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Reeves’ £150 cut in UK’s energy bills will be nuked by Sizewell costs, ex-Labour donor claims

Dale Vince’s claims over the impact of paying for Sizewell C on energy bills is one of a number of hidden costs which could see consumers pay higher bills – instead of £150 less

David Maddox, Political Editor

Rachel Reeves’ pledge to take £150 off household energy bills could be wiped out because of the costs of nuclear energy, hidden green levies andnew levies being introduced by the energy regulator, it has been claimed.
In her Budget last week, the chancellor promised to take £150 off
household bills by scrapping the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) scheme.
But former Labour donor and green entrepreneur Dale Vince has now claimed that the impact of paying for building nuclear energy capacity will largely wipe out the £150 because of the £1bn cost in the first year and ongoing costs for nuclear power.

 Independent 7th Dec 2025, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/reeves-energy-bill-discount-nuclear-power-budget-b2878907.html

December 9, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Nuclear (in)flexibility, nearly 100% electricity from solar PV and offshore wind surge!

David Toke, Dec 08, 2025

I keep hearing claims, most recently from the British Government, about how nuclear power can be used flexibly to help balance fluctuating wind and solar. But in reality in most situations around the world nuclear is inflexible and its operation simply pushes wind and solar off the grid. Also, according to a report from Ember, cheaper batteries and proliferating solar can lead to solar on its own cheaply providing all electricity demand for 97-99 per cent of the time in the sunnier parts of the world. Meanwhile back in the UK offshore wind is now surpassing generation from natural gas according to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).

Tales of SMRs nuclear (in)flexibility

Looking around the world, it is very difficult to find any examples of nuclear power being flexible. The main example quoted is France. However, France has some close connections with the rest of the European continent. These differ for example, to the connections to the UK and the continent.

Unlike the UK, the French electricity system operator has no choice but to order the scaling down of some French nuclear plant. This is to cope with inflows of wind and solar across its borders that they cannot stop. In Britain where the inflows can be better controlled, as elsewhere, nuclear operators would prefer not to be flexible. Instead, wind and solar power get turned off and the renewable sources are blamed for energy that is really being wasted by inflexible nuclear operations! A study of Scotland, where a lot of wind power is constrained because of a lack of grid capacity, found that most wind power would not have been be wasted if there were no nuclear power station s operating in Scotland (see HERE). And, in practice there is no chance of nuclear power plant being flexible in normal operations, whatever people say!

The current UK Government is struggling to mask the fact that it’s so-called new generation of ‘small modular reactors’ (SMRs) is going to cost even more, MW for MW, than the much-overpriced Hinkley C and Sizewell C Nuclear plant. Rolls Royce is leading the charge here with a proposed 470MW (not small!) nuclear reactor. This will come into operation sometime in the next 20 years or so. According to Rolls Royce this development will be ‘equivalent to more than 150 onshore wind turbines’‘ (See HERE) Ah, so that’s the crack! SMRs are now promised to replace wind turbines! That will please the wideley expected future leader, Nigel Farage! Nigel hates windfarms but loves Rolls Royce and nuclear stuff – so patriotic, he claims!

I must say, it’s pretty small fare. I mean the Rolls Royce ‘SMR’ will only replace 150 onshore wind turbines – and at double or probably triple the price of onshore wind in delivered energy! (currently there are over 11000 wind turbines in the UK). Not much of a bargain really for Nigel, there I’m afraid. But really, as with populists the world round, its the headlines that matter, and never mind the facts!

