Our Failed UK Nuclear Energy Programme

The Adam Smith Institute has been carrying our research recently about the way neglect of nuclear power has led to us paying 40% more for our electricity than the French.

There have been 21 new nuclear reactors proposed by successive UK governments since the 1980s. Astonishingly, only one has been built. Compare it with France, where 45 new reactors have been built which provide 70% of the country's electricity.

The ASI found that the building of these plants accounted for the discrepancy in price between the two countries. An ASI representative, Mitchell Palmer, said that the missing reactor projects were abandoned because of over-regulation, which made them uneconomic to build.

Here's Mitchell talking about it:

"British households are being sacrificed on the altar of a broken energy policy. Paying 40% more than the french is a consequence of regulatory gold-plating. Whitehall mandated seven thousand design changes for the plant being built at Hinckley Point in Somerset while our neighbours built a standardised fleet and reaped the rewards of energy sanity".

France is also able to export reliable (24/7/365) electricity to neighbouring countries; for example, last week, London (and much of south-east England) was getting about 50% of its power from France.

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher's government proposed building one new nuclear reactor every year for a decade; ten in toal. Only one was built: Sizewell B.

In 2008, Ed Miliiband, as energy secretary, displayed plans for the building of nuclear plants on eight designated sites. Only Hinckley Point C was activated; it is still buing built and is way over budget. Sizewell C is in its early stages and there is every indication that it, too, will be late and way over budget.

A Nuclear Industry Associatiion representative, Tom Greatrex, said that the UK's failure to build these reactors has left us dependent on global gas supplies, with higher bills, higher emissions and less industrial capability. This is undoubtedly true; our aluminium industry has gone; fertisier manufacture has virtually stopped, and Ed Miliband, in a second disastrous stint as energy minister, has refused to allow the UK to extract its own gas from the North Sea, preferring to buy it from Norway (also from the North Sea) at several times the price.

This is what happens when energy-policy decisions are made by people with no understanding of basic science. They might be described as energy illiterates. They don't even know enough science to ask the right questions.

There should be a separate non-political body writing energy policy, comprising physicists, chemists and engineers. Until that happens, we will subject to decisions made by ignorant people motived more by politics than science.



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