of the countries where it conducted surveys, Pew observes that “people who place themselves on the left have a more negative view of Israel than those on the right.”
But that ideological gap is most pronounced in the US, according to Pew, where “74 percent of liberals have a negative view of Israel, compared with 30 percent of conservatives.”
Still, in an April survey of Americans, Pew found a sharp rise in the number of Republican voters who view Israel unfavorably – from 27 percent to 37 percent – indicating that Israel is losing support across the political spectrum.
In recent years, there has been a notable new phenomenon of prominent right-wing commentators, like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Judge Andrew Napolitano, voicing skepticism and sometimes harsh criticism of Israel and US support for it that once seemed unthinkable.
The rise of Israel skeptics within the Trump administration and the US right more generally has reportedly led Netanyahu to confide in close aides that “that he misjudged the direction the US was taking on Israel and the broader Middle East,” Israel’s Ynet reported.
With notable standouts like Napolitano, a vocal supporter of Palestinian rights on moral grounds, the break in the pro-Israel consensus on the American right is driven more by disagreements about where Israel fits into an “America First” vision and a perception that Israel pushes for the US to engage in disastrous wars on its behalf.
To be sure, whatever ill feeling there may be in the White House toward Israel and its leader has not resulted in any US pressure on Israel to halt the genocide.
Israel’s reputation tanks in Europe
Public pressure does nevertheless seem to be having an effect in other Western countries, where staunchly pro-Israel governments are stepping up their criticism of Israel.
In May, France, the United Kingdom and Canada threatened Israel with unspecified “concrete actions” if it does not end its starvation siege of Gaza.
And just last week, Ireland became the first Western country and member of the EU to declare at the highest level that Israel is perpetrating genocide in Gaza.
The European Union is also “reviewing” its Association Agreement with Israel, amid growing calls to suspend the lucrative trade deal.
Given that the EU recently bragged about adopting its 17th sanctions “package” against Russia since 2022, these declarations about Israel appear woefully late and inadequate.
With Israel openly exterminating Palestinians, through relentless bombing and starvation, Brussels has yet to impose anything other than token sanctions on Tel Aviv.
And yet, there are signs of movement. Spain this week canceled a $310 million arms purchase from Israeli weapons company Rafael amid reported moves by Madrid “to reduce Spain’s reliance on Israeli defense technology in light of Israel’s ongoing military operations in Gaza.”
In Spain, according to Pew, 75 percent of the public holds a negative view of Israel.
These moves may be little and late, but they would likely not have happened at all without constant, vocal public outrage at Israel’s crimes and the complicity of European and other governments.
They are signs that public pressure and protest matter and are more important than ever to bring a halt to this genocide.
Nuclear Power will ruin France
Nuclear power will ruin France , by Laure Nouahlat, published by Seuil , May 16, 2025, 224 p., 13.50 euros.
Neither the French population, nor any parliamentarian or senator had their say, as if nuclear power were democratically held above ground.
Reporterre 16th May 2025,
https://reporterre.net/Le-nucleaire-va-ruiner-la-France
Despite the staggering cost of all-nuclear power, France is stuck in this impasse. Here are the excerpts from the investigative book ”
Nuclear Power Will Ruin France
.” Laure Noualhat dissects the mechanisms of this waste.
Is nuclear revival reasonable ? According to Emmanuel Macron and many others, the nuclear ” holy grail “ would be the only solution to slow climate change and preserve our comfort. While the government is making savings at every turn, the sector seems to benefit from an unlimited budget.
It was announced Monday that the Cigéo nuclear waste disposal facility in Bure will cost up to €37.5 billion. To revive the industry, the bill will climb to at least €80 billion. As delays mount, these amounts are continually revised upwards. All this while EDF is already heavily in debt.
Where will the tens of billions of euros for these new EPRs be found ? And the necessary investments in the existing fleet ? It will be the State, that is, the taxpayer, who will pay.
This is what journalist Laure Noualhat demonstrates in her relentless investigative book, Nuclear Power Will Ruin France . The result of six months of investigation, it is published today in the Seuil- Reporterre collection and will be accompanied by a documentary broadcast on YouTube in early June. Through this extensive work, Reporterre is tackling a crucial issue for the future of the country, largely absent from public debate. Because these choices are made in total secrecy, Reporterre is shedding light on a subject that concerns us all.
Here are the previews of “ Nuclear Power Will Ruin France ”:
What were you doing on February 10, 2022 ? For the small world of energy, it was a memorable day. On that day, presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron stood behind a lectern under the immense tin roof of the General Electric plant in Belfort. His voice echoed like a cathedral. Behind him, GE teams had positioned a gigantic Arabelle turbine, 300 tons of gleaming steel lit as if it were an industrial museum piece.
