High energy: the PM and his Chancellor. Credit: Dan Kitwood/WPA Pool/Getty
Being a wealthy man from a wealthy family, the concept of being forced into debt may be hard for the Chancellor to grasp. But with a looming cost-of-living crisis linked to soaring energy bills threatening to overshadow May’s local elections, perhaps he could think about it in terms of his approval ratings. These are now in negative territory and heading the wrong way. He might also care to look at the ConHome Cabinet League Table, where he has just plunged to the bottom.
This is in large part due to his Spring Statement, which was a fiasco — a failure not just of empathy, but also of basic political judgement. However, he and Boris Johnson do have one last chance to turn this around — and that’s the forthcoming energy independence strategy. It’s due out on Thursday, but after weeks of wrangling between Downing Street and the Treasury, there’s no guarantee.
The Prime Minister — as always looking for the big, bold, willy-waving policy — wants to go nuclear. But he’s forgotten that the story of British nuclear is not a happy one.
It all began with such high hopes. In 1956, a young Queen Elizabeth II opened the world’s first nuclear power station, Calder Hall in Cumbria. As she said back then, “this new power, which has proved itself to be such a terrifying weapon of destruction is harnessed for the first time for the common good of our community”.
However, that wasn’t the whole truth. As well as generating electricity, the first generation of Magnox reactors were also designed to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. The dual purpose meant they were never optimised for civilian use. Calder Hall was also next door to Windscale Pile No. 1 — which, in 1957, was the site of Britain’s worst nuclear accident.
In the Sixties, the next generation of Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors (AGR) was planned as a fresh start. But these too were a big disappointment. The first one opened 13 years late and the fleet as a whole has been plagued by technical problems. In the Eighties, Margaret Thatcher decided to give nuclear a third chance. The plan was to build ten new plants, based on the Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR) design. But due to escalating costs only one of these was ever built — Sizewell B.
In the 2000s, it was Tony Blair’s turn to bang his head against a brick wall. This time, the design of choice was the French-owned European Pressurised Reactor (EPR). Eight sites were planned; but to date, work has started on just one of them — Hinkley Point C. Predictably, it too has been hit by multiple delays and cost over-runs. It’s due open in 2026 — 70 years after Calder Hall — but the results of yet another cost review could mean that more bad news is on the way.
After seven decades and four failed attempts to make nuclear power work for Britain, Boris has decided that we should make a fifth attempt. He wants 25% of the Britain’s electricity to come from nuclear power. At the moment the figure is about 16% — most of which is from stations that are due to close by the end of this decade.
But over the past 40 years, we’ve only managed to build them at a rate of one per generation. What makes Boris think he can do ten times better? Moreover, this is a technology notorious for blowing through budgets. If it all goes wrong again, then with multiple projects we’ll pay a heavy price. Why then is there so little opposition to this high-risk strategy?
Possibly it’s because the public is so desperate for affordable energy. Supposedly unpopular forms of generation like onshore wind farms are anything but. These projects enjoy overwhelming support, even if they’re built close to where people live. According to the Sunday Times, Tory internal polling shows that support for renewables goes “off the charts” if local residents get discounted electricity. Nuclear is not as popular as wind or solar, but the same principle could apply: deal with the nimbies by stuffing their mouths with freebies.
Just how seriously is the Prime Minister taking his grand plan? Judging from a Johnsonian quip that “we should put a small nuclear reactor in every Labour seat” — the answer is not “not very”. It doesn’t help that the PM has a track record of promoting madcap schemes such as Boris Island or the bridge across the Irish Sea. Fortunately, those notions came to nothing, but on nuclear, who will stop his folie de grandeur?
Our best hope is Rishi Sunak. As a banker, he knows just how reluctant the private sector is to fund the construction of nuclear power stations. The risks are just too big. So it’s unlikely that we’ll get our new nukes unless the British Government shares in the cost of construction. Even a 10% share would mean finding billions in taxpayers’ money. Though the PM might be willing to risk our cash on a dodgy prospect, his penny-pinching Chancellor is reportedly horrified.
Remember, this is a technological challenge that has defeated the governments of Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair — but, hilariously, we’re supposed to believe that Boris Johnson can succeed where his predecessors failed.
