Inside the power-hungry data centres taking over Britain.
Our thirst for AI is fuelling a new construction wave: of giant data centres. But can ourelectricity and water systems cope — and what will the neighbours say?
Plants [like the one] run by the company Stellium on the outskirts of
Newcastle upon Tyne, are springing up across the country.
There are already
more than 500 data centres operating in the UK, many of which have been
around since the Nineties and Noughties. They grew in number as businesses and governments digitised their work and stored their data in outsourced “clouds”, while the public switched to shopping, banking and even tracking their bicycle rides online.
But it was in 2022, when a nascent
technology company called OpenAI launched ChatGPT, that the world woke up to the potential of AI and large language models to change the way the planet does, well, just about everything.
It can do this thanks largely to advances in chip design by the US company Nvidia — now the world’s most valuable (and first $5 trillion) business. The trouble is, a typical 4334wChatGPT query needs about ten times as much computing power — and electricity — as a conventional Google search.
This has led to an
explosion in data centres to do the maths. Nearly 100 are currently going
through planning applications in the UK, according to the research group
Barbour ABI. Most will be built in the next five years. More than half of
the new centres are due to be in London and the home counties — many of
them funded by US tech giants such as Google and Microsoft and leading
investment firms. Nine are planned in Wales, five in Greater Manchester,
one in Scotland and a handful elsewhere in the UK.
The boom is so huge that
it has led to concerns about the amount of energy, water and land these
centres will consume, as residents in some areas face the prospect of
seeing attractive countryside paved over with warehouses of tech. Typically
these centres might use 1GW (1,000MW) of electricity — more power than is
needed to supply the cities of London, Birmingham and Manchester put
together.
Times 29th Nov 2025, https://www.thetimes.com/business/technology/article/inside-britains-ai-data-centre-boom-can-the-grid-keep-up-jllzb3b0p
Nuclear a ‘political toy’ for Ed Miliband in Scotland, claims Scottish National Party
SNP’s Stephen Flynn has taken a firm stance against the development of
nuclear power stations in Scotland.
Aberdeen South MP Stephen Flynn has
left a scathing review of Energy Secretary Ed Miliband’s plans for
nuclear power stations in Scotland. He labelled the plans ironic as it
would leave “energy rich Scotland picking up the bill for those
projects” when it “already produces more electricity than it
consumes”, claiming that said irony “will be lost on nobody – well
maybe just Ed Miliband it seems.” He also took aim at the UK state Great
British (GB) Energy, which has “so far achieved nothing for Scotland”,
leading to Miliband “doubling down on that record with this new
instruction to a supposedly independent company.” “Nobody knows what GB Energy is actually supposed to be, but this news suggests it’s little
more than a political toy for Miliband to play with whilst he destroys
Scotland’s offshore industry,” he added.
Energy Voice 1st Dec 2025, https://www.energyvoice.com/renewables-energy-transition/nuclear/586027/nuclear-a-political-toy-for-ed-miliband-in-scotland-claims-snp/
Use less energy : Demand-led policy scenarios show promise.
Renew Extra 29th Nov 2025,
Demand-side energy reduction has so far received less policy support than supply-side net-zero technologies, despite the fact that, as this interesting new Nature paper claims, ‘energy demand reductions of ~50% by 2050 compared with today are possible while maintaining essential services and improving quality of life’. That would involve more than just improved technical efficiency of energy use and production, something that is already thankfully underway- although still rather too slowly. It would also mean fundamental changes in how energy is used, with radical reductions in consumption due to new social/behavioural patterns.
The paper notes that ‘policies explicitly targeting large energy demand reductions remain scarce, suggesting that they have so far been disregarded by policymakers owing to real or perceived lack of political feasibility. Instead, national energy strategies frame shifts in demand through an emphatically technological lens, focusing on efficiency gains through electrification and overlooking the broader structural and societal changes necessary to substantially cut the need to use energy..’
To address the perceived ‘persistent gap between academic energy demand scenarios and the scarcity of corresponding energy policy’, in a new approach, academics and policy makers join forces in a demand-focused process of ‘co-created’ UK 2050 energy scenario analysis, led by policymakers and evaluated through public dialogue. It takes more effort, but this paper says the new combined approach is well worth it: the ‘uniquely close involvement’ of policymakers leading the project evidently generated markedly different & positive narratives that reflect policymakers’ concerns while still leading to scenarios with reductions in energy demand of 18–45%, exceeding what policies normally suggest’. To address the perceived ‘persistent gap between academic energy demand scenarios and the scarcity of corresponding energy policy’, in a new approach, academics and policy makers join forces in a demand-focused process of ‘co-created’ UK 2050 energy scenario analysis, led by policymakers and evaluated through public dialogue. It takes more effort, but this paper says the new combined approach is well worth it: the ‘uniquely close involvement’ of policymakers leading the project evidently generated markedly different & positive narratives that reflect policymakers’ concerns while still leading to scenarios with reductions in energy demand of 18–45%, exceeding what policies normally suggest’.
The new paper expands on the method developed by Barrett et al, replacing the ‘academic scenario design’ stage by a policymaker-led process, with input from energy-system modellers. The resultant co-created scenarios are then subject to public discussion, so as to ‘avoid being perceived by policymakers either as ideologically driven or as theoretical academic exercises’……………………………………
The paper also claims that the new approach can deliver practical result and savings: ‘demand-side measures can help reduce societal risks by decreasing future reliance on technologies currently unproven at scale, in the context of a policymaker-led framework……………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2025/11/use-less-energy-demand-led-policy.html
U.N. nuclear agency returns to Chernobyl to check damage from recent Russian drone attack.
