nuclear-news

Stop Sizewell C campaigner slams Labour lies over nuclear power

Alison Downes from the Stop Sizewell C campaign group spoke to Socialist Worker

Thursday 19 June 2025, https://socialistworker.co.uk/environment/stop-sizewell-c-campaigner-slams-labour-lies-over-nuclear-power/

Labour energy secretary Ed Miliband claims Britain needs new nuclear power plants “to deliver a golden age of clean energy abundance”. 

But Alison Downes from the Stop Sizewell C campaign group says it’s the last thing we need to stop climate breakdown.

The Labour government pledged over £14 billion last week towards building a new nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast. Construction of Sizewell C began last year, next to the live Sizewell B plant.

Alison told Socialist Worker she opposes it because of “the climate emergency and the need for quick, cost effective action to reduce our carbon emissions”. 

“This type of reactor has got such a bad track record in the other places where it’s been built, or attempted to be built,” she explained. 

“And the slowness of completion all count against it as a solution for a climate emergency.” 

The new nuclear plant would cost billions at a time when Labour is pushing austerity. Alison said, “In 2020 the cost was estimated at £20 billion and I think very credibly is now predicted at around £40 billion. 

“Our assumption is that at least 50 percent of Sizewell C would be paid for by the taxpayer.” 

She added, “A lot of this information is not in the public domain. Every time we ask, we get batted away with reasons of commercial confidentiality. 

“But our understanding is that the government still intends to be a majority owner in the project.”

Sizewell C, which will be built by French state-owned company EDF, is  expected to be operational some time in the 2030s. 

It will be funded using a Regulated Asset Base model. This will guarantee EDF a return on its investments and means that electricity suppliers will contribute to the cost of building the plant. 

“And that comes from consumer bills,” says Alison. “Consumers just have to keep paying for as long as the project is under construction.” 

Radioactive waste disposal underlines that nuclear power is not an environmentally-friendly option. 

In the long term, it would need to be stored deep underground. 

Alison explained, “A disposal facility for all of Britain’s waste is under consideration. But they still haven’t found a willing host community in a place where the geology is suitable. 

“We don’t really know when it would be available and how much it would cost. Sizewell B waste is here and is going to be here for decades to come. 

“And, of course, you have big question marks about the impacts of climate change. Every time new studies are released they suggest that those impacts are bigger and faster than previously thought.

“So you have to factor in the cost of keeping this site safe from flooding for a century or more.”

The leaderships of the Unite and GMB unions have enthusiastically welcomed the Sizewell C announcement.  

Alison said, “Well, of course, major infrastructure projects bring jobs. We definitely agree that opportunities for young people are very important. But they’re not necessarily very long term jobs. 

“There was a major boom and bust in this area when Sizewell B was built. A lot of people feel that the area has really struggled in the aftermath as a result of the crash once construction was finished.

“The thing that really frustrates us about this is that the number of permanent long term jobs at Sizewell C is relatively small. It’s about 700 with a couple of hundred contractors.” 

Alison said that home insulation would make people’s energy bills go down and create thousands of new jobs. 

Stop Sizewell C has run advertising campaigns on the London Underground, lobbied county councils, met with ministers and stopped pension funds from investing in the project. 

“Keir Starmer was due to come here last week and he cancelled at short notice,” said Alison. “I think he probably thought that it might be wise to stay away.”

Unions should fight for investment in green energy and a just transition for workers in nuclear. 

June 21, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

A golden nuclear age

‘the last thing variable renewables need is inflexible nuclear plants: they are incompatible.’

June 14, 2025, Renew Extra Weekly

 Nuclear power will help take us into a ‘golden age of clean energy abundance’. So said UK Energy Secretary Ed Milliband, in the run up to the public spending review. He announced an extra £14.2 billion in state support for EdFs proposed 3.2GW Sizewell C European Pressurised-water Reactor (EPR) and also £2.5bn for small modular reactor support, with Rolls Royce having won the UK Small Modular Reactor (SMR) competition. There would also be £2.5bn to support fusion. 

Whereas there has been a lot a concern about the cost of Sizewell, given the delays and over-runs with its sister EPR plant at Hinkley, it was argued that the second plant would benefit from the lessons learnt, and certainly Miliband was very single-minded about it: ‘all of the expert advice says nuclear has a really important role to play in the energy system. In any sensible reckoning, this is essential to get to our clean power and net zero ambitions.’ 