Even if these immensely complicated, decade-long construction projects were to go to plan, that would still leave the opportunity cost. Billions — perhaps, ten of billions — of pounds are at stake. Using this money to prop-up the French nuclear industry means not using it to level-up Britain as Boris promised he would. It means not investing in the energy industries where Britain should be leading the world, like offshore wind power and carbon capture. It means making this country a technology importer, when we desperately need to export our way back to prosperity. We will be a poorer, more indebted nation if we choose the nuclear option.
It also means a huge diversion of government effort away from the immediate energy needs of the British people. Winter is coming and so is the next 50% hike in our gas and electricity bills. We have just months to adequately insulate the homes of the most vulnerable households. It is this goal that should be consuming the Prime Minister’s political attention, not his nuclear fever dream.
Remember that the best case scenario for nuclear is that we’ll have a new generation of power stations coming online some time in the late 2030s. But the cost-of-living crisis demands urgency. Instead of gambling on a technology that has let us down again-and-again, Boris needs to concentrate on the here-and-now.
That means deploying the technologies that can make a difference by next year, not the next decade. Our national security is at stake, our household finances are at stake, and when temperatures begin to fall again, lives are at stake.
I realise that a roll of loft insulation doesn’t make for the most exciting of photo opportunities — especially for a gesture politician like Boris Johnson — but right now it might make all the difference.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeWindmills only produce electricity when the wind blows at the right speed and in the right direction- between 10% and 30% of the time in Britain. It is not a solution, it is a “nice to have”.
The options are coal, gas or nuclear. For transport the options are petrol or diesel. For steel production, coal.
Forget hypothetical “man-made global warming”. The minuscule risks of “climate change” in 200 years time is nothing compared to energy price spikes today and putting ourselves in the grip of our enemies.
Get fracking, get mining and open up more North Sea fields. Buy off the fracking and mining locals with £0 gas for twenty years. Make the fracking contractors supply gas onto the domestic market at a discount for the first two years of production to help people with the current inflation. Then they can sell on the world market at prevailing prices. Use the extra tax revenues to roll out Rolls-Royce’s SMRs nationwide.
Britain should aim to never be in Germany’s horrendous position of buying energy from someone you are fighting in a war in order to stop the lights going out. The blame lies squarely with the eco-lunatics who have magnified a small ecological phenomenon into a global scare.
An excellent synopsis. Thank you.
Surely we could also open up the mines again using AI Robots in place of the expensive and somewhat stroppy Miners of the past. Casualties would also no longer be a problem.
There must be plenty of coal left in say the Selby Coalfield or did we divert the East Coast Mainline in the 80’s for nothing?
I am certain that the famous centenarian and former ‘green guru’, James Lovelock, FRS, would approve.
Right. Can we get you to write the articles instead of Franklin? 🙂
Think I’d make him Energy Minister!
Matt, your solutions are too intelligent and simple for our leaders to contemplate.
Spot on but at the same time we need to ‘push back’ against the ‘accepted science’ on Net Zero. This type of inaccurate hogwash has vast sums of money being thrown at so it is obvious that the social scientists, not proper chemists or physicists, would follow the money.
The inaccuracy and falsehoods perpetrated by the 2nd recently published IPCC report is an outrage and an assault on truth and statistics.
So much of this is right. However some of the “blame” must lie with globalisation generally. And the west’s softness and unwillingness to imagine they could ever be dealing with “uncivilised” factors. Spending billions of oil and gas is hardly green.
The headline of this, “Why does Boris want to nuke the UK” plays on the old calumny that nuclear power and nuclear weapons are the same things. It’s like saying that putting petrol in your car is the same as dropping a fuel-air bomb on someone. That conflation was the tool used by the green movement and hydrocarbon industry to keep nuclear on the back foot for the last 50 years. Arguments on the basis of costs and benefits are fine but that’s just propaganda.
You have recall that from the very beginning (1957) CND* & Co were the classic case of Lenin’s “Useful Idiots”.
All that nonsense about “Ban the Bomb” was just another aspect of ‘Cold War’ Soviet infiltration and subversion.
(* Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.)
More recently, it has been alleged that the anti-fracking campaign has been well funded – from Russia.
Yes the authors “CND” bleeding comes through in the first paragraph. With current geopolitical events I’m pleased the pacifist lunes have always been shown the door by the sensible electorate.
This is missing the point somewhat. Whilst the state has failed in its ambitions to build large nuclear power stations in an economic or timely fashion in the past, the current plans are for private companies to build small scale reactors. Of course some govt money may be required and the plans could still fail but at a smaller scale with lower govt involvement the risks are more reasonable.
It’ll simply end up like every other privatised utility, where the risks are carried by the taxpayer while any profits go into the back pockets of the wealthy
That is because the state allows it to be so. Truth is, the risks are minimal in most utilities (though in the nuclear power industry it might make sense to impose safety rules in return for some basic guaranteed level of earnings), it was never necessary for example, for suppliers of water. If they go bust, they go bust, and as in every other business somebody will come along and buy them at a discount and keep operating them.
And if they break the rules, by discharging sewage into watercourses, then the directors should be prosecuted, fined, jailed, and banned. That works fine in business generally
And the current setup with “renewables” being subsidised up the wazoo to consumers isn’t?
It would be nice if a way could be found to have RR and Hitachi compete to get one built and commissioned using each of their technologies. They’re both good technologies but Hitachi might be able to get one running faster than RR. What’s important for the UK is to have the capabilities required to build and operate the things at scale, not necessarily the IP. If Hitachi can get there faster, it should be considered.
Really! Take a look at Sizewell C on the Suffolk coast. Half ownership to be taken by HMG and EDF (25% each), the rest by the private sector – ha!. EDF too has a disastrous record with nuclear and the proposed site will be partially in the sea by the end of its lifespan…..what’s not to like.
Oh dear! Yet again typical hyperbole:“1957, was the site of Britain’s worst nuclear accident”.
The Windscale fire of October 1957 probably resulted in the eventual death of about 100 souls,due to various Cancers.
In the same year we killed 5,500 on the roads.
I agree, the British nuclear industry had an excellent safety record having learnt the lessons from the Winscale fire, the Magnox stations were probably the safest reactors ever built in that they kept water well away from the core.
The tragedy of the AGR program is that the plug was pulled just when industry had figured out how to build them well. Had Torness and Harwell 2 been followed with more after 1980 we would have a fleet of nuclear power stations providing zero carbon power for the last 40 years. The real problem with UK industrial policy in general is failure to provide long term investment in anything. Sadly, the current arguments over nuclear suggest the same mistakes will be made again. Unlike Peter though, I believe the mistake is the failure to invest in something long term. The SMR program offers the chance to rebuild domestic nuclear capabilities in industry, engineers and managers. The price of building that will be high, but stick with it and the benefits will be greater.
I agree, long term planning is something which the UK is very poor at doing, whether that be road infrastructure, NHS or nuclear; the list is never ending.
My experience in industry was that most of the businesses for which I have worked were always very reluctant to invest in plant and machinery, despite good calculations based on sound assumptions.
There seems to be a general lack of regard to infrastructure in general in this country. It’s almost as though the second we moved out of the Victorian era, everything was deemed a solved problem. We get never ending demands for investment in services that require advanced infrastructure, but never any desire to invest that very thing that makes those services possible.
James Hawes argues in The Shortest History of England that it’s a function of the C19 English bourgeois class being able to jump to the aristocracy in a generation and hence failing to build a culture of productive (rather than rentier) investment across generations. There’s something in that.
The fossil fuels will run out one day. I’m not in favor of phasing them out before we have to– or at least before we are ready to–but neither should we wait till they are gone before getting ready for what’s next. And unless something new comes along, that means nuclear. The others aren’t dependable and require fossil fuel backups. They tend to have big ecological footprints as well, which you would think the Greens would care about. Might as well be trying to figure out how to make it work now before it is an emergency. Just this past year places from Europe to Texas got reminders of the fragility of the green energy systems.