The International Atomic Energy Agency is sending
technicians to the site of Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant to
assess the current condition of an arch-shaped steel structure that was
erected over the damaged reactor following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The protective shell, known as the New Safe Confinement, was erected in 2016.
It was struck by a Russian drone in February 2025, authorities said.
“While February’s drone strike did not lead to any release of
radioactive material, it caused significant structural damage, affecting
the NSC’s designed confinement function and projected lifetime,” IAEA
Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said Thursday in a statement.
Washington Times 28th Nov 2025 https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/nov/28/un-nuclear-agency-returns-chernobyl-check-damage-recent-russian-drone/
The Neocon-Realist Armageddon Over Ukraine
Rubio was in Geneva last Sunday with the Ukrainians and Europeans to undermine Trump’s 28-point plan, trying to replace it with one of just 19 points that unrealistically gives an advantage to Ukraine. Unrealistic because this war has already ended on the battlefield and Trump has virtually acknowledged it.
By Ray McGovern, Consortium News, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/11/28/ray-mcgovern-the-neocon-realist-armageddon-over-ukraine/
Donald Trump made some revealing remarks to the media as he flew to Florida for Thanksgiving on Wednesday. Asked if he thought Ukraine is being asked to give too much land to Russia in his proposal to end the war, Trump responded:
“It’s clearly up to the Russians. It’s moving in one direction. … That’s land that over the next couple of months might be gotten by Russia anyway. So, do you want to fight and loose another 50,000 or 60,000 people? Or do something now? They are negotiating; they are trying to get it done.”
That’s the same realistic approach Trump’s new special envoy to Ukraine, U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, took with the Ukrainians and Europe’s so-called “coalition of the willing” during a visit to Kiev earlier this week.
Driscoll reportedly threw in yet one more reason for Ukraine to end the war – the fact that the Russians have ever-growing stockpiles of missiles they can deploy.
In other words, the undeniable Russian advances all along the contact line in Ukraine are no longer deniable to anyone tuned into reality.
But not everyone is tuned in. U.S. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who unrealistically claimed that Ukraine could still win, has been removed as special envoy to Ukraine, but there are other neocons lurking near the White House, for instance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio who also as national security adviser can control the flow of intelligence and policy proposals to the president.
Rubio was in Geneva last Sunday with the Ukrainians and Europeans to undermine Trump’s 28-point plan, trying to replace it with one of just 19 points that unrealistically gives an advantage to Ukraine. Unrealistic because this war has already ended on the battlefield and Trump has virtually acknowledged it.
What’s next is an official agreement, endorsed, ideally by the United Nations Security Council, where France or Britain, however, could veto it, as the Europeans continue their efforts to thwart such a peace agreement.
Britain, France and Germany, for example, are still pushing the fantasy that Russia is poised to attack Europe.
So we are at the threshold on Ukraine, at the beginning of a consequential battle between the neo-cons and Europeans on one side, and Donald Trump and the realists on the other. Will Trump show the fortitude to see this through and overcome his secretary of state?
For now you can dismiss the idea that the so-called “Peace Plan” is “dead on delivery.” It hasn’t even officially been delivered to Russia yet.
Russian President Vladimir Putin awaits hand delivery from U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff probably on Monday – Washington’s recent unorthodox conduct of diplomacy notwithstanding.
My sense is that Witkoff, like Driscoll, will dis the Europeans and go to Moscow with the 28-point draft plan for discussion and that it will adhere to one of the main provisions of Anchorage — namely that Trump will not let Zelinski sabotage movement toward an agreement. Putin told Hungarian President Viktor Orban today in Moscow that he remained open to meeting Trump in Budapest at a future date.
For his part, Putin seems ready to do business. An important backdrop is his priority objective of preventing relations with the U.S. from falling into a state of complete disrepair. As for Ukraine, Putin has reiterated that the 28-point Trump plan could form the basis for future agreements.
Taking questions from the press yesterday in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Putin gave clarity to a number of key issues. He said there was “no ‘draft agreement’ per se,” but rather “a set of issues proposed for discussion and finalization.”
Putin went on:
“We discussed this with American negotiators, and subsequently, a list of 28 potential points for an agreement was formulated.
Thereafter, negotiations were held in Geneva between the American and Ukrainian delegations. They decided among themselves that all these 28 points should be divided into four separate components. All of this was passed on to us.
In general, we agree that this could form the basis for future agreements. However, it would be inappropriate for me to speak now of any final versions, as these do not exist.”
Putin noted that the U.S. — this would be Trump, not Rubio — is “taking our position into account – the position that was discussed before Anchorage and after Alaska. We are certainly prepared for this serious discussion.”
On the question of land, Putin made certain that Russia will not be denied. He said, “I think it will be clear at once what it is all about. When the Ukrainian troops leave the territories they occupy, then the hostilities will cease. If they do not leave, we will achieve it militarily. That’s that.”
Of course, in 2022 Russia entered the Ukrainian civil war that had begun after the 2014 U.S.-backed coup that lead to the U.S.-installed government attacking the ethnic Russian Donbass region, which had rejected the unconstitutional change of government and declared independence.