Not everyone agreed with that, and, in any case, as the Stop Sizewell C campaign said, ‘there still appears to be no final investment decision for Sizewell C’, with agreements on the remaining substantial private funding still being negotiated. And it noted that ‘every pound sunk into risky, expensive Sizewell C is a pound lost to alternative energy sources and critical social funding that the voting public cares deeply about. It’s not too late to redirect money to offshore wind, or warm homes – creating thousands of jobs – or to restoring the most unpopular and unjust cuts. Sizewell C, given the terrible track record of Hinkley Point C, would be £40 billion badly spent.’

However, Labour seems totally committed to it, although there was some wry media commentary that this might be what sinks Millband’s career- and also about the dubiousness of the nuclear investments and associated fiscal rule changes.  There certainly is plenty of potential for things to go awry, and, despite what Milliband claimed, plenty of experts who have warned about the risks and uncertainties of new nuclear, including SMRs. And on costs, the Royal Society had earlier concluded that, even with storage back up, renewables were likely to be cheaper than nuclear. Interestingly, Scotland is still sticking to its no nuclear approach. And there was plenty of opposition from the rest of the UK.

The large-scale new reactor funding (nearly £20bn in all) was the only significant energy-related allocation in the Spending Review, unless you include the £15bn for trams and local transport outside London. The £15bn allocated specifically to nuclear weapons upgrading, for the delightfully named sovereign warhead programme, was unrelated, but, as CND noted, there are some links between civil and military nuclear technology development, including reactors for submarines.  There had been hopes from devotees that Carbon Capture would get a lot more funding. It already had £22bn, and so ought to be more than content with the £9.4 bn extra allocation. It did seem to go down well.

As for renewables, there’s just £300m (actually already announced), for Great British Energy to upgrade Offshore wind supply chains. Although to be fair, there will also be support for some renewable projects from the Research Councils and from the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), which of course also supports the private sector CfD based renewable auction market system. The Spending Review also says the government is supporting ‘the development of home-grown clean power’, including ‘by confirming up to £80 million over the SR period for port investment to support floating offshore wind deployment in Port Talbot, subject to final due diligence’, while ‘Great British Energy and Great British Energy – Nuclear will invest more than £8.3 billion over this Parliament in homegrown clean power’.  Make that what you will- it’s been suggested that it means more for SMRs, less for renewables!  But Carbon Brief notes that, overall, there’s a 16% rise (to £12.6bn) in DESNZ spending- not including the nuclear investment.  

The spending review isn’t about policy formulation, but of course it does reflect policy, so what we are seeing is the triumphant renewal of nuclear, although renewables are still seen as all import, very little new public money in being allocated to them. Even AI got £2bn!  But perhaps you can’t read too much into that. Milliband is clearly still keen on net zero with renewables being central (aiming for around 60GW by 2030), with CCUS, and now nuclear, playing smaller bit parts, along with some residual fossil gas. 

So renewables will continue to lead. They are now supplying over 50% of UK power and are still expanding fast. Nuclear has fallen to 15% and will fall further as the old AGR plants are closed, before picking up again when Hinkley finally gets going and then some more if Sizewell really does get built, along possibly with some SMRs, in the 2030s. So maybe 25% of power by then? 

There will no doubt continue to be objections to each of the energy options. Certainly to nuclear, but also to CCUS and to fossil gas.  And inevitably also to renewables – as well as to the whole ‘net zero’ idea.  For example, predictably, the Global Warming Policy Foundation has produced a new report which claims that ‘net zero will bankrupt Britain.’ For example, it says ‘the Government’s plans ensure that bills are likely to go up, rather than fall as claimed’, with new subsidies for variable renewable energy locking in further price rises for consumers. It also warns about the increasing cost of grid balancing. 

Instead of this, the GWPF report seems to favour a return to fossil fuel. It says ‘the potential of the UK’s shale gas resources has also gone unexplored. A new discovery in Lincolnshire, known as the Gainsborough Trough, could add £112 billion to UK GDP, according to a study by Deloitte’. Farage seems to be saying the same sort of thing – even calling for a return to coal mining in Wales. So, they both seem to be saying let’s not worry too much about emissions – let’s go backwards. Labour is not doing that, although some might think its conversion from an anti-nuclear party in the 1980s to a militantly pro-nuclear one now, has involved a bit of backtracking, and a lack of consistent vision.