Just what I was thinking, it might be 100 or 200 years (if we use coal), but we will run out. It seems sensible to have alternatives well ahead of time. I can only see nuclear fission or fusion as possibilities for long term. Only fission currently workable, so we should really get on with at least one facility and plan it properly. Of course to plan properly we might want to up the fossil fuels in the interim.
Everything about this piece is wrong.
Sunak’s spring statement reflects the fiscal reality facing Britain. The cost of living crisis is a result of energy dependency, and of the ridiculous lockdowns which this journalist co-championed.
So the first thing to do is to swear off economy-destroying lockdowns in time for the next respiratory virus season. The next thing to do is work on energy independence.
Without baseline nuclear, you need Russian gas. Or Saudi gas. Or somebody’s gas.
And the idea that nuclear is a failed policy is rot and nonsense. Look across the English channel. And the next generation of reactors are even better.
Boris is right. We need nuclear if we want to achieve a reduction in emissions.
In the meantime, we also need to rethink our policies towards Putin, given the reality of the gas market today.
Well said. The author is dunderheaded. His political leanings make him blind to the realities of the day.
The final paragraph sums up the nonsense. Loft insulation? Good grief.
Fracking it is then.
But we have to look to the future too. France have done incredible things with their nuclear energy (there, I said something nice about France), their rectors are estimated to have far longer “shelf-life” than most conventional power stations. Wind, solar, insulation all are goods, but not good enough on their own, and if we do want to decrease our carbon out-put (and I realise that many here are not convinced we need to, but political parties of all strips in Britain are committed) then fracking cannot be a long-term solution.
I think the nimby effect has largely done for fracking. We are just not very rational about energy production, and unfortunately are encouraged to be even less so by activist fanatics.
This paragraph shows the writer is lacking in clue. Wind power (and solar for that matter) are not in fact affordable power generation solutions. Even ignoring their inherent unreliability, they are extremely expensive and extremely land intensive. To replace a Sizewell B nuclear plant (~1.2 GW of power) with wind and solar would require a windfarm the size of one of the three Dogger Bank wind farms (also ~1.2GW each). According to the official website all three of these are over 500 sq km or 200 sq miles in area.
If we want reliable energy the choices are basically fracking or nukes. Fracking is cheaper. But if you subscribe to the global warming hypothesis as Boris Johnson does (well Carrie does so he pretty much has to) then you can’t frack. Nukes are the only alternative. Hence nukes it is
Seems to me that the new generation of Thorium reactors are both much safer than the old style nuclear power plants and vastly smaller. If one is gung-ho on reducing dependence on gas and oil, surely that is the only logical way to go. Every source of energy has a risk including the earliest form developed by humans, fire. But the benefits are obviously huge.
Well said!
Certainly worth a bit more research spend. Has anyone got them working yet?
I don’t believe so. Not any molten salt reactors, at least.
Rather sneaky to include “carbon capture” as an energy industry.
I suppose it is if you mean, “energy intensive” rather than “energy producing”.
Wind can and does produce anywhere between 40% of the UK’s electricity and, last week, 0.2%. Back-up is required for intermittent wind and solar. Insulation is all well and good, and I agree with the author, but how will that keep the power on if there is no wind and no backup? Short of building large dams, there is currently no deployable, large-scale, affordable storage solution for storing intermittent renewable energy, such as wind.
Carbon capture would be pragmatic. Decarbonising the carbon economy. This would be especially relevant for the biggest emitters, China, India, and, to a lesser extent, because it is exiting coal apace, the USA. But is it sustainable?
The nuclear reactors the author refers to are all huge and built in situ. Small modular reactors could be factory built. Rolls Royce has a good track record building reactors for the Royal Navy. Moltex has its molten thorium salt design, also a small reactor. Elon Musk is offering to build small nuclear reactors on a short timescale. The fact Musk is very confident should make nuclear sceptics sit up and take notice. He has a habit of getting things done.
Nuclear is the most realistic, proven, and sustainable, large-scale solution available.
Musk is such a scammer, all he is after is feed capital to prop up the other parts of his ponzy empire. As for “getting thing’s done” where is hyperloop? Have you noticed all the Tesla Semi trucks on the motorways? How is the solar roof business going? Space-ex is teetering on bankruptcy and the car company has taken 10 years to return a profit, and the “Las Vegas Loop” taxi in a tunnel is a joke. Me I’m not so impressed.