After eight years of indirectly aiding Donbass, Russia intervened directly after the Minsk agreements to end the civil war were sabotaged by Ukraine and the Europeans. Russia’s war demands have remained demilitarizing and denazifying a neutral Ukraine. In the course of its intervention it has absorbed four Ukrainian oblasts into the Russian Federation, which remains non-negotiable to Moscow.
“Those in the West who understand what [recent Ukrainian defeats on the battlefield] could lead to are pushing for an end to the fighting as soon as possible,” Putin said, referring to the realists in Washington.
“They understand that if the front lines are drawn back in certain areas, the Ukrainian armed forces will lose their combat effectiveness and their most combat-ready units,” he said. “‘Enough is enough, preserve the core of your armed forces and your statehood, that’s what you need to focus on,’ say those who hold this view.”
But he said “others,” referring to the Europeans and neocons, “insist on continuing the hostilities until the last Ukrainian. That’s the difference in approaches.”
Putin tried to put to rest the fear-mongering in Europe about a planned Russian attack on the continent. “Russia does not intend to attack Europe. To us, that sounds ridiculous, does it not?” he said. “We never had any such intentions. But if they want to have it formalised, let’s do it, no problem.”
Putin also reiterated that Russia could only sign a peace agreement with a legitimate government in Ukraine after a new election, another obstacle to overcome.
“I believe that the Ukrainian leadership made a fundamental, strategic mistake when it was afraid to hold presidential elections, and as a result, the president lost his legitimate status,” Putin said. “As soon as any kind of peace agreement is reached, the fighting will stop, and the state of emergency will be lifted, elections will be announced.”
Which is another incentive for Zelensky and those who back him inside and outside of Ukraine to keep on fighting.
“So, basically, we want to reach an agreement with Ukraine in the end, but it’s almost impossible right now, legally impossible. We need our decisions to be internationally recognized by the major international players. That’s it,” said Putin.
He added:
“And so, of course, we need recognition, but not from Ukraine today. I hope that in the future we will be able to come to an agreement with Ukraine: there are many healthy people there who want to build relations with Russia for a long-term historical perspective.”
Peace then will require the complete negation of the neocons and the Europeans and a new government in Kiev — a tall order indeed.
It comes down to whether Trump can finally stand up to them — people whom he appointed, like Rubio, and whom he golfs with, like Sen. Lindsey Graham. He seems to have less respect for the Europeans, who practically sat at his feet around the Oval Office desk earlier this year pleading their case on Ukraine.
Trump may be motivated in part by the vain desire to end the war to win the Nobel Peace Prize. But he can get it done. Trump can ignore the Europeans and be serious this time about cutting off military aid and intelligence to Ukraine as he threatened to do if Zelensky did not accept his 28 points by Thanksgiving.
When it comes to Ukraine, Trump really does hold the cards. Will he play them?
UK Nuclear Projects Set to Add $1.3 Billion a Year to Power Bills
By Tsvetana Paraskova – Nov 28, 2025,
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/UK-Nuclear-Projects-Set-to-Add-13-Billion-a-Year-to-Power-Bills.html
Subsidies and Contracts for Difference (CfD) that the UK government has promised to the two projects for new nuclear power stations are expected to add $1.32 billion (£1 billion) annually to the UK power bills from around 2030, The Telegraph reports, citing documents by the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station, developed by EDF, is expected to begin generating electricity in 2030-31, after years of delays and cost overruns.
That year, CfD is expected to generate $6.1 billion (£4.6 billion) in receipts, including £1.0 billion to fund subsidy payments to the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant for its first year of expected generation, OBR said in its economic and fiscal outlook released after the UK’s latest budget announcement.
The UK government earlier this year also took the final investment decision to build the $51-billion Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk Coast in eastern England, which was the first British-owned nuclear power station to be announced in over three decades.
Sizewell C will be the first nuclear power station in the UK financed using a regulated asset base (RAB) model that levies an additional charge on consumer energy bills, which contributes to the financing costs of the plant, OBR noted. This levy is also expected to increase energy bills as early as January.
UK households will pay slightly higher energy bills in the first quarter of 2026 after energy market regulator Ofgem last week raised the Energy Price Cap by 0.2%, against expectations of a 1% drop.
The slight increase in the price cap is driven by government policy costs and operating costs. This includes funding the government’s Sizewell C nuclear project, which will bring more [?] clean power, Ofgem noted.
Opponents of new conventional nuclear plants in Britain argue that consumers will be burdened with a “nuclear tax” for the expensive projects in their energy bills.
“The Government has a misguided belief that nuclear will be a cheap, ‘green’ solution to our energy needs, but the evidence shows the opposite – that costs of delivery and of dealing with nuclear waste – will continue to rise,” Alison Downes, of Stop Sizewell C, told The Telegraph.
“We remain opposed to the imposition of a nuclear tax on households, given the acknowledged uncertainty about the projected costs of constructing Sizewell C.”
The mysterious black fungus from Chernobyl that may eat radiation
Mould found at the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster appears to be
feeding off the radiation. Could we use it to shield space travellers from
cosmic rays? In May 1997, Nelli Zhdanova entered one of the most
radioactive places on Earth – the abandoned ruins of Chernobyl’s exploded
nuclear power plant – and saw that she wasn’t alone.
Across the ceiling,
walls and inside metal conduits that protect electrical cables, black mould
had taken up residence in a place that was once thought to be detrimental
to life. In the fields and forest outside, wolves and wild boar had
rebounded in the absence of humans. But even today there are hotspots where staggering levels of radiation can be found due to material thrown out from the reactor when it exploded.
