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The UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities have welcomed the publication earlier this month by two renowned academics and opponents of nuclear power of reports exposing the folly of the Labour Government in pursuing an energy future for Britain which embraces nuclear power.
Professor Andy Blowers OBE is an Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences with the Open University; a former member of the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) and the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee (RWMAC); and is the author of The Legacy of Nuclear Power. Professor Stephen Thomas is an Emeritus Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Greenwich and the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Energy Policy. Professor Thomas is also a member of the EPA Radiological Protection Advisory Committee, which plays an advisory role to the Irish Government.
Labour Ministers have already committed to the completion of the Hinkley Point C station; achieving financial close and making a start on the Sizewell C project; and concluding a competition started under the Conservatives to select two preferred Small Modular Reactor designs to steer through regulatory approval and back with taxpayer money. Worryingly, Secretary of State Ed Miliband has also spoken of his desire to extend the operational life of one or more of Britain’s aging ‘Advanced’ Gas Cooled reactor plants beyond the current projected closure date of 2028; their increasing compromised safety, with graphite moderator cores cracking, is an issue that the NFLAs revisited recently with Nuclear Minister Lord Hunt.[i]
The latest papers represent a detailed expose of the chequered history of nuclear projects being delivered late, way over budget or sometimes abandoned, and how this pattern will inevitably continue, making the Whitehall obsession with delivering new nuclear ‘Unaffordable, Undesirable and Unachievable’. New nuclear projects are incredibly expensive and incredibly slow to deliver, are reliant upon uranium sourced historically from Russia, leave a horrendous legacy of radioactive waste and environmental contamination that is incredibly problematic and costly to clean up, and – as we have seen with threats to nuclear plants in the Ukraine and Russia – represent potential ‘dirty bombs’ if attacked and their containment breached by terrorists or hostile nation states.
They are also an illogical choice for a government which professes a desire to achieve a ‘clean power Britain’; for any new projects will come on-stream far too late to arrest the impact of climate change and, in any case, will most likely be located on coastal sites threatened by the impact of climate change. New projects will also worsen fuel poverty as hard-pressed electricity customers will pay for them through the imposition of an additional levy on their bills and will then be obliged to pay for the electricity at a vastly inflated price against that available from renewables.
The NFLAs are with the authors in their conclusion that ‘the financial and human resources wasted on nuclear…could be better deployed on alternatives that will be cheaper, quicker and more reliable.’
Ends//..For more information contact NFLA Secretary Richard Outram by email to richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk
The media release issued by the two authors:
Today, Friday 1 November we are launching two papers:
- ‘It is time to expose the Great British Nuclear Fantasy once and for all’ (long paper);
- ‘New Nuclear – Unaffordable, Undesirable and Unachievable’ (short paper).
In our view, these papers irrefutably demonstrate why the government’s proposed vast expansion of nuclear power in the UK is unnecessary, unjustifiable but also impossible.
We believe it is imperative that government reviews and reconsiders its nuclear policy and recognises that it cannot proceed.
The longer paper provides our considered and detailed analysis which reveals that nuclear is too costly, takes too long, is technologically challenged and leaves an expensive and unmanageable burden of wastes for future generations. More than that, there are no suitable sites for new power plants and those that are supposedly ‘potentially suitable’ will all be vulnerable to the impending ravages of Climate Change during their lifetimes.
The shorter paper (which is available for publication) presents our arguments concisely, presenting a fundamental challenge to current orthodoxy on the case for nuclear. At a time of pressure on public spending, nuclear does not represent good value for money, nor is it attractive against other more pressing social welfare priorities.
New Nuclear – Unaffordable, Undesirable and Unachievable (the shorter paper)
Andrew Blowers and Stephen Thomas
In 2022 Boris Johnson set a target of 24GW (eight more Hinkley Point Cs) of new nuclear capacity to be running by 2050. To achieve this, he announced the creation of Great British Nuclear with a mission of ‘helping projects through every stage of the development process and developing a resilient pipeline of new builds.’ More than two years after its announcement Great British Nuclear has no permanent executive, no permanent staff and no premises. While not explicitly endorsing the 24GW, the new Labour Government proclaimed that a scale expansion of nuclear ‘will play an important role in helping the UK achieve energy security and clean power’. But, neither government has recognised the near impossibility of achieving the Great British Nuclear expansion. It is a project bound to fail.
No amount of political commitment can overcome the lack of investors, the absence of credible builders or reliable technologies let alone secure regulatory approval. In an era of climate change there will be few suitable sites to host new nuclear power stations and radioactive waste stores for indefinite timescales on vulnerable sites will be scattered across the country. There are the new fears that nuclear foments, the danger of accidents, cyber-attacks, terrorism and war vividly brought into present focus by threatened nuclear plants in Ukraine (Zaporizhzhia) and Russia (Kursk).
New nuclear is unaffordable especially at a time of severe fiscal constraint required by the £22bn ‘black hole’ in the country’s finances. Nuclear energy has consistently proved to be a bottomless pit with ever rising costs and lengthening delays. Hinkley Point C has doubled in cost and will be at least 12 years late when it begins operating. Its successor, Sizewell C has already cost the Treasury £2.5b.with a further subsidy of £5.5bn announced just to get the project to a Final Investment Decision (FID) forecast for this year, although a FID has been said to be imminent for three years. To prevent the project collapsing, the UK Government has chosen to contribute about 95% of the cost of getting Sizewell C to FID. Government began to order components for Sizewell C more than a year ago, which, if it does not go ahead, would be taxpayer money lost. Under the financing model proposed, Regulated Asset Base (RAB), consumers will start paying for the plant from the day of FID, long before they receive any power from the plant. The risk of cost escalation during construction will fall on them. For Hinkley Point C, EDF took this risk and has, as a result, had to write off €12.9bn of its investment. This subsidy to Sizewell C would place an immediate extra burden on citizens facing higher energy prices and loss of winter fuel payments – the subsidies for Sizewell C would have paid for six years of winter fuel payments.
Lack of investors means that large nuclear reactors beyond Sizewell C are unlikely, so attention has turned to Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) as the latest episode in the Great British Nuclear Fantasy. Portrayed as cheaper, quicker to build and safer they are simply old wine in newish bottles. None has been ordered, built, operated or completed comprehensive safety evaluation anywhere in the world so the claims are just pious hopes. Great British Nuclear’s first task was to run a competition to identify the two best SMR designs for deployment by the mid-2030s. So, even if they were economic and reliable, follow-on plants would only come on-line well after 2040 far too late to make a significant contribution to achieving net zero. Meanwhile, money is being sunk into the competition and around £20bn of taxpayer money will be needed to bring them to development and pay for a handful of reactors. Investment on such a scale in designs that are untried, untested and will materialise too late is foolish. The next stage should have taken six months and been completed in Spring 2024, but it is running about nine months late.
We consider it reasonable to conclude that any major expansion of civil nuclear power in the UK beyond that already committed is neither desirable nor achievable.
The nuclear industry would have us believe that new nuclear is essential if climate change is to be combated effectively. This highly suspect assertion is meant to divert attention away from the long-standing concerns about nuclear power: how to ensure severe accidents cannot happen; what to do with the waste; how to avoid proliferation of weapons material.
Announcements of large programmes of nuclear reactors are often made not just in Britain. They either fail completely or result in a few white elephant reactors. This will happen with the Johnson programme. The cost will be the wasted decade or more finding out the project is not feasible or desirable and the financial and human resources wasted on nuclear when they could be better deployed on alternatives that will be cheaper, quicker and more reliable.
It is time to expose the Great British Nuclear Fantasy once and for all (long report)
[i] https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/after-two-months-nflas-receive-vague-response-on-agrs-from-nuclear-minister/