A group of masked employees, all wearing the same electric blue construction jackets, listens learnedly to the president. Four years earlier, these women and men were part of Alstom’s energy division, the industrial flagship that former Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron had conscientiously dismantled during his time at the Ministry of Finance.
No matter, on this Thursday, February 10, the now President has just announced the ” rebirth “ of French nuclear power, boasted of national ” sovereignty “ and praised the merits of ” planning “ to address the challenges of the moment: reducing our CO2 emissions by 55 % by 2050, ensuring France’s industrial development, and controlling the French people’s energy bill.
No law regulates presidential will
Regardless of the background—environmental, energy, nuclear, activist, industrial, or political—this speech hit the mark and is historic. With its delivery, President-candidate Macron has just rescued France from decades of uncertainty by relaunching the mass construction of nuclear reactors. Since its approval in 2003 by the National Assembly, the Flamanville EPR project has been mired in endless setbacks. In 2012, President Hollande chose a contrary path by enshrining in law the reduction of nuclear power’s share to 50 % of the electricity mix by 2025 (compared to 65-70 %) and to 30 % by 2030. In short, the socialist planned a slow phase-out of nuclear power, allowing for the preparation of the decommissioning of the oldest reactors, the ramp-up of renewables, and an unprecedented effort toward energy efficiency.
In February 2017, candidate Macron – a former minister under Hollande – took up this promise.
”
I will maintain the framework of the energy transition law. I am therefore maintaining the 50
% target,
“ he confided to the
WWF during a Facebook Live broadcast watched by 170,000 people and interviewed by… Pascal Canfin, who will join the President’s list for the 2019 European elections.
Five years later, facing General Electric employees, the Jupiterian president performed an about-face. Six
EPR2s will emerge, he promises, built in pairs on three sites: in Penly in Normandy, in Gravelines in the North, and in Bugey in the Ain. And eight more will be under consideration. Neither the French population, nor any parliamentarian or senator had their say, as if nuclear power were democratically held above ground. Since this announcement, the program of the six EPR2s
has still not been validated by any legal decision, much less by an ”
energy and climate programming law
” (
PPE ), which should have been revised for the occasion.
To date, in 2025, no law governs the presidential will shaped by long years of lobbying (by associations such as Xavier Moreno’s Cérémé or Bernard Accoyer’s Nuclear Heritage & Climate, but also Voies du nucléaire or the French Nuclear Energy Society) since his arrival in power.
A colossal cost
Knocking down walls or hiding the misery, insulating here or repainting there, moving the pipes, changing the door… it’s difficult to ask a tradesman for a quote for work if you don’t know what you’re going to do. It’s the same with nuclear reactors.
As these lines are being written, in March 2025, three years after the Belfort speech, no one knows how much the EPR2 will cost . This is normal: their detailed design has not been completed despite the 10.5 million hours of engineering already devoted to the project.
In February 2022, the government had put forward a construction cost of 51.7 billion (2020 euros). In 2023,
EDF made two updates to the costing, noted by the Court of Auditors in its report on the
EPR sector in January 2025:
”
The overnight construction cost [as if the reactor were completed in a single night] of three pairs of
EPR2s rose from 51.7 to 67.4 billion euros [2020 euros], an increase of 30
% under unchanged economic conditions and excluding the effect of inflation.
“ In 2023 euros, the bill reaches 80 billion. For comparison, this figure of 80 billion already represents four times the annual deficit of the Social Security…
Ukraine “Stinks Of Authoritarianism” – Kiev Mayor Klitschko Hits Out At Zelensky
Meanwhile, after earlier in the week calling for three way meetings between himself, President Trump and Putin, Zelensky has now declared that it would be “meaningless” and instead wants more military aid.
by Tyler Durden, Tuesday, Jun 03, 2025
Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,
The former mayor of Kiev, Vitali Klitschko has blasted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and bluntly stated that the country is plagued by authoritarianism.
The former world heavyweight champion boxer told the Times of London that Kiev City Council essentially cannot operate because of “raids, interrogations and threats of fabricated criminal proceedings.”
“This is a purge of democratic principles and institutions under the guise of war,” Klitschko declared, adding “I once said that it smells of authoritarianism in our country. Now it stinks of it.”
The Times describes Zelensky and Klitschko as being in a “de facto state of war.”
The report notes that the Ukrainian government has arrested seven Kiev city officials as part of ongoing investigations targeting an alleged criminal network involved in corruption cases related to urban development.
“Many mayors are intimidated, but my celebrity status is a protection,” Klitschko stated, adding “You can dismiss the mayor of Chernihiv, but it is very difficult to dismiss the mayor of the capital, whom the whole world knows.”
“That is why everything is being done to discredit and destroy my reputation,” he further urged.
Zelensky has reportedly been considering arresting Klitscho after he called for the President to consider ceeding Crimea to Russia as part of a peace deal.