BB 28th Nov 2025, https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20251125-the-mysterious-black-fungus-from-chernobyl-that-appears-to-eat-radiation
What Defeat Looks Like
Had the western powers acted in good faith to resolve these issues at Minsk, history might have taken a different course. Instead, European leaders did everything they could to scuttle the Accords.
On the battlefield, Russia is in no rush; it is defeating Ukraine in a grinding war of attrition that by now is irreversibly in Russia’s favour.
As in Potsdam at the end of the Second World War, the only path forward now is working out the terms of Ukraine’s defeat. And there is still time to save lives, writes Stefan Moore.
Stefan Moore, Consortium News, November 28, 2025, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/11/28/what-defeat-looks-like/
European leaders are in panic mode. They are scrambling to ensure that Trump’s 28-point peace plan that they believe favours Russia can be revised to give Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky an equal say alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin.
This is delusional thinking. Whether or not Zelensky and his U.S./NATO allies, who have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into this conflict care to accept it, Russia is the indisputable victor in this terrible 14-year war, beginning with the 2014 Ukrainian civil war, which Russia entered in 2022.
Moscow will call the shots when it finally ends. As in Potsdam at the end of WWII, the only path forward now is working out the terms of defeat.
Those terms include Ukraine losing all or most of the four eastern oblasts – Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson (amounting to roughly a third of its territory and population); an ironclad prohibition from joining NATO, which Russia correctly views as a hostile alliance; the reduction of its armed forces (the size to be negotiated) and the denazification of its military and government.
For those who believe this is an intolerable capitulation, it’s time to review the historical record.
Since the end of the Cold War, despite promises to Russia that it would not move “one inch eastward”, NATO has pushed up to Russia’s borders from Poland to the Baltic states and in 2008 invited Ukraine and Georgia to become members. The potentially devastating consequences of this expansion were signalled by the most senior U.S. diplomats at the time.
William Burns, the U.S. ambassador to Russia in 2008 warned in a cable published by WikiLeaks that Ukraine becoming a NATO member could lead to war with Russia in Ukraine, a prediction that eventually came true.
The architect of America’s Soviet containment policy, George Kennan, presciently warned as early as 1997 that “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”
Not only were these words not heeded, but the West set out to weaken Russia in every way possible.
The Coup
In 2014, the U.S. helped engineer a coup (revealed here, here, and here) to overthrow Ukraine’s democratically elected, Russia-friendly president Victor Yanukovych and install a Western-friendly regime. Billed in the Western media as a popular uprising for democracy, it led Ukraine on the path to civil war between the European-aligned west and the east which had closer ties to Russia.
The biggest losers in this adventure were the ethnic Russian people of Ukraine’s eastern region who opposed the coup and called for the creation of separate autonomous states. In response, Ukraine’s armed forces and its virulently anti-Russian neo-Nazi battalions went on the attack.
In what turned out to be a disingenuous attempt to resolve the conflict, Ukraine and Russia took part in the Minsk Accords (mediated by France and Germany with U.N. support).
Among other things, Minsk proposed autonomy of the ethnic-Russian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk within a federated state of Ukraine, and an understanding that Ukraine could not join NATO, an alliance that Russia correctly sees as an existential threat.
For those who fail to comprehend Russia’s insistence on the latter point, it would be equivalent to Mexico or Canada entering a security alliance with Russia that allowed them to station nuclear capable missiles on the U.S. border. One only has to recall the Cuban Missile Crisis to see how that worked out.
Had the western powers acted in good faith to resolve these issues at Minsk, history might have taken a different course. Instead, European leaders did everything they could to scuttle the Accords.
Later, former Germany’s Angela Merkel and then ex-French president Francois Hollande would publicly admit that they were just playing along to give NATO more time to arm Ukraine to defeat Russia – a battle they have been willing to fight to the last Ukrainian.
Between the time of the Minsk Accords in 2015 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, on behalf of the besieged population in the east, nearly 14,000 ethnic Russian civilians had been killed by Ukraine’s forces, teaching the Russian language had been prohibited, Russian churches had been outlawed and Russian language media had been severely restricted.
The Istanbul Denial
Yet, despite the setback following Minsk and just two months into Russia’s invasion, another opportunity to end the war was being negotiated between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul.
The terms were similar to Minsk, but just as Ukraine was about to sign the agreement, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson descended on Kiev on behalf of NATO to tell Zelensky to pull the plug — the U.S. and Europe would provide Ukraine with all the weapons it needed to continue to fight Russia.
So, four years on, here we are. Putin, fooled twice, has lost all trust in Western leaders and has no more time for their games. On the battlefield, Russia is in no rush; it is defeating Ukraine in a grinding war of attrition that by now is irreversibly in Russia’s favour.
Contrary to European leaders’ tough talk, Ukraine has nearly run out of trained soldiers, the U.S. has run out of ground war arms to give to Ukraine and, despite its belligerent rhetoric, Europe has run out of money to send to Kiev. (Meanwhile, revelations of corruption close in on Zelensky’s inner circle, claiming the resignation today of his chief of staff.)
The tragedy is that all of this – the loss of over a million lives (mostly young Ukrainian and Russian men thrown into the meatgrinder of trench warfare), the fleeing of over 7 million Ukrainian refugees who are unlikely to ever return and the widespread destruction of Ukraine’s infrastructure – could have all been avoided.