Of course, as with other policies the Government is struggling to compete in messaging with the far-right. In doing so it feels it has to buy into a lot of myths about nuclear power. As one Government minister was made to say recently (presumably by his pro-nuclear civil servants) in an answer to a Parliamentary Question from a Liberal Democrat MP:

‘The next generation of nuclear, including small modular reactors (SMR), offers new possibilities including faster deployment, lower capital costs, and greater flexibility…..Whilst nuclear energy has a unique role to play in delivering stable, low carbon baseload energy, SMRs may be able to serve the electricity grid more flexibly than traditional nuclear, as well as unlock a range of additional applications in energy sectors beyond grid electricity.’ (See HERE)

What unbelievable nonsense! I would never want to be a government minister and have to spout such rubbish! I’ve already suggested that the SMR(s) will take a long time to emerge at eye-watering cost. But flexibility? Why should this happen? It does not happen now with the PWR plant at Sizewell B. So why should it happen with the Rolls Royce ‘SMR’ which is also a PWR? No reason at all!

In fact the Rolls Royce ‘SMR’ it is even less likely to operate flexibly than Sizewell B (which does not). This is because of the likelihood that, as in the case of Hinkley C, Rolls Royce will be offered a so-called ‘baseload’ contract. This means that the nuclear power plant are paid a set price for every MWh they generate – whenever it is generated. It does not matter whether wholesale prices become negative and wind and solar is forced off the system, nuclear continues to generate.

Rolls Royce will no doubt be given such a contract to ensure that the investors get a virtually guaranteed return. Otherwise it will be virtually impossible to attract private investors to give the required facade of part-private finance to the operation. In reality of course the bulk of the money to finance the equity for the plant will come directly from the taxpayer and the consumers will pick up the bill for the inevitable cost overruns.

To cap it all, the SMR(s) will contribute practically nothing to balancing renewables since that will be done by ‘peak’ gas plant (see my blog post HERE).

Almost 100 per cent 24/7 electricity from solar + batteries

Meanwhile solar PV is advancing around the world at several times the pace of new nuclear and fossil fuel power plant. See my earlier blog post HERE and the Figure below. Now, the energy think tank ‘Ember’ (see HERE) conclude that almost 100 per cent electricity can be delivered cheaply in the sunnier parts of the year using solely solar PV and batteries.

In places like Las Vegas and Oman 97-99 per cent of all electricity demand, 24/7 can be provided solely by solar PV for a cost of $104 per MWh. That is exactly the wholesale power price in the UK. It should be recalled that they are talking about just solar PV and batteries, never mind other renewables………………………………………………………………………………… https://davidtoke.substack.com/p/nuclear-inflexibility-nearly-100

December 9, 2025 Posted by | ENERGY, UK | Leave a comment

The UK wants to unlock a ‘golden age of nuclear’ but faces key challenges in reviving historic lead.

  The U.K.’s Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce called for urgent reforms after identifying “systemic failures” in the country’s nuclear framework. It found that fragmented regulation, flawed legislation and weak incentives led the U.K. to fall behind as a nuclear powerhouse.

The government committed to implementing the taskforce’s guidance and is expected to present a plan to do so within three months. There is not, at the moment, a single SMR actively producing electricity under four revenues. They will all come at best in the 30s,” Ludovico Cappelli, portfolio manager of
Listed Infrastructure at Van Lanschot Kempen, told CNBC.

While SMRs are a “game changer” thanks to their ability to power individual factories or small towns, their days of commercial operation are too far away, he said.
From an investment standpoint, “that is still a bit scary,” he added. To secure the large baseloads needed to offset the intermittency of renewables, “we’re still looking at big power stations,” added Paul Jackson, Invesco’s EMEA global market strategist.

 CNBC 6th Dec 2025, https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/06/the-history-of-nuclear-energy-lies-on-british-soil-does-its-future-.html

December 9, 2025 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

UK’s Planning & Infrastructure Bill 2 – worse, and by stealth. 

I was wondering why there was no PIB2 in the Budget. Now I understand why. It’s far worse (from an environmental perspective) than I could have imagined.

In his speech yesterday, (1/12/25) Starmer said, “in addition to accepting the Fingleton recommendations… I am asking the Business Secretary to apply these lessons across the entire industrial strategy.”