Personally, as I said in response to the Labour Party’s invitation to submit comments to its National Policy Forum consultation on energy policy, I do not think we need renewables and nuclear, not least since ‘the last thing variable renewables need is inflexible nuclear plants: they are incompatible.’ Quite apart from the costs and the safety and security risks, which I have looked at elsewhere, I think it’s foolish to build large expensive plants that are only used occasionally for backup. The same is true for an isolated fleet of SMRs- trying to make them flexible enough to provide grid balancing is likely to make them even more costly.  Instead,  I pointed out that ‘there are UK scenarios in which renewables expand to supply almost all energy needs by 2050 led by wind and solar’, with full short and long term storage and flexible system balancing, at reasonable costs, although I did warn that ‘ dealing with interannual cycles may require import/grid trading options to be explored. But having inflexible nuclear plants doesn’t help at all- they just get in the way’. 

It’s fascinating stuff trying to ensure zero carbon green energy system flexibility and sustainability at low cost, as I have reported in Renew over the years, but Labour now seems to see nuclear as a key option. As a result, although there are some good things (e.g. on warm housing) in the new spending review, I’m not sure, given also their stance on some other key issues, how much longer I can stay being a member.

June 18, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

Who are Britain Remade?

Britain Remade is a Tory think-tank and lobby group campaigning on behalf of nuclear power.

By Mike Small, https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2025/05/01/who-are-britain-remade/

There’s a concerted attempt to attack Scotland’s long-standing commitment to no new nuclear power, alongside a full-scale assault on the idea of Net Zero, and the very basics of climate policy (however inadequate mainstream policy is).

This is being led by Nigel Farage who has called Net Zero ‘the New Brexit’, whatever that means. All this has been echoed by Tony Blair’s intervention this week where he argued that any attempt to limit fossil fuels in the short term or encourages people to limit consumption is “doomed to fail”. Alongside this we can see Scottish Labour’s recent commitment to the cause of new nuclear power in Scotland.

Today The Scotsman ran with a front-page splash all about how ‘SNP voters back nuclear power’ by Deputy Political Editor David Bol and Alexander Brown.

he article was replete with quotes from Labour MSP for East Lothian, Martin Whitfield, Scottish Conservative MP, John Lamont, who said the Scottish Government embracing nuclear power would be “basic common sense”. Then there’s a quote from Sam Richards, founder and campaign director for Britain Remade, who, it turns out commissioned the poll and was also enthusiastically pro-nuclear.

What The Scotsman didn’t explain though, was who ‘Britain Remade’ are? They’re presented as if they’re maybe pollsters or some independent think-tank.

But Britain Remade is a Tory think-tank and lobby group campaigning on behalf of nuclear power. Jason Brown is Head of Communications for Britain Remade, a former No. 10 media Special Adviser and Ben Houchen’s comms Adviser.

Jeremy Driver is the Head of Campaigns at Britain Remade, a former Lloyds Banker and Parliamentary Assistant to Ann Soubry. Sam Dumitriu is Head of Policy at Britain Remade who formerly worked at the Adam Smith Institute. These are Tory SPADS working on their own campaign to support new nuclear in Scotland: Lift The Ban On New Scottish Nuclear Power.

Britain Remade claimed they are not affiliated: “We’re an independent grassroots organisation. We are not affiliated with, or part of, any political party” their website says. They may not be officially affiliated to any party, but it’s very clear where their politics (and their staff) come from.

So here we have the Scotsman giving over its front-page to a Tory lobby group to promote their campaign. On the same day they published a similar piece in the Telegraph “SNP’s ‘senseless’ nuclear ban ‘damaging Scotland’” so it’s really working for them.

This is not just a question of client journalism, it’s a question of how far right-wing forces, often working with dark money, will attempt to derail even the most modest (and completely inadequate) environmental policies. Quite why Saudi-funded Tony Blair should jump on the anti Net Zero bandwagon is anybody’s guess, but it’s quite clear there is a coordinated pro-nuclear lobbying group in action in Scotland that pans across the Conservatives and Labour parties, and is supported by astroturf groups and pliant media friends. Watch this space for more on the new nuclear lobby.

May 7, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

TONY BLAIR: STILL A NUCLEAR NUTTER!

 https://jonathonporritt.com/tony-blair-nuclear-energy-failure/ 6 Dec 24

Earlier in the week, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change brought out a new report grandiloquently titled: “Revitalising Nuclear: The UK Can Power AI And Leave The Clean Energy Transition”.

