The UK's plans for new nuclear power
In June 2025, the UK Government took an 85% ownership stake in Sizewell C, making a commitment of £14.2 billion to develop the nuclear power plant, in addition to the £2.7B allocated in next year’s budget. The 3.2GW nuclear reactor will be constructed adjacent to RSBP Minsmere, along the Suffolk seacoast. RSPC have already expressed concerns about the power plant’s impact on the wildlife reserve.
EDF, who have taken a 15% stake in the project, claim the nuclear facility will power 6 million homes. According to OFGEM, the energy regulator, based on the average electricity usage of 2,700kWh, 6 million homes would use 5x more electricity, or 16,200 terawatt hours. This is just the beginning of the deception to taxpayers and energy bill payers surrounding the proposed nuclear power plant. Planners granted permission to construct the plant despite serious issues concerning projected water supply to cool the spent fuel rods stored onsite along with sea level rises and storms from a changing climate.
How new nuclear will add to already spiralling energy costs
The cost of new nuclear is staggering, with very high risk of cost overruns, so much so that investors won’t go near it. For this reason, to pay for the new project at Sizewell, Government is looking at a regulated asset base (RAB) funding model. Electricity bills are estimated to rise by £2 in the first year for everyone, increasing annually over the 10 years it takes to construct it. There is no guarantee that we won’t be required to pay for it after it’s producing electricity, through higher electricity prices locked in through the Capacity Market CfD auctions.
Neither the taxpayer, nor the billpayer, has to foot the bill for renewable power which presents much better value for money when combined with battery storage. The market is flooded with willing investors who make an attractive market return on their investment. The Feed in Tariff has been successful in creating more renewable energy generation, which has lowered the wholesale price of electricity, offsetting the corresponding environmental charge on consumers bills.
Considering that only 14 years ago, Government was clear that there would be “no state subsidies for nuclear.” We dig deeper as to why this Government is so keen on nuclear power.
Civil and military nuclear power linked
Fortunately, we have the nuclear nexus of intelligence here in Sussex, in Professor Andy Stirling and Dr Phil Johnstone at the University of Sussex, highlighting the interwoven nature of the UK’s civil and military nuclear programmes. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the UK is going all out on nuclear, given the current nuclear posturing happening globally. The void of a world leader, strong enough to take a stand in non-proliferation of nuclear power, can only lead to harm and lost causes, as no one wins if any nation actually deploys a nuclear bomb. When no one wins, we all lose. We are one planet, one world.
The recent release of the Strategic Defence Review, Making Britain Safer at Home, Strong Abroad, includes significant support for a nuclear submarine fleet and six new munitions factories. Instead of committing to leadership in the Green Economy, this Government has chosen investment in military might, to provide weapons for foreign nations to fuel their war machines, while remaining a contentious player in global nuclear proliferation.
The focus on nuclear spending in evident in HM Treasury’s spending plans, which devote 2.5X the amount of spending on new nuclear power than to renewable energy. HM Treasury’s expectation would be that all the renewables investment goes towards the construction of electricity generation and storage, while the spending on nuclear is development cost without electricity output. Over this spending period, renewables investment would deliver immediate benefit to the consumer.
Nuclear Decommissioning - a hidden hundred year cost
There is no permanent way of safely storing nuclear waste that has a 10,000 year-half life. No community in the UK wants to host any nuclear waste site as demonstrated by the Lincolnshire County Council recently rejecting the possibility after years of community opposition. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is charged with overseeing cleanup of 17 sites across the country. 75% of their annual budget of £4.1B is funded by the taxpayer. Our national liability to clean up our existing nuclear legacy is estimated at more than £240 billion, fully funded by the UK taxpayer, thanks to the bankruptcy of British Energy, who owned the nuclear fleet and sold it to EDF. The cost of decommissioning nuclear power plants and their toxic waste is a sunk cost, that we have to pay even if we stop building new nuclear power plants. We also pay the cost to transport this radioactive waste around the country, presenting further national risk.
Unwittingly, the taxpayer is funding is a fixed, unavoidable cost that removes important resource for other areas of spending, probably one that they would prefer, like investing into developing wind and solar power that can and has provided 100% of our electricity needs, especially during sunny, summer days.
43We could also consider using funds that are allocated to building new nuclear power plants to develop our energy storage capabilities. Intermittent clean electricity generation, like wind power, where the UK has the best wind resource in Europe, and solar power, currently delivers 36% of our electricity needs, with a large pipeline of energy storage projects approximating 47GW, or almost 15X the capacity of Sizewell C, all developed by private industry and social enterprise with no subsidy from the taxpayer. We have the capability to mine cobalt for the batteries in Cornwall. Taking advantage of this to build a self-sustaining industry right here in Britain would help our nation’s economy.
The Severn tidal barrier is another example of a major clean energy infrastructure project that was rejected by previous Government, because it was supposedly uneconomical, despite the lower average price commitment contracted over its life compared to Hinkley Point C or Sizewell C.
The time is now for supporting the highly qualified teams at Stop Sizewell C (https://stopsizewellc.org/), and the (https://cnduk.org/CND) to have our say with the Government to stop investing in the construction of new nuclear power plants in the UK. Use your voice and take action now before our money is invested in ways that do not serve us, exacerbating our already high cost of living and worsening social care and living conditions.
References
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nuclear-provision-explaining-the-cost-of-cleaning-up-britains-nuclear-legacy/nuclear-provision-explaining-the-cost-of-cleaning-up-britains-nuclear-legacy
https://www.civilserviceworld.com/professions/article/61bn-nuclear-decommissioning-contract-cancelled-by-beis-after-procurement-flaws
http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications.php@id=344.html
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/25/concrete-is-tipping-us-into-climate-catastrophe-its-payback-time-cement-tax
https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2021
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/22/iraq-nuclear-contaminated-sites
Uranium in Iraq, the Poisonous Legacy of the Iraq Wars, Abdul-Haq Al-Ani, Joanne Baker 2009
A Global Picture of Industrial Interdependencies Between Civil and Military Nuclear Infrastructures Andy Stirling, Phil Johnstone, SPRU, August 2018
4 Comments
Ian Turnbull · 09/11/2021 at 14:47
You mention that ‘nuclear electricity’ will contribute to an 8% reduction is carbon emissions, but not until 2035. I would be interested to learn, in this same subject area, how much heat the 430 nuclear reactors at work around the world extract from the Atomic dimension: heat which then inevitably gets dumped in the oceans and atmosphere.
I never hear the nuclear industry mention this fact. After fifty years, does it add up to being a big component of global warming. Hmmm … add in the heat from the nuclear tests and nuclear reactors in ships and submarines. The calculations are outwith my skill.
Thanks for this summary report. I worked at Dounreay and on several occasions experienced the emotional content of radiation, as an enormous out-pouring of sadness and despair. I came away thinking the particle world is more sentient that we have so far dared or cared to consider.
We’ve so much more to learn.
Dan Curtis · 11/11/2021 at 16:01
You are very right Ian, there is a lot about nuclear that we do not yet understand, which is why it makes so much more sense to stick with proven reliable renewable energy, and why we lament the fact that the enormous heat discharged from nuclear reactors is not used, but wasted and that it adds to the loss of resources associated with nuclear.
Ian Smith · 04/12/2021 at 10:56
As a related aside, the Contract For Difference strike price for Hinckley C has consistently been reported as £92.50/MWh. Well, that was true when the contract was signed. Large project CFDs that I have worked on over the years (they were common under the original pool electricity market structure at privatisation in 1990) have all had a number of adjusters – and not just inflation. I have not even attempted to get a FOI request on what these adjusters are for Hinckley as it would undoubtedly get rejected under the commercial confidentiality exemption but I would love to know, for instance, who is taking the foreign exchange risk which could be very significant given the rather extended construction programme.
I would urge anyone making a contemporary economic argument for or against nuclear, to use the current strike price which is £106/MWh and can be found here: https://www.lowcarboncontracts.uk/cfds. By the time the station actually produces electricity, no doubt it will have risen even more whilst renewables costs will have fallen further.
Aside from the hidden costs related to de-commissioning addressed in this article, there is another rarely mentioned one – insurance. Insurance markets simply do not have the capacity to provide enough cover for third party risks so the industry has benefitted from its inception from significant concessions here under the Paris and Brussels Conventions (going back as far as 1960). Essentially, the asset owner gets a capped public liability with indemnities provided in two further tiers, by the state where they are located and then by the convention signatories.
Dan Curtis · 20/12/2021 at 12:36
Excellent new insight from the Stanford academic Amory Lovins – https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/why-nuclear-power-is-bad-for-your-wallet-and-the-climate?s=09