There are some VERY far-reaching proposals within the Fingleton recommendations. These include,
but are not limited to: modifying the Habitat Regulations, – allowing developers to comply with the Habitats Regulations requirements by paying a substantial fixed contribution to Natural England; – reversing Finch; – reversing the LURA’s enhanced protection for National Landscapes; – increasing Aarhus cost caps. Those are just SOME!

 Community Planning Alliance 2nd Dec 2025, https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7401614251934654464/

December 9, 2025 Posted by | environment, UK | Leave a comment

Severn Estuary Interests Group responds to Nuclear Review (Fingleton Report) challenging misleading environmental narrative

Friday 5 December 2025, https://www.somersetwildlife.org/news/severn-estuary-interests-group-responds-nuclear-review-fingleton-report-challenging-misleading

The Nuclear Review, or Fingleton Report, calls for a radical reset of Britain’s approach to nuclear regulation and potentially to National Strategic Infrastructure Projects as a whole.

The report and surrounding reporting and commentary perpetuates the damaging government narrative that environmental protections are preventing development. 

The original government decision was to build a power station on one of the most highly protected ecological sites in the UK and Europe. The Severn Estuary is both a Special Area of Conservation and a Special Protection Area – a globally significant habitat supporting vast populations of migratory fish, internationally important bird species, and diverse invertebrate communities.

The impact of the nuclear power station on these important and vulnerable habitats and species will be immense and will continue for 70 years. HPC will extract the equivalent of one Olympic-sized swimming pool every 12 seconds, force it through the reactor system at high velocity, and then discharge it back into the estuary significantly heated. The idea that these impacts are trivial is pure misinformation. 

The data cited in the Nuclear (Fingleton) Report is inaccurate. It is data collected in relation to Hinkley Point B, an older and now decommissioned nuclear power station, and extrapolated for HPC. The designs of these power stations are not the same.


The data ignore fish behaviour in the estuary resulting in assumptions that much lower numbers will be impacted than the reality. The importance of the estuary for fish spawning is largely ignored and juveniles that can’t be counted but will be sucked through the cooling system. The impact on species and habitats will be extremely damaging in a Special Protection Area and Special Area of Conservation.

It is also important to place current claims about cost increases in a proper context. Hinkley Point C was originally expected to be operational in 2017 at a cost of £18 billion. It is now projected for 2031 at a cost of £46 billion. EDF itself has attributed these enormous delays and overruns to inflation, Brexit, Covid, civil-engineering challenges, and an extended electromechanical phase. Given the scale of these industry-driven issues, it is frankly unworthy to mock those seeking to uphold the legal requirement for EDF to install an acoustic fish deterrent on the enormous cooling-water intakes. 

The real issue here is the developer’s approach, not the environmental regulations that function to protect nature. EDF devised the mitigation measures themselves, rejecting offers of collaboration from local experts. This, as with the notorious HS2 bat-tunnel debacle – has inflated costs precisely because expert ecological advice was not incorporated early enough. The continuing narrative that environmental safeguards are the “blocker”, or that only “a few individual animals” benefit from mitigation or compensation, is a deliberate and politically convenient distortion of the evidence. 

Simon Hunter, CEO of Bristol Avon Rivers Trust said: “When developers fail to consult meaningfully, ignore local expertise, and attempt to sidestep environmental safeguards, costs rise and nature pays the price. Many countries would never have permitted a development of this scale in such a sensitive location in the first place. The situation at HPC is not an indictment of environmental protection, but of poor planning, weak accountability, and a persistent willingness to blame nature for the consequences of human decisions.” 
 
Georgia Dent, CEO of Somerset Wildlife Trust said: “The government seems to have adopted a simple, reductive narrative that nature regulations are blocking development, and this is simply wrong. To reduce destruction of protected and vulnerable marine habitat to the concept of a ‘fish disco’ is deliberately misleading and part of a propaganda drive from government. Nature in the UK is currently in steep decline and the government has legally binding targets for nature’s recovery, and is failing massively in this at the moment. To reduce the hard-won protections that are allowing small, vulnerable populations of species to cling on for dear life is absolutely the wrong direction to take. A failing natural world is a problem not just for environmental organisations but for our health, our wellbeing, our food, our businesses and our economy. There is no choice to be made; in order for us to have developments and economic growth we must protect and restore our natural world. As we have said all along in relation to HPC, how developers interpret and deliver these environmental regulations is something that can improve, especially if they have genuine, meaningful and – most importantly – early collaboration with local experts.” 