This fued has been ongoing for sometime. A year and a half ago, Klitschko urged that Zelensky failed to prepare Ukraine properly for the war with Russia and will “pay for his mistakes.”
Meanwhile, after earlier in the week calling for three way meetings between himself, President Trump and Putin, Zelensky has now declared that it would be “meaningless” and instead wants more military aid.
A major escalation is expected after Ukraine launched a massive drone attack on Russian airbases Sunday, which many are equating with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Sizewell C nuclear power plant ‘could get go-ahead within weeks’
Keir Starmer expected to confirm result of 15-year search for investment at UK-France summit next month
Jillian Ambrose, 3 June 25, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jun/03/sizewell-c-nuclear-power-plant-keir-starmer-uk-france-edf
UK ministers could give the go-ahead to the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk within weeks, according to reports.
Keir Starmer is expected to give the final nod to begin construction of Britain’s second new nuclear power project in a generation, alongside the French nuclear developer EDF, at a Franco-British summit next month.
The final approval for Sizewell C, first reported by the Financial Times, would mark the end of a 15-year journey to secure investment for the plant since the site was first earmarked for new nuclear development in 2010.
The government is understood to be in the final stages of securing billions of pounds of investment from the private sector to back the project, which follows the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant, which is under construction in Somerset.
Ministers are expected to use the government’s spending review, scheduled for 11 June, to set out the UK’s investment in the project, which will ultimately rely on a mix of funding from taxpayers and via energy bills.
The final go-ahead from Starmer and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, will then follow during the Anglo-French summit due to take place in London on 8-10 July, according to the Financial Times.
The UK government’s stake in the project stood at 84% at the end of last year compared with EDF’s 16% share of the project. The French state’s cash-strapped utilities company is understood to be eager to reduce its stake in the project even further.
Potential investors in the project according to the report include Schroders Greencoat, Equitix, the Canadian pension fund CDPQ, Amber Infrastructure Partners, Brookfield Asset Management, the UK pension fund USS and the insurer Rothesay, backed by the Singaporean infrastructure fund GIC.
EDF had originally planned to build the nuclear plant alongside China’s state nuclear developer China General Nuclear Power Corp, which also holds a stake in the Hinkley Point C project, but its partner was forced to step back from the project by the UK government on security grounds.
The project has secured £6.4bn of government funding to support its development to date, of which £2.5bn was granted by the Conservative government under Rishi Sunak and a further £3.9bn has come from the current Labour administration.
UK government has already allocated £6.4bn to the Sizewell C nuclear project!
The Sizewell C Development Expenditure Subsidy Scheme (DEVEX Scheme) has
been made for £5.5bn for the Sizewell C company. Under this scheme to
date, £3.9bn has been awarded to the company, in two tranches, one of
£1.2bn and one of £2.7bn. Prior to these awards, the Department had
awarded £2.5bn to the project since the Government Investment Decision in
November 2022 under the SZC Investment Funding Scheme. Hence, in total, the
Department has to date allocated £6.4bn to the project under both subsidy
scheme.
Hansard 2nd June 2025
UIN 54121, tabled on 21 May 2025
https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2025-05-21/54121
Sizewell C nuclear project to get go-ahead during Anglo-French summit
UK ministers hope to sign up private sector investors for new Suffolk power
plant later this month. The new Sizewell C nuclear power station is
expected to get the final go-ahead during an Anglo-French summit in London
next month, as UK ministers edge towards securing billions of investment
from the private sector.
Darren Jones, a Treasury minister, told the
Financial Times earlier this year that the final investment decision for
Sizewell C, where shareholders formally commit to the investment, would be
“at the spending review” on June 11. Ministers are expected to reaffirm
the government’s intention to invest in Sizewell in or around the
spending review, according to people close to the situation, with details
expected on how much they could allocate in taxpayer support for the
project.
However, the final go-ahead is not expected until an announcement
by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron
during the Franco-British summit in London between July 8 and July 10,
according to people close to the talks in Britain and France. By then the
government and EDF will have received final bids from several private
investors who have been given a deadline of late June, allowing the formal
final investment decision to proceed.
Groups expected to bid for a stake in
Sizewell include insurer Rothesay, backed by the Singaporean infrastructure
fund GIC, the Canadian pension fund CDPQ, Amber Infrastructure Partners,
Brookfield Asset Management, pension fund USS, Schroders Greencoat and
Equitix, people close to the talks have said. Centrica, the owner of
British Gas, has also confirmed that it is in talks to invest in the
project.
FT 3rd June 2025,
https://www.ft.com/content/25927b63-6ce5-4964-b8df-086c010148f8
1 This Month
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
Petition to revoke the licensing of the Near Surface Nuclear Disposal Facility (NSDF) at Chalk River. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7247
of the week – STOP SMALL MODULAR REACTORS IN CANADA
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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