The notion that the West came to the aid of Ukraine to defend democracy in the most corrupt and neo-Nazi infested country in Europe is as deceptive as it is laughable. This has always been a battle initiated by the U.S./NATO alliance to weaken Moscow, overthrow Putin and return the West to dominance over Russia like in the 1990s, with Ukraine as the unfortunate willing proxy.
It was sheer hubris and stupidity for the neocons in Washington and Brussels, pumped up with triumphalism after the fall of the Soviet Union, to think they could mould the post-Cold War world including Eurasia in their interests without disastrous consequences.
In the end, Ukraine will be defeated but there are no real winners.
Both Ukraine and Russia will take years to recover from the human and economic cost of this devastating war; Europe’s economy is in tatters with near negative growth, energy prices three times higher than before the destruction of Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline, and companies fleeing to produce offshore.
As for the U.S. , it has nothing to show other than public anger over the war, soaring national debt and increasing isolation as a global power.
As always, the biggest prize-winners are the global defence contractors whose profits have skyrocketed since the start of the war in Ukraine and Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
Stefan Moore is an American-Australian documentary filmmaker whose films have received four Emmys and numerous other awards. In New York he was a series producer for WNET and a producer for the prime-time CBS News magazine program 48 HOURS. In the U.K. he worked as a series producer at the BBC, and in Australia he was an executive producer for the national film company Film Australia and ABC TV.
UK energy bill payers will hand £2bn a year to EDF for new power stations
COMMENT. Here is a prime example of the crookedness of the UK Labour government, in pretending that the nuclear industry is beneficial to people and the environment:
“The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has promised to cut energy bills by an average £150 for each household from April by slashing green levies.“
UK green levies are taxes imposed by the government on sources of pollution, which contribute to about 8% of a household’s energy bill. These levies raise funds for various energy-efficiency schemes and have generated £5.9 billion from household energy bills in 2024. They are essential for supporting energy-saving measures in homes and for expanding renewable energy sources, ultimately improving energy security in the UK
French government-owned company to receive funding for Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C
Rob Davies, Guardian 28th Nov 2025
UK energy bill payers will hand over £2bn a year in subsidies to EDF, the French company building two nuclear power stations, according to government figures.
EDF, owned by the French government, will be entitled to £1bn in annual payments as soon as Hinkley Point C, in Somerset, comes on to the grid in 2030. The sum is due under the contracts-for-difference system that guarantees low-carbon energy companies a fixed price for the electricity they generate..
Separately, £1bn will be added to bills through a separate nuclear levy scheme to fund Sizewell C, in Suffolk, a 3.2 gigawatt (GW) project also led by EDF.
The result is an increase of about £2bn in bills, funding the cost of two plants that together will generate about a sixth of the electricity that Britain was using during peak demand so far this year, equivalent to 6m homes.
A government spokesperson said: “We are reversing a legacy of no new nuclear power being delivered to unlock a golden age of nuclear, securing thousands of good, skilled jobs and billions in investment.”
The government hopes the extra cost of new nuclear reactors could be offset in the future by the stable “baseload” output they offer, which can rein in the rising cost of balancing volatile output from energy sources such as solar and wind.
That balancing cost is expected to hit about £2bn this year, according to the Nuclear Industry Association. The government said Sizewell alone could save £2bn a year in future, adding that the impact on bills over the construction period was likely to be about £1 a household each month.
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has promised to cut energy bills by an average £150 for each household from April by slashing green levies.
Assessments of the nuclear subsidy were revealed in documents released by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which assesses the impact of economic policy. The OBR said EDF would receive £1bn in the first year of operation at Hinkley, due to come on stream in 2030 after 12 years of construction.
“In 2030-31, contracts for difference (CfDs) are expected to generate £4.6bn in government receipts, including £1bn to fund subsidy payments to the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant for its first year of expected generation,” the OBR said.
The subsidy is the result of an agreement struck between EDF and the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in 2013.
The then energy secretary, Ed Davey, now the leader of the Liberal Democrats, agreed a “strike price” guaranteeing that the French state-owned company would receive £92.50 for each megawatt hour (MWh) for electricity generated at the 3.2 GW plant.
The strike price has risen with inflation to about £133 and is projected to reach £150 in 2030, according to the Daily Telegraph, which first reported the Hinkley subsidy.
The wholesale cost of electricity is much lower, now about £80 a MWh, meaning EDF will be able to claim the shortfall from consumers and businesses that use its electricity, thanks to the CfD agreement…….
The construction of Sizewell C, which has yet to begin and is scheduled for completion in the 2030s, will also drive up bills.
From January, energy bills will be inflated by a levy supporting the plant’s construction, adding £10 a year. The levy is expected to raise £700m but will double to 2030 to fund Sizewell, whose price tag is projected to hit £100bn.
In practice, the cost of the power station could increase. Hinkley Point C was originally projected to cost £18bn but has been subject to several time and cost overruns; EDF predicted last year the final bill could hit £46bn. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/nov/28/uk-energy-bill-payers-edf-hinkley-point-c-sizewell-c
Scottish National Party accuses UK Government of ‘swindle’ over energy bills.
The UK Government has been accused of a ‘shameful swindle’ over the reduction of energy bills after a think tank estimated savings could be significantly lower than pledged.
The SNP has warned the Chancellor’s latest announcement to reduce household energy costs by £150 was “already falling apart”.
