The fall and rise of nuclear power in Britain
Simon Taylor, from the Cambridge Judge Business School, regaled Energy Ireland delegates with some light hearted reflections on the development of the nuclear power sector in the UK over the past 70 years. Most of these are referenced within his recently published book: The fall and rise of nuclear power in Britain.
Taylor said that the appetite to develop nuclear power in the UK can be traced back to the use of the technology from a weapons’ perspective during World War II. “There was genuine optimism in the 1950s that civil nuclear power was the answer to Britain’s energy needs,” he said. “From the outset the sector was plagued by a process of wrong decision making. This was most certainly the case where the technology options were concerned and the knock-on effect this had on project development times and associated costs.”
Taylor highlighted the development of the Dungeness B plant in Kent as the most obvious example of nuclear development strategies not going according to plan. “The plant in question was commissioned in 1965,” he explained. “However it did not come fully on-stream until 1995. The project was plagued with difficulties from day one.”
Taylor reflected on the impact which government policies had made on the development of the UK’s nuclear power sector during the Thatcher era. These included the privatisation of the electricity supply industry, courtesy of the Electricity Act 1989.
“However, this turned out to be a failure as British Energy’s share price crashed in the period 1999 through to 2003,” he explained. Taylor confirmed that the last two nuclear power stations, commissioned up to this point and currently in use, are the Sizewell A and B plants in Suffolk.
“By the end of the millennium nuclear power had the worst of all images from a cost, environmental and safety perspective,” he added. “The Chernobyl disaster had helped cement this perspective in many peoples’ minds. However, less than 10 years later the potential use of nuclear energy was again being mooted as the need to develop an effective response to the threat of global warming became apparent.”
According to Taylor, the renaissance of the nuclear power dream in the UK can be traced back to the Climate Change Act of 2008. “This set out the scale of the response required to ensure that the threat of global warming could be mitigated,” he said. “Nuclear was identified as part of Britain’s response in this context but it was also recognised that many of the existing nuclear plants were coming to the end of their useful life. This, in turn, highlighted the need for a new generation of nuclear power facilities to be developed. Hence the current plan to develop a state-of-the-art facility at Hinkley Point in Somerset.”
Taylor added that the proposed project has a strong theme of history repeating itself associated with it. “The project was initially conceived in 1990,” he said. “It was then shelved but subsequently revived in 2006. The plant has been designed to produce 7 per cent of UK power by 2026 but final approval for the project has yet to be given by the UK government. In the meantime, problems abound with regard to the financial viability of the French sponsoring company EDF. Rumours of investment from Chinese sources represent another part of the development mix.”
Taylor said that, in addition to Hinkley Point, an additional five new nuclear power stations have been mooted for Britian. These include a third plant at Sizewell and one in Wales. “But none of these will get off the ground until the problems dogging the Hinkley Point project have been finally resolved,” he concluded.