Musk has managed to deliver a successful electric car, helped along by billions in subsidies and low interest rates. His company is so overvalued that it poses an existential risk to the economy. It can never deliver profits to justify it’s current value. If you think Hyperloop is stupid take a look at SpaceX and his Mars colony. Utterly preposterous.
Yes, people like fluffy white rabbits as well. How is it that Peter Franklin does not mention the blindingly obvious disadvantages of renewables, which is that they produce little or no energy for significant lengths of time? I’m not against renewables, but it is utterly irresponsible to imply that they alone can provide the UK’s energy needs.
The route taken to nuclear power (Uranium fission) was driven by the desire to produce plutonium for weapons. That is probably why Thorium was never explored properly.
Uranium must be imported. What is worse: much of the known Uranium is found in places subject to considerable political risk in either purchasing it or transporting it safely to our shores. Dependence on energy imports of any kind is looking very dodgy, following our insane policy of poking Russia.
By contrast, Thorium is everywhere. Now would be a really good time to look seriously at Thorium for power production.
I’m glad you said this. How long would Thorium take to develop?
Oakridge experimental thorium reactor was so controllable they used to turn it off over the weekends when the boffins were at home. No worries about thermal runaway and dependence on cooling systems, just stop exciting it and it cools down, unlike uranium which needs constant cooling.
Article misses the point completely. As I understand it the plan is to use small modular reactors built in factories and installed into the old magnox sites. By building in a controlled environment a lot of the problems encountered by large site built nuclear can be avoided, quality control should be better and delivery schedules better managed. The complexity or a reactor plant is less than a modern airliner, they should be built in the same conditions with rigorous oversight .
The truth of the matter is that most voters don’t give a tinker’s cuss about global warming and the associated tree hugger sandaloid fascists desires, and a real vote winner would be to have the guts and courage to carry on as before, bin all the electro zero lunacy, and say that Britain has perfectly decent air, and whatever Britain does makes not one jot of difference anyway…. and point out that 1 flight of a Lockheed C5A transport jet uses god knows how many tons of kerosene, so your Tesla does not matter anyway.
Don’t forget the regulatory assault nuclear has been under, often led by Green pressure groups. Unpicking some of this barrier will drastically decrease the risk of going over budget in these projects.
There’s money in regulation too. Every extra dollar of cost overrun is another 90cents in the pockets of Hitachi, Westinghouse, hundreds of subcontractors and consultants. There’s a helluva lot of money to be made regulating radiation, and it’s mainly getting the paperwork right.
Important context missing from this debate is the endgame; what does a mature renewable-based system look like? Essentially it means abundant generation (ie, nuclear plus renewables) plus storage.
Neither nuclear nor renewables are capable of the responsiveness + reliability needed for peak demand, currently provided by gas. Whether pumped hydro, molten salt, batteries, hydrogen or something else, stored non-carbon energy is the only alternative to fossil fuels for flexibly meeting peak demand.
So storage is needed anyway, and if we have storage we can then focus on renewables as the lowest cost source of replenishment – intermittency ceases to be a problem.
So, in summary, renewables for lowest cost + nuclear for baseload, with surplus from both to cover peak load (via storage) . This isn’t an opinion nor a prescription; it just illustrates what needs to be included in the scope of the debate.
Once again, an article advocating renewables that does not address the issue of intermittency and lack of viable storage capacity. Yes, nuclear is expensive, although we have no visibility on the likely cost of mini-reactors but so is the scale of the battery storage required to meet current needs – that’s before the increase in demand driven by the uptake of EV’s and the switch to heat pumps.
Perhaps Peter Franklin could read Chris Bond’s Substack on the matter and then publish a revised version of this article.
The cost overruns of nuclear power plants are political rather than technological.
While I do not have much confidence in Boris Johnson’s executive ability to get things done right (he appears to have none at all), the general logic of opposing nuclear power above is completely wrong. Past failures in a rapidly advancing technological space are nothing more than solutions waiting to happen.
We must recall that the slow growth of nuclear power over the post-war period was substantially the result of the oil companies success in ensuring that nuclear power never threatened their own hegemony (this is, incidentally, why they are so supportive of renewables – they guarantee that oil will continue to be needed for decades). Now, however, oil and gas isn’t going to be allowed to keep doing this, so the political climate in which nuclear power faces severe headwinds is disappearing.
Secondly, while as stated I have no confidence in Boris, I have a huge amount of confidence in Elon Musk, who wants the UK to be a test bed for a fleet of rapidly deployable micro-reactors. This can be done far faster and cheaper than the large cold-war era designs that are discussed above, so this is another reason to be confident that things can change for the better.
It is because people such as Franklin dominate the media, politics, and the civil service, that we find ourselves in such a predicament. He has a political point of view, doesn’t understand the problem, but thinks that he has.
Our nuclear industry wasn’t a failure, because although stupidly abandoned so that we’ve lost much of the expertise, we managed to build enough stations which supply us with 20% of our energy, and what is more, do so even when the wind is too little, or too much, there’s no sun, and everyone’s just switched on the kettle. What happens when those nuclear power stations are decommissioned through old age? Or wish to charge the electric cars we’ve been compelled to buy, ready for tomorrow’s use? Or switch on those heat pumps? The last one was commissioned in 1995.
In contrast, France has about 58, with which they supply other countries with power (if we behave), and journalists have the cheek to challenge our politicians with the smallness of the increase France is able to allow.
Cost overruns on such projects should of course be avoided, but shouldn’t be used as an excuse to avoid making such decisions, and funding should be domestic, and because of the risk and strategic necessity, will inevitably involve a state CEGB. After all, the government has vast unfunded pension commitments.
As for the unfortunate Mr Johnson; it’s too late. We are suffering from decisions made by politicians long since knighted or ennobled, or in new careers of consultancy.
Boris Johnson has few options, but it drives me up the wall to hear that the solution is more wind turbines, solar panels, or insulating old housing stock – there’s nothing new about the latter, and the effectiveness is limited and time consuming. However, I do believe that new buildings (not just houses) should have very high quality insulation, solar panels, and rain harvesting to relieve the sewers.
Well said.
Relying on wind power verges on insane.
These power stations are supposed to come on line “by 2050”. That probably means, in reality, by 2060. A lot could happen between now and then.
Is that an argument for not doing it?
The reasons for the failure of the British nuclear power programme are complex. They have little or nothing to do with proposals for new nuclear technology. This article is based on a false premise.
A couple of good articles lately and I begin to re-think cancelling my subscription (5days left). Then an article such as this comes along and I recall why I cancelled
Sure there are some poor articles … this one is a good example … clearly dashed off in a hurry and missing the key change that brings Nuclear back as a major contender.
But there are some excellent articles … I fully intend to re-new my membership
Nuclear seems in fairness our main credible option … and yet for the life of me I cannot understand how you have omitted any mention of Small Modular Reactors ?
These new reactors could transform the whole energy market and you don’t even mention them
https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-smrs
I don’t know why, but I seem to disagree with a disappointingly large number of pieces by Mr Franklin. As for loft insulation, I have lost count of how much we have spent supposedly insulating our houses over the last thirty odd years to little discernible effect.
https://www.ref.org.uk/ref-blog/370-offshore-wind-subsidies-per-mwh-generated-continue-to-rise
Technology exists to have solar roof tiles (e.g. https://www.tesla.com/solarroof)… why not mandate/subsidise for every new build going forward…? Costly but…
Another factor is Nuclear are constantly switched on to provide constant electricity generation. Wind power is not constant and so currently needs to partner with electricity that can be switched on and off , which is why gas power electricity is the best solution until a green constant source can be found in future. Gas is also a very clean energy source and relatively safe.
“Remember, this is a technological challenge that has defeated the governments of Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair — but, hilariously, we’re supposed to believe that Boris Johnson can succeed where his predecessors failed.”
Good Lord England, I do love your humor.
SMR’s … Small Modular Reactors
Like the author Peter Franklin you are clearly unaware of the potential?
https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-smrs
Awful headline, and the article goes downhill from there.