The Treasury earmarked the savings by scrapping the
energy company obligation scheme – a home insultation programme. It comes after the Resolution Foundation warned energy bills could continue to rise – and the reduction will be lower than anticipated.
Figures from the think tank suggests the average saving on energy bills could be £60 per household by 2029-30. Analysis by the think tank also estimates savings to be £127 in 2026-27, falling to £115 in 2027-28 before reducing again the following year. But prior to the general election in 2024, Labour committed to reducing energy costs by £300 by 2030.
Herald 29th Nov 2025, https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25658822.snp-accuses-uk-government-swindle-energy-bills/
Due to legal considerations UK government is now pausing its planned nuclear regulatory reforms.
Labour is reportedly pausing nuclear-sector reforms despite a sweeping
report urging planning and regulatory changes to cut costs and accelerate
new projects. Legal concerns raised by a government adviser have prompted Reeves to withhold the recommendations from the upcoming Budget, delaying growth-focused measures. ……………………
The Labour government is set to hold fire on pushing through sweeping reforms to nuclear energy due to a legal adviser’s concerns over the “UK’s
environmental, trade and human rights obligations”……….
ITV News has now reported that the Chancellor will
not include the growth-focused recommendations in her Budget speech on
Wednesday. The broadcaster reported that the Chancellor will make reforms “subject to further work and review” after a government adviser voiced concerns about the legal crossovers in the paper with UK obligations………
Oil Price 26th Nov 2025, https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Britains-Nuclear-Reform-Set-to-Stall-Over-Legal-Concerns.html
UK’s new nuclear body urges scrapping nature protections for new projects
24th November 2025, https://www.cpre.org.uk/news/nuclear-body-urges-scrapping-nature-protections-for-new-projects/
In the spring of 2025, the government set up a Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce to make it easier to build new nuclear projects. Their final report has just been published and its recommendations threaten some of the hard-won measures we have to protect our countryside and nature.
The taskforce was made up of figures working for the nuclear industry. They’re proposing two measures in particular that we’re worried about.
First, it proposes that new nuclear as a whole would get an opt-out of both the Habitats Directive and the mitigation hierarchy. This is a mechanism whereby developers first need to seek to avoid harm and then try to minimise the harm. Only when they cannot do this, they should compensate for the harm by improving the natural environment elsewhere.
The report calls for nuclear developments to pay into the new Nature Restoration Fund being set up by the Planning and Infrastructure Bill and ‘move directly to off-site nature conservation’ as the default. This sweeps away the first part of the hierarchy, which asks developers to avoid or minimise local harms on landscapes and nature in favour of offsetting the harm somewhere else. This is counter to CPRE’s view which is that protecting and regenerating landscapes at the source must come first.
Secondly, it calls for the scrapping of the duty on public bodies to further the statutory purposes of National Parks and National Landscapes, which came in in 2023. The report says the duty ‘has caused confusion, and will likely delay, and add cost, to nuclear development.’
Two CPRE groups – Kent and Friends of the Lake District – have already challenged decisions using the new protected landscapes duty, but in both cases planning permission was still granted.
Scrapping this duty would undermine the progress made in safeguarding our protected landscapes like the South Downs or the Shropshire Hills and return us to the weak duty that existed previously.
The Chancellor has said she welcomes the report and will set out the government’s response on Wednesday, and we’ll be strongly urging ministers not to dilute nature and landscape protections.
Ministry Of Defence looking at ‘various sites’ for sub dismantling project
COMMENT. Put more simply. the UK government doesn’t really know what to do with the toxic wastes from nuclear submarines.
Governments are obsessed with “defence” against each other. Meanwhile the public thinks ‘jobs, jobs, jobs” even if those jobs are toxic, and part of a useless industry.
By George Allison, November 28, 2025, https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/mod-looking-at-various-sites-for-sub-dismantling-project/
A written answer in Parliament has confirmed that the Ministry of Defence is actively considering multiple locations for the UK’s permanent submarine dismantling and disposal capability.
Responding to Graeme Downie MP, defence minister Luke Pollard said the demonstrator vessel Swiftsure continues to be dismantled at Rosyth and remains on track to complete in 2026. He noted that “there are six further legacy submarines in Rosyth awaiting to enter the dismantling process.”
Those boats, alongside the 15 stored at Devonport, form the initial batch being processed under the Submarine Dismantling Project.
Pollard confirmed that the enduring solution will be delivered through a separate effort, the Submarine Disposal Capability Project, which is still in its concept phase. He stated that the department is “assessing options for the capability and its location with various sites under consideration within the UK,” adding that Parliament will be informed once a decision is ready.
This aligns with the practical pressures on the Defence Nuclear Enterprise. Rosyth can process only a small number of hulls at a time, while Devonport’s workload is dominated by defuelling, refit work and major safety driven upgrades. Both sites have finite regulatory and environmental headroom.
The broader SDP context helps explain the direction of travel as since 2013 the programme has been tasked with dealing with 27 retired submarines, removing radioactive and conventional waste safely and refining methods as it progresses. Swiftsure’s dismantling has already informed improved procedures, and the MoD reports that later boats will see faster and cheaper waste removal.
The Swiftsure project has proven the process, but the long term question remains open: where should the UK base a facility that will handle future decommissioned submarines on a rolling, multi decade basis. Pollard’s answer confirms that this decision is now in play.
Trump’s Ukraine peace plan D.O.A with neocon Rubio as Secretary of State, National Security Advisor.
top diplomat Rubio doesn’t do peaceful diplomacy, only violent regime change.
