The next one is Sizewell C, where the Government has agreed to act as an anchor investor by taking a 20 percent stake, with France’s EDF, pension funds and infrastructure investors coughing up the rest. This £4bn investment is already baked into the Government’s forward spending plans. It is the required commitment to the rest of the fleet which is sticking in the Treasury’s craw, and with good reason.
With the possible exception of the first generation Magnox power stations, virtually all nuclear build in the UK has been ruinously expensive, costing far more than almost any imaginable alternative. The price of Britain’s unique, gas cooled nuclear technology – initiated by Tony Benn – was off the scale.
What is more, credible voices have questioned whether the quantities of economically mineable uranium even exist to meet the currently projected world demand for the stuff as a “clean” source of energy. As things stand, we are as dependent on Russia as a source of enriched uranium as we are its hydrocarbons. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
The danger is that by putting our faith in what is essentially a backward looking, twentieth century technology, only with hugely onerous twenty first century safety standards on top, we are making the same mistake again.
A combination of multiple smaller reactors, fast developing storage technology to complement intermittent renewables, and energy efficiency would seem a much more promising path – particularly the latter where it might be possible to reduce energy usage by a third without damage to lifestyles and economic output.
As it is, we seem to be heading for a kind of back to the future world of heavy government involvement and investment in our energy infrastructure. Why not just recreate the Central Electricity Generating Board, the all powerful and magnificently arrogant state owned behemoth that used to monopolise Britain’s energy needs, and be done with it?
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