The Severn Estuary Interests Group, a collaboration of organisations that prioritise the health and resilience of the estuary for nature and people, is able to say based on decades of experience, that the environmental rules and regulations are not the reason EDF have found themselves spending an alleged £700m on fish protection measures. The Fingleton Report and subsequent reporting has failed to acknowledge some important points with regard to the building of Hinkley Point C: 

December 9, 2025 Posted by | spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

British Energy Ruled Out Nuclear At Heysham Due to Geological Fault.

Letter sent by Email today…https://lakesagainstnucleardump.com/2025/12/05/british-energy-ruled-out-nuclear-at-heysham-due-to-geological-fault/

Dear Lizzi Collinge MP

I am sure that you felt the earth move on December 4th along with everyone else in the region as there was a sudden movement along faults in the Morecambe bay area between Silverdale and Heysham. This was very scary for all concerned, we thought there had been a massive explosion in Milnthorpe and immediate thoughts went to Heysham’s dodgy old reactors.

SHUT DOWN OLD EMBRITTLED REACTORS AT HEYSHAM

Following on from our previous correspondence with you, the latest earthquake is a major reason why the old and embrittled reactors at Heysham should be mothballed – there would still be jobs on the site (maybe even more than now) for many years to come to ensure safe shut down and decommissioning.

GEOLOGICAL FAULT IS REASON BRITISH ENERGY SAID NO TO NEW BUILD AT HEYSHAM

The movement of the tectonic plates along the fault near Heysham on December 4th is also a major reason why there should be no new nuclear as advised by British Energy in 2002 and reported in the Lancashire Telegraph. We would suggest that MPs should ask for a copy of British Energy’s survey which found that a geological fault in the Heysham area rules out a Heysham 3 and 4. For the nuclear industry and local politicians to be ignoring this advice now in the context of a 3.3 earthquake in the Heysham area could be regarded as being reckless with the public’s safety.

Kind regards

Marianne, Radiation Free Lakeland

Fault rules out new build at Heysham, 18TH APRIL 2002

A GEOLOGICAL fault in the land next to Heysham 1 and 2 has ruled out the possibility of ever building a new nuclear power station at that site.

This week British Energy admitted it would be “impossible” to construct a Heysham 3 or 4.

Local environmentalists have recently been campaigning to stop an expansion of the area’s nuclear power capability fearing that Heysham could be chosen under the Government’s energy review.

But a British Energy survey has revealed that the vacant land has a geological fault which makes it unsuitable for development.

A spokesman said: “We have a certain amount of land but it is not suitable and a Heysham 3 or 4 has never been on the cards.

There are better places around the country to build new power stations.”

Embrittled Old Reactors

December 8, 2025 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

UK Government’s nuclear taskforce does not radiate authority

Paul Dorfman – AN “independent” Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce commissioned by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has published its final report, calling for a “radical reset of an overly complex nuclear regulatory system”.


Perhaps unfortunately, the taskforce’s announcement seems to have pre-empted its own findings, stating that it will “speed up the approval of new reactor designs and streamline how developers engage with regulators” without providing any evidence that regulation is responsible for huge delays and ballooning costs rather than the incompetence of the
builders and the issues with designs.

So, the possibility that regulation takes as long as it does because that was how long it took to do the job to the required standard was discounted from the get-go.

Made up of three nuclear industry proponents, an economist and a lawyer, the taskforce makes 47 new recommendations “to unleash a golden era of nuclear technology and
innovation” – including the proposal that new nuclear reactors should be built closer to urban areas and should be allowed to harm the local environment.