In essence, it’s little more than a re-run of today’s standard nuclear propaganda – plus two things:

First, a highly flaky retrospective looking back to 1986 to calculate what would have happened to the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions if anti-nuclear campaigners’ “inaccurate post-Chernobyl narrative” hadn’t reduced us to a nation of nuclear sceptics; second, an even more flaky look ahead to the ‘new nuclear age’ that is now so desperately needed to provide the electricity to “power AI”.

It’s total tosh – and, as such, I really do urge you to read it!For me, however, reading it was a weird experience, transporting me back 20 years to Tony Blair’s premiership and his evangelical conversion to the cause of nuclear energy in 2005. Before that, he’d more or less gone along with his own Government’s Energy White Paper of 2003, which was distinctly nuclear-sceptic – interpreted widely at the time as “kicking nuclear into the long grass”.

During those two years, however, the “deep nuclear state” duly “put him right” (on military as much as on energy grounds), and although the Sustainable Development Commission (of which I was then the Chair) and many other think tanks and expert advisers were assiduously reinforcing the 2003 White Paper’s non-nuclear priorities, Tony Blair duly announced that he obviously knew better than everybody else, and that “nuclear was back on the agenda with a vengeance”.

The consequences of that decision are obviously not as severe as Tony Blair’s ineffable arrogance in enthusiastically backing George Bush’s insane decision to invade Iraq in 2003 – which he still argues was the “right thing to do”, despite more than 20 years of consequential mayhem in the Middle East.

It can be argued, however, that his nuclear fantasies at that time have screwed up energy policy in the UK ever since. That nuclear baton was passed on to Gordon Brown and on and on through to Kier Starmer, with all Prime Ministers in between espousing a fantastical faith in the future of nuclear power and the contribution it will make to our low-carbon energy future.

Quick reality check: by way of electrons from NEW nuclear power stations feeding into the grid, the UK’s vengeance-driven nuclear industry has delivered NOT ONE throughout those 20 years. NOT ONE! And it will still be not NOT ONE until 2030 at the earliest.

(EDF’s PWR at Sizewell B came online in 1995). The only new power station under construction (at Hinkley Point C in Somerset) will not come online until 2030 at the earliest.

According to the Tony Blair Institute, this is all the fault of the UK’s mind-blowingly powerful anti-nuclear movement, with all its incredibly well-funded campaigns (only joking!), persuading otherwise intelligent people that even to talk about nuclear power will cause severe radiation sickness (still only joking!). What are Blair’s wonks on? How can otherwise intelligent people just wish away 20 years of chronic incompetence, financial mismanagement and engineering inadequacies on the part of the nuclear industry itself?

I jest, but only because it’s so serious. One can only speculate how much further down the road to a Net Zero future we’d be if we hadn’t had this nuclear cloud hanging over us all this time – in terms of accelerated investments in energy efficiency (particularly housing retrofits), renewables, storage (both short-term and long-term) and reconfigured grids. The Institute’s report claims (straight off the back of its very big envelope) that the UK’s emissions would be 6% lower if we’d just listened to Tony Blair at the time. I do hope someone will do a counterfactual analysis of how much lower they’d be if we’d just gone down that alternative route.

But the dysfunctionality just goes on and on. GBNF (Great British Nuclear Fiasco) now presides over one costly decision after another. Because Hinkley Point C won’t be coming online until after 2030, EDF has had to persuade the Office For Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to extend the lifetime of its remaining fleet of AGRs – which I’m not necessarily opposed to, by the way, as long as the safety case for so doing is as robust as ONR/EDF would have us believe.Rather more problematically, the ONR has also agreed to extend the operating lifetime of Sizewell B to 60 years – through to 2055. That’s a bit different.

What people don’t realise is that when you extend the lifetime of a nuclear reactor you’re also extending the lifetime of all the waste it’s produced in operation being stored on site for decades after it comes offline. Let’s just say, with Sizewell B, through to the end of the century.

Which brings me on to Sizewell C.

On Tuesday (3^rd December), I was sitting there in Court 46 in the Royal Courts of Justice in London listening to what at first hearing sounded like a very geeky legal argument about how to interpret a particular clause in the 1965 Nuclear Installation Act: does the ONR, or does it not, have an obligation, in its issuing of a licence for a new reactor, to impose conditions at the time of issuing the licence on the operator (i.e. EDF) covering material safety risks that should be taken into consideration?