Trump wants out of the US proxy war with Russia…but not because he’s man of peace.
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL , 28 Nov 25
Enabling the Israeli genocide in Gaza that has killed over 100,000 Palestinians made no dent on Trump’s degraded conscience. In fact, he’s ecstatic that he can both control and rebuild Gaza as head of the colonial ruling ‘Board of Peace’ which will essentially cement Gaza into Greater Israel.
Trump’s sadism extends to his ghoulish glorying in blasting 20 small unarmed boats to smithereens off Venezuela as prelude to his imminent and violent regime change operation.
But Trump wants out of America’s lost proxy war with Russia destroying Ukraine. He cares not a whit about the death and destruction his predecessor Biden brought Ukraine by promising NATO membership and fueling their war on Russian leaning Ukrainians in Donbas. He simply knows it’s a lost cause that gobbles up valuable war resources needed for Gaza, Venezuela and eventual confrontation with China.
Why then was he so stupid to appoint virulent neocon Marco Rubio as both Secretary of State and National Security Advisor? Rubio is not in sync with Trump’s peace plan. He flew to Geneva to reassure European leaders committed to an impossible Ukrainian victory that ‘all is not lost.’ Rubio’s remarks halted momentum derived from Trump’ 28 point peace plan that Russia President Putin agrees provides a sensible framework for a negotiated peace. Europe is risking self-destruction to prevail over Russia and Rubio is all too willing to assist them.
Trump should fire Rubio from both jobs to regain lost momentum to extricate America from its lost war to weaken, isolate Russia from Europe. With Rubio at State and National Security, Ukraine will simply lose more territory and more cannon fodder every day he continues to gum up the peace process.
One might surmise Rubio would push for peace in Ukraine so he could spend more of his supposed diplomatic portfolio effecting regime change in Venezuela followed by Honduras, Nicaragua, Columbia and his ultimate prize Cuba.
But top diplomat Rubio doesn’t do peaceful diplomacy, only violent regime change. Since Russian regime was part of our 11 year long proxy war against Russia beginning when we KO’d Russian leaning Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovych in 2014, Rubio remains all in.
If Trump was serious about withdrawing from Ukraine and indeed all of Europe bankrupting their economies to confront an imaginary Russian bogyman, he’d have put peacemakers at State instead of warmakers. Forget ending the Ukraine war on Day 1. Unless he dumps Rubio and his fellow neocons, Trump will get to Day 1,461, his last, still enmeshed in the Ukraine roach motel.
Fighting for Peace and Fighting for War in Ukraine
More importantly, Kiev also rejected Russia’s key demand, thus maintaining the root, main cause of the war: NATO’s and Kiev’s attempts to have Ukraine become a NATO member
Russian and Eurasian Politics, by Gordonhahn, November 26, 2025, https://gordonhahn.com/2025/11/26/fighting-for-peace-and-fighting-for-war-in-ukraine/
We are witnessing another failed effort by U.S. President Donald Trump to make peace in Ukraine. Europe, perhaps along with the Deep State, has helped Kiev reject yet another Trump diplomatic effort. This leaves in place the threat of a Europe-wide war with Russia. Europe very possibly will spark a larger war with Russia.
The effort for peace spawned by the 28-point plan drafted by Steve Witkoff in consultation with Moscow has failed because Kiev again has refused to accept Russia’s key demands: Ukrainian neutrality, territorial concessions, and demilitarization. Denazification appears to a less key demand for Moscow or at least Kiev is willing to make concessions on this point.
Rather than accepting its imminent defeat the Ukrainians joined with their European allies in once again drafting an alternative, completely countervaling and counter-productive peace proposal, which Moscow immediately rejected, having already accepted the Trump document, as „a basis for a future agreement,“ as Russian President Vladimir Putin put it.
This could have led to the beginning of a three-way give and take, but Kiev rejected abandoning the 20 percent of Donetsk Oblast territory its forces still hold and demands an 800,000-man army. More importantly, it also rejected Russia’s key demand, thus maintaining the root, main cause of the war: NATO’s and Kiev’s attempts to have Ukraine become a NATO member, despite the objective threat this poses to Russian national security and Moscow’s opposition to NATO expansion spanning three decades.
Europe immediately declared its opposition to the plan and raced to draft the alternative, Kievan plan to undercut the Trump plan, repeating an exercise they undertook in summer when another Trump diplomatic effort seemed might make some headway. Furthermore, it appears that the Deep State and/or MI6 have helped to spearhead the Eurpean effort to derail the Trump peace train.
The bugging and leak to Bloomberg of a less than compromising conversation between Steven Witkoff and Russian President’s chief foreign policy advisor Yurii Ushakov has been used as was intended: to discredit the peace plan, which neocon propagandists like Michael Weiss have claimed was a purely Russian creation that Trump and other ‚Putin agents‘ dutifully pushed on tot he agenda, doing the Kremlin’s bidding.
Trump’s only hope of acheiving an agreement is to force one by pulling out all the stops in order to pressure Kiev to accede to Moscow’s demands, which are backed up strongly by Russia’s mounting advance across eastern Ukraine towards the Dnieper River.