There are five members of the taskforce: John Fingleton is an
economist, Mustafa Latif-Aramesh is a lawyer, Andrew Sherry is former chief scientist at the National Nuclear Laboratory, Dame Sue Ion has held posts in sets of UK nuclear industry bodies, and Mark Bassett is a member of the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group and appears the only one with
any experience of regulation.

Following the taskforce’s interim report in
August, a coalition of 25 civil society groups involved in formal
discussions with government warned of the dangers of cutting nuclear safety regulations, stating that the taskforce’s proposals “lacked credibility and rigour”.

Their moderating voices have gone unheard. New nuclear
construction has been subject to vast cost over-runs and huge delays. This is not the fault of safety and planning regulation – rather it’s the nature of the technology.

This attempt at nuclear deregulation would loosen
the safety ropes that anchor the nuclear industry in an increasingly unstable world. It doesn’t make good sense.

Given that the UK will influence other countries, there’s a risk that this narrative, that the only problem with nuclear is regulation, will be taken up elsewhere and there will be increasing pressure on regulators to do their job as quickly as possible regardless of whether necessary rigour would be damaged.


Blaming nuclear regulators for vast cost over-runs and huge delays has always been a fallback position for the nuclear industry. This is not the fault of safety and planning regulation, rather it’s the nature of the technology. De facto nuclear deregulation is a poor short-term choice of the worst kind – and reveals something important about the high-risk
technology that the UK Ministry of Defence classes as a “Tier 1
Hazard”.

It makes good sense to choose the swiftest, most practical,
flexible and least-cost power generation options available. Unlike new nuclear, renewables are here and now – on-time and cost effective. It’s entirely possible to sustain a reliable power system by expanding renewable energy in all sectors, rapid growth and modernisation of the electricity
grid, storage roll-out, faster interconnection, using power far more effectively via energy efficiency and management, and transitional combined cycle gas technology for short-term power demand peaks.

Combining solar, wind and energy storage increases their individual values and lowers the net cost of the energy they produce, making each component more valuable.
This synergy turns intermittent energy sources into a reliable,
dispatchable power supply.

 The National 3rd Dec 2025, https://www.thenational.scot/politics/25668133.uk-governments-nuclear-taskforce-not-radiate-authority/

December 7, 2025 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

New mini nuclear reactors are jeopardised by wildlife fears

COMMENT. Doncha love that headline?

I mean – those poor little non-existent unaffordable, dirty, dangerous, useless mini nuclear reactors – being persecuted by nasty Arctic, Sandwich and vulgar common terns!

Pledge to build three small modular reactors on island of Anglesey is threatened by warnings of potential impact on nesting terns in local nature reserve.

Sir Keir Starmer’s attempt to kickstart Britain’s mini nuclear reactor programme is being threatened by a protected colony of rare birds. The prime minister has pledged to build the UK’s first three small modular reactors (SMRs) at the Wylfa nuclear site on the island of Anglesey in north Wales, but the proposed location sits beside the Cemlyn nature reserve, where about 2,000 pairs of Arctic, Sandwich and common terns nest
each summer.

Wildlife groups have warned that the birds could abandon the
site if construction goes ahead, and this threatens to delay or reshape the first big project in the government’s nuclear programme, according to the Telegraph, which first reported the story, Mark Avery, a scientist and former conservationist at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), said:

“Terns are vulnerable because of the types of places where
they live, which tend to be places that would be disturbed if they’re not protected. So they do need our help. And the UK is important for these species. If anybody’s going to look after them, we ought to.”

 Times 1st Dec 2025, https://www.thetimes.com/business/energy/article/new-mini-nuclear-reactors-are-jeopardised-by-wildlife-fears-gjmf28bgz

December 7, 2025 Posted by | environment, UK | Leave a comment

Together Against Sizewell C (TASC)’s new legal challenge against Sizewell C’s secret flood defences.