“Yes it does”, in the opinion of Stop Sizewell C, bringing the challenge to ONR’s decision not to attach specific conditions to its licence for Sizewell C. The material safety risk at the heart of this challenge relates to the sea defences that will be required to protect Sizewell C into the future, about which there is nothing explicit in the license.

A bit of maths: IF Sizewell C ever gets a Final Investment Decision from the Government (mid-2025 at the earliest), and IF EDF hasn’t run out of money by then, construction could start in 2027/2028. Allow ten years for construction (I’m being kind). So, Sizewell C comes online in 2037, with a projected lifetime of 60 years – as with Sizewell B – through to 2097.

Set that against the latest projections from the (super-conservative) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that we should be anticipating a minimum of a one metre sea level rise by 2100.

And then try and imagine the scale of sea defences that will be required to ‘defend’ Sizewell C through to the end of the century from at least a metre higher sea levels, plus storm surges and so on – let alone to whatever time will be required to store the nuclear waste arising from its operations. A ‘material risk’? I think so.

But that was not the opinion of Mrs Justice Lieven, the Judge hearing Stop Sizewell C’s challenge. She obviously ‘knew her stuff’ ( as she should, having worked previously as a lawyer for Hinkley Point C!), but her perfunctory dismissal of the challenge was quite astonishing.

I blame both Tony Blair – a critical part of the whole deep nuclear state working away behind the scenes – as well as the UK’s astonishingly gullible media which just goes along with all this nuclear crap, year after year after year.

May 3, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

Campaigner hits out at ‘PR trick’ nuclear energy poll of SNP members

By Laura Pollock, Multimedia Journalist, 1 May 25, https://www.thenational.scot/news/25131226.campaigner-hits-pr-trick-nuclear-energy-poll-snp-members/

A LEADING independence activist has hit out at a recent poll suggesting roughly half of the SNP’s voters believe nuclear power should be part of Scotland’s mix of clean energy generation.

Robin McAlpine, founder of pro-independence think tank Common Weal, has branded the polling a “PR trick based on deliberately withholding crucial information”, claiming people who responded were not given “the basic facts”.

Polling for the campaign group Britain Remade, founded by a former energy adviser to Boris Johnson, found 52% of those who voted for the party in 2021 believe nuclear power should be included in Scotland’s energy mix to meet the 2045 net zero target.

Meanwhile, 57% of those who voted for the party in last year’s general election felt the same way, the poll found. A total of 56% of Scots thought nuclear power should be part of Scotland’s clean energy mix to meet the targets, while 23% disagreed, and 21% said they did not know.

Opinium surveyed 1000 Scottish adults between April 22 and 25.

However, McAlpine argues those quizzed on the topic were not aware of key points as laid out in a blog post for pro-independence Common Weal Common Weal.

He highlights the price of hydrogen electricity being cheaper than nuclear, as well as the hidden costs of building and decommissioning nuclear infrastructure.

“Would SNP voters back nuclear if it was explained that it will cost them three times as much as renewables and then also cost nearly £5000 per household just to clean them up?” McAlpine told The National.

He further questioned: “Do people know that it is much cheaper to run a renewable system with battery storage for short-term load balancing and hydrogen storage for long term battery storage? Are they aware that you can’t turn nuclear power on and off and that it has to run at full power all the time? So it can’t balance renewables when the wind isn’t blowing, it can only displace renewables from the grid.

“The only conceivable purpose of nuclear in Britain is to power the south of England. Look at Fukushima, look at the power stations in Ukraine, how much risk do you want to take when you have absolutely no need to do it? 

“If people are told ‘more expensive, much more dangerous, can’t be switched up or down or turned off, costs an absolute fortune to decommission at the end’, I think you’ll find they answer differently.”

Britain Remade has been approached for comment.

The SNP have argued nuclear power projects remain too expensive to be a viable alternative to renewable power.

Responding to the polling, SNP MSP Bill Kidd said: “Our focus is delivering a just transition that supports communities and creates long-term economic opportunities to build a truly sustainable future.

“Nuclear remains one of the most costly forms of energy with projects like Hinkley Point C running billions over budget and years behind schedule.

“In contrast, Scotland’s net zero transition is already delivering thousands of green jobs across energy, construction, innovation, and engineering. This number will continue to grow.

“Simply, renewables are cheaper to produce and develop, create more jobs, and are safer than nuclear as they don’t leave behind radioactive waste that will be deadly for generations.

“While Labour funnels billions into slow, centralised projects, the SNP is focused on creating real, sustainable jobs in Scotland now.”

May 3, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment