Britain's very wrong turn in energy policy

Christina Macpherson

May 2

At least Rishi Sunak would appear to have recognised all this nuclear nonsense for the massive con trick it is. As far as the Treasury is concerned, a few hundred million to prop up Rolls-Royce, and a couple of billion to keep the prospect of Sizewell C alive – that's acceptable, it would seem. Beyond that, from the Chancellor's perspective, lies one vast funding black hole. Not least because of nuclear waste.

Courtesy of the mainstream media's cosy relationship with the nuclear industry, we hardly ever hear about this. But the Treasury writes a cheque to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority of around £2.5bn every year – to deal with the legacy of our earlier nuclear investments in terms of waste management and decommissioning. The price tag just for cleaning up Sellafield has now risen to an astonishing £97bn! On top of that, the anticipated cost of an underground storage facility to house the high-level waste for thousands of years has now risen to as much as £53bn – according to the Government's own figures. That's the cost of old nuclear. It will be no different with any new nuclear.

Why a nuclear power policy is clearly the road not to take

Wrong turn — Beyond Nuclear International The establishment's obsession with nuclear power just won't die,
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By Jonathon Porritt 1 May 22,
This is absolutely the right time for a new Energy Strategy. Unfortunately, we've got absolutely the wrong politicians in charge of it. In the UK, the combination of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak all but guarantees that the new Energy Security Strategy will fail on most counts.

– In Boris Johnson, we have a careless showman, drawn unerringly to 'big ticket' announcements, groomed by a nuclear industry that knows exactly how to play to these personality defects.

– In Rishi Sunak, we have a man so detached from the reality of most people's lives that the prospect of five million UK citizens finding themselves in fuel poverty by the end of the year means literally nothing.

Careless Johnson and callous Sunak is a devastating double-act – with the inconsequential figure of Kwasi Kwarteng (UK Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) lurking around to pick up the pieces.

There will, of course, be some welcome commitments in the new UK Strategy, particularly on solar and offshore wind, with a hugely encouraging pipeline of new developments in both now underpinning the UK's decarbonisation strategy. Onshore wind may well get more encouragement than in the past, but the aesthetic sensibilities of Tory Nimbies will still matter more to Johnson and Sunak than the opportunity to ramp up the single most cost-effective source of renewable electricity – coming in at an astonishing 20% of the cost of new nuclear! Yet again, those 'hard-working families' Johnson constantly refers to will pay the price for this appalling policy failure.

The UK establishment's obsession with nuclear power just won't die. Boris Johnson is heading off down a well-worn path. Margaret Thatcher promised to build a nuclear reactor every year for ten years at the start of her time in office. In 2006, Tony Blair vowed to bring back nuclear power 'with a vengeance'. David Cameron's Government identified opportunities for a massive expansion of nuclear.

However, apart from Sizewell B (which came online in 1995) and EDF's grotesquely expensive monster emerging at Hinkley Point C, there's nothing to show for all that overblown nuclear enthusiasm. The industry blames this 40-year failure on everyone else – including a generation of anti-nuclear campaigners. In truth, the blame lies entirely with the industry itself, mendaciously promoting outdated, dangerous, increasingly expensive technologies.

Johnson's big nuclear bets will almost certainly include big reactors at both Sizewell C and Wylfa, and as many as possible of the so-called 'small reactors' being pushed by Rolls-Royce. Regardless of the hype, the economic reality of all of these bets is dire:

Sizewell C – with the Chinese out of the picture, the Government will be looking to its new Regulated Asset Base funding model (with consumers having to pay up front) to persuade private investors to get on board. Backed (so far) by the promise of £1.75bn of taxpayers' money.

Wylfa – so much effort has gone into trying to get a new reactor at Wylfa over the line over the last ten years! All to no avail – primarily for economic reasons. Any renewed 'firm commitment' for Wylfa will mean as little as all previous commitments.

Rolls-Royce's Small Modular Reactors – apparently, Johnson is particularly excited by this prospect, even though they're not even remotely small (at 470MW, they're actually as big as the first generation of Magnox reactors here in the UK!), and no-one has ever done modular construction (offsite in factory settings) before now.

And none of these 'exciting prospects' will give Johnson (let alone hard-pressed UK consumers) one single electron in terms of helping to meet the Government's target to have carbon-free electricity by 2035.