4 Dec 25, https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/sizewell-c-legal-challenge/

The Sizewell C site will be storing up to 4,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel on this vulnerable coastline until the late 2100s. The precautionary principle should surely apply so resilience, potential risks and impacts are assessed on a worst case basis and that should be done now. Sizewell C Ltd seem to believe they can do as they see fit with our Heritage Coast, National Landscape and designated wildlife sites irrespective of the damage they will cause.

 On Tuesday 9 December Together Against Sizewell C has a permission hearing at the High Court for their case about the overland flood barriers.

The project now includes a stated commitment by Sizewell C Ltd to the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to install additional sea defences in a ‘credible maximum’ climate change scenario. These defences in the form of two huge 10 metre high ‘overland flood barriers’ were not included in the approved DCO project. In our opinion, these flood barriers, if installed, will likely have additional adverse impacts on the neighbouring designated wildlife sites including RSPB Minsmere as well as the Heritage Coast and Suffolk Coast & Heaths National Landscape. We need to ensure that the original promotor EDF and the now UK government controlled Sizewell C Ltd are not allowed to use climate change uncertainties as an excuse to delay assessment and avoid public scrutiny of these additional structures for decades. The full impact of the whole project should be assessed now.

There is very little detail about the barriers, but it appears from the above diagram [on original] that, if needed:-

The Southern barrier stretches for nearly 500 metres from the Sizewell A site, across the Sizewell Gap to the start of the cliffs running south to Thorpeness, sited on land not in Sizewell C’s ownership.

The Northern barrier potentially stretches from the north of the Sizewell C site, through the SSSI, then inland over Goose Hill for up to a kilometre.

Together with our lawyers, Leigh Day, we have sought the High Court’s permission to apply for judicial review of the decision of the Secretary of State to refuse TASC’s request to revoke or vary the Sizewell C DCO. The grounds for our legal challenge are set out in Leigh Day’s press release.

How we got here

From documents obtained under a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, TASC found out that EDF knew as far back as 2017 that their chosen nuclear platform height of 7.3m AOD would, along with the adapted sea wall on the eastern flank of the site, require two 10-metre high ‘overland flood barriers’. These will be needed to prevent the nuclear platform from flooding from the west in the event that sea level rise reaches a ‘credible maximum’ scenario. This will lead to a major breach of the low-lying coast to the north of Sizewell C and south of the Sizewell nuclear cluster. However, while EDF rightly included the adaptive design of the eastern sea defences in their DCO application documents, they did not include the southern and northern overland flood barriers in the DCO application, thereby avoiding any public scrutiny. As a result there is no commitment in the approved DCO to install these additional sea defences. This is despite there being a requirement to keep the nuclear site safe for its full lifetime from climate change impacts in a credible maximum scenario i.e. to, at least, 2160 while spent nuclear fuel is stored on site.   

TASC’s aim is to ensure that the overland flood barriers, not included by EDF in the DCO application, now form part of the overall project. Therefore we need the Secretary of State to either revoke or change the DCO, in order that a lawful assessment of the potential environmental impacts of the entire project is carried out and subject to public scrutiny. 

This is important because the project may be grossly underestimating the potential environmental impact, flood risk and sea-defence costs. This, if unaddressed, could be a major burden on future and far future generations who may be impacted by severe, non-reversible environmental, ecological and human impacts combined with an extreme financial liability if Sizewell C were to flood.

Further background for those that want to know more

The Sizewell C project, originally promoted by EDF, is to build twin EPR nuclear reactors close to the North Sea at Sizewell, Suffolk, one of the fastest eroding coastlines in Europe. The site is in the heart of Suffolk Coast & Heaths National Landscape, largely surrounded by designated wildlife sites including RSPB Minsmere and will be partially built on Sizewell Marshes SSSI.

In 2021, Prof Paul Dorfman’s report stated “…any adaptation efforts to mitigate annual flooding (projected to almost entirely surround the proposed EDF Sizewell C EPR nuclear island by 2050) will inevitably entail significantly increased expense for construction, operation, spent nuclear fuel management, rad-waste storage and eventual decommissioning”. 