Only depriving Kiev of all US assistance has a chance of forcing Ukrainian leader Volodomyr Zelenskiy to agree to a neutrality, a small army, and territorial losses. But Trump does not want to be blamed for helping Russia to achieve its war goals and to be able to claim a military victory over both Ukraine and NATO. Trump cannot abode a semi-credible propaganda campaign tot he effect that it was he is a loser, that he lost the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War, imagined by most in the West as ‚Putin’s full-scale, unprovoked war against Ukraine.‘ This is the stalement – one between Trump’s political needs and personal weaknesses, European and Kievan elites political-survival needs requiring Russia’s defeat, and Russia’s realistic perceptions of its national security’s min imal requirements – there is no stalement on the battlefield.
Only two outcomes are possible immediately – that is, during Trump’s presidency: (1) Russia takes all of Ukraine east of the Dniester or (2) a European-wide war begins when some Europeans deploy forces to western Ukraine and they are attacked by Russia and/or when Ukraine or its Western partners orchestrate some false flag operation to justify an escalation. These two outcomes both can occur sequentially.
The first outcome is already underway prompting panic and desparate steps in global neocon circles from Washington to Stanford to London and Paris. Russian forces are taking Kupyansk in the north on their way to Kharkov. After Kharkov, the road is open to western Kiev. Russian troops are finishing the capture of the important conglomeration and hub of Pokrovsk and Myrnograd, which opens the way to the last significant Ukrainian strong point of Pavlograd, located a mere 15 miles from the major industrial city of Dnipro on the Dnieper.
Further to the south, Russian forces have already entered Guliapole after having finished up sweeping through several small towns in the wake of capturing Vugledar 13 months ago. The southern city of Zaporozhia on the Dnieper also is now in site. Gulaipole is halfway from Vugledar to Zaporozhia, with Russian forces moving twice as fast as they were moving immediately after taking Vugledar. In addition to these forces marching west, other Russian forces are fighting towards the city from the south. That is the Russia will be at the Dnieper in force along a broad front in a matter of months, with Dnipro and Zaporozhia likely to fall in 1-3 months. There is no stopping the Russian army now. Its manpower, weapons superiority, and morale are increasing, while those of Kiev are in persistent decline.
The second outcome, which becomes more possible, as European and Kievan elites scramble to avoid political, professional and even personal disaster for themselves, is a European provocation of a larger European war. The French are making more and more insistent noises about sending troops to Odessa and elsewhere in Ukraine. And the voices calling for the deployment of European troops to Ukraine are becoming increasingly shrill.
Most recently, Gen. Fabien Mandon, French army’s new chief-of-staff, told a congress of mayors that France’s must muster will to fight:
“We have the know-how, and we have the economic and demographic strength to dissuade the regime in Moscow.”
“What we are lacking – and this is where you [the mayors] have a role to play – is the spirit. The spirit which accepts that we will have to suffer if we are to protect what we are.
“If our country wavers because it is not ready to lose its children … or to suffer economically because the priority has to be military production, then we are indeed at risk.
“You must speak of this in your towns and villages” (www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/world/europe/france-voluntary-military-service.html).
Simultaneously, former NATO Secreytary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen declared: „Europe must stop waiting for signals from Washington and take the initiative in Ukraine. Paper guarantees mean nothing to Putin. Only concrete commitments matter. That’s why I now call for Europe to deploy up to 20,000 troops behind Ukraine’s front lines, establish an air shield with around 150 combat aircraft, and unlock frozen Russian assets. Europe earns its seat at the table by bringing real capability, not by asking for permission“ (https://x.com/AndersFoghR/status/1993221555166310410?s=20).
Europe’s ruling neocon-neoliberal elite are ‚simulacrats‘; they believe they can create reality on the basis of an the old world long dead and a new world it imagines, attempts to construct, make real by way of propaganda and the fear and hate it can induce. The old war of different glorious national pasts is mixed with the fictional new world of a Europe with perfect, pure democracies, histories, cultures, motives, and policies facing a putrid, barbarian Russia driven by an inexhaustible thirst for domination, power, and violence. Reality can be instantly reconfigured. First, Russia is a weak authoritarian regime with clay feet of oil and terror and an army that captures an uninhabited Ukrainian village or two per month. Then it is capable of conquering Europe, being at your front door virtually any day now.
The choice between war and peace should be an easy one. To be sure, Mr. Putin seems to have chosen war back in February 2022. However, there was good cause, and he softened the blow by conducting not the full-fledged massive invasion of Western mythology but a limited invasion force of some 100,000 troops and using little of Russia’s monumental air power. Moreover, he immediately contacted Kiev for peace talks, seeking an end to NATO expansion in Ukraine and the massive military buildup there equipped and trained by NATO. Mr. Zelenskiy immediately agreed to talk, and the ensuing Istanbul process yielded a treaty initialed by both sides in late March.
But the West chose a more serious war. The Bucha false flag ‘Russian massacre‘ was organized and Washington sent its British minion, then PM Boris Johnson to inform Kiev that the West would not provide the security guarantees, upon which much of Kiev’s agreement to the treaty rested and promised military and other assistance ‘for as long as it takes.‘ Putin’s short war for Russian nationals security became Ukraine’s long war for NATO. Now it is one for the survival of the Maidan regime and perhaps of NATO and the EU.
Some in the West have changed the nature of its assistance, struggling to build an offramp from destruction for Kiev, but others appear ready to offer in full the Ukrainian sacrificial lamb on the altar of NATO expansion ‘for as long as it takes‘ for Trump to leave the Oval Office and a new proponent of war for dying, democratic Ukraine‘ takes his place.
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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