In line with the ONR’s preference, Hinkley Point C is a ‘dry site’ i.e. its platform height at 14 metres AOD is of sufficient height to prevent it from flooding. However, Sizewell C with a platform height of 7.3m AOD, is a ‘protected site’ which means that Sizewell C must at all times demonstrate that the site can be protected against flooding for its full lifetime by use of ‘permanent external barriers such as levees, sea walls and bulkheads’. Once Sizewell C is constructed with a 7.3m AOD platform height, the platform cannot be raised at a later date. The overland flood barriers need to be assessed now so alternatives can be considered e.g. raising the platform height.

Sizewell C was given DCO approval in July 2022 against the recommendation of the five professional planning inspectors. In TASC’s view, the impacts from the overland flood barriers, if they had been assessed during the DCO examination, may well have resulted in planning permission being refused. In any event, our case argues that the Secretary of State’s ‘Habitats Regulation Assessment’ has not considered the environmental impacts of the full project or alternatives, something that is a lawful requirement. 

Documentation published by the ONR supporting their grant of Sizewell C’s nuclear site licence in May 2024, has revealed that, in TASC’s opinion, there are now two materially different projects, the one in the DCO approved by Kwasi Kwarteng, and the one still being considered by the ONR as part of the ‘site safety case’. It was an FOI request to the ONR in late 2024 that provided the documentation from 2017 that shows the project requires the adaptive flood protection in the form of the overland flood barriers in a credible maximum climate change scenario.

The Sizewell C site will be storing up to 4,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel on this vulnerable coastline until the late 2100s. The precautionary principle should surely apply so resilience, potential risks and impacts are assessed on a worst case basis and that should be done now. Sizewell C Ltd seem to believe they can do as they see fit with our Heritage Coast, National Landscape and designated wildlife sites irrespective of the damage they will cause.

In an attempt to resolve our concerns, on 6th March 2025 TASC wrote to Secretary of State, Ed Miliband calling on him to make a decision on whether the material change to the Sizewell C project highlighted by TASC, namely the commitment to install ‘overland flood barriers’, ‘amounts to exceptional circumstances that make it appropriate for him to exercise his power to change or revoke the DCO’.

The Energy Minister, on behalf of the Secretary of State, replied on 28th March 2025, refusing TASC’s request to vary or revoke the DCO. As TASC consider this matter to be of great importance, we have been left with no alternative but to challenge the Secretary of State’s decision through the courts.

December 6, 2025 Posted by | Legal, UK | Leave a comment

Hinkley Point C contractor issued notice after ‘significant fire safety shortfalls’

The potential for harm and risk of serious injury was identified

A fire enforcement notice has been served on a Hinkley Point C
contractor after “significant fire safety shortfalls” were identified at
the nuclear construction site. Following a focused fire safety
intervention, Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) inspectors identified
that Bylor JV (Laing O’Rourke and Bouygues Travaux Publics) had failed to
implement appropriate arrangements for the effective planning,
organisation, control, monitoring and review of preventive and protective
measures.

 Somerset Live 2nd Dec 2025, https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/hinkley-point-c-contractor-issued-10681094

December 4, 2025 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Did Davey’s EDF Hinkley deal scupper tax payer?

Is EDF about to pocket extra cash due to strike price from decade ago?

 The Telegraph reports that Hinkley Point C will slap £1bn a year onto UK
energy bills the moment it starts generating. The cash will flow straight
from households to EDF under a subsidy deal locked in more than a decade
ago.

A second £1bn hit will land through the nuclear levy that bankrolls
Sizewell C in Suffolk. Campaigners are already calling the combination a
“nuclear tax on households” as ministers push ahead with the biggest
expansion of nuclear power in a generation.

Treasury and OBR documents
released after Rachel Reeves’s Budget spell out how the money will move.
CfD receipts are forecast to hit £4.6bn in 2030-31 with £1bn of that
handed to Hinkley C in its first year of operation. The root cause is the
2013 strike price agreed between EDF and Sir Ed Davey. It guarantees
£92.50/MWh for Hinkley’s output, now worth £133 with inflation and
expected to reach around £150 by the time the plant opens in 2030. If
wholesale prices hover near £80/MWh as they do today EDF can claim roughly£70/MWh from consumers and businesses to make up the difference.

 Energy Live News 1st Dec 2025. https://www.energylivenews.com/2025/12/01/did-daveys-edf-hinkley-deal-scupper-tax-payer/

December 4, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

France & UK Still Insist On Sending Troops To Ukraine, In Effort To Sabotage Trump Peace Plan

by Tyler Durden, Tuesday, Dec 02, 2025 ,https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/france-uk-still-insist-sending-troops-ukraine-effort-sabotage-trump-peace-plan

As we reported earlier, the important Miami meeting wherein American and Ukrainian delegations hammered out a revised ceasefire draft for some five hours on Sunday did not have European participation. But this is where the real deal-making is taking place. Trump envoy Steve Witkoff is en route to Moscow, where he’s expected to meet with President Putin on Tuesday, in order to present where things stand on the peace plan.

The Miami meeting reportedly focused on where the new de facto border would be in the east, after the 19-point plan featured significant territorial concessions in the Donbass and Crimea. As for Europe, is still touting a “coalition of the willing” which are vowing ongoing military support to the Zelensky government.

At this moment, France and the United Kingdom especially are continuing to push for the deployment of troops from NATO-member states to Ukraine as part of their version of peace settlement, despite this being very obviously unacceptable to Moscow. 

Last week Politico reported that when US Secretary of State Marco Rubio joined a discussion involving the coalition of the willing via phone call, he made clear to all that the White House wants a peace agreement in place before committing to any long-term security guarantees for Kiev.

But UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer tried to push back, arguing that a “multinational force” would be essential for ensuring Ukraine’s future security.

Bloomberg then followed with a report saying that UK officials have already selected the military units they plan to deploy, based on several reconnaissance trips to Ukraine.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron proposed that such troops could operate in the capital area or western regions of the country, far from the front lines. But this would flagrantly cross all Russia’s red lines. NATO troops on its doorstep was key Putin’s decision-making in launching the ‘special military operation’ in the first place.

It must be recalled that the original US-drafted 28-point peace plan, which leaked to the press and more recently was condensed down to 19 points, included an explicit prohibition on deploying NATO troops to Ukraine.

The European-proposed counter-plan, which was also quickly leaked to the media, greatly softened that stance and laid out that instead of a blanket ban, NATO would not “permanently station troops under its command in Ukraine in peacetime.”

At a moment Trump’s peace plan advances, and with Witkoff on his way to meet with President Putin, hawks in Europe are growing even more hawkish:

Such intentionally vague language leaves open the possibility of NATO troop rotations into Ukraine. The Kremlin has time and again said it would not tolerate this, and such a move would lead to direct war with the West.

Europe’s plan also seeks to leave open a Ukrainian path to NATO, but this is also a sticking point which the US plan leaves out, given it would of course be dead on arrival if presented to Putin.

December 4, 2025 Posted by | France, UK, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

UK is running out of water – but data centres refuse to say how much they use.

One Government insider said ‘accurate water figures have historically been very hard to get from facilities of any size’.

 Tech firms are failing to tell the Government how much water they use in
their data centres, as concerns grow that the UK does not have enough water to meet its needs.

Experts are calling on the Government to introduce
tighter regulations on data centres amid warnings that new power and
water-intensive supercomputers could be built in areas vulnerable to
drought. Campaigners have raised concerns that the Government is “too
close” to tech lobbyists and is failing to fully consider the impact a
data centre boom could have on the UK’s natural resources.

 iNews 1st Dec 2025, https://inews.co.uk/news/uk-running-out-water-data-centres-refuse-say-4062230

December 4, 2025 Posted by | environment, technology, UK | Leave a comment

  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

December 3, 2025 Posted by | energy storage, secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

  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/

December 3, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

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