Why Britain is struggling with nuclear energy

A rust-colored dome looms over the muddy farmland of Hinkley Point, a headland overlooking the Bristol Channel in southwest England.

When a giant yellow crane lifted the 45-metre-wide concrete and steel dish into place this winter, it marked a milestone for what would become the first commercial nuclear power station to be built in Britain since the mid-1990s and a flagship in an effort to revive the industry.

Yet the closure of the first of two cylindrical reactor buildings was also a reminder of the enormous, lengthy and increasingly expensive effort to build what is known as Hinkley Point C.

The plant has been in the works for more than a decade, but completion is still years away.

Recently, Électricité de France, the French state-owned company building the power plant, warned of further delays. The start date, scheduled two years ago for 2027, has been pushed back to the end of this decade, or perhaps 2031.

The extra time will add billions more to a final bill that could be as much as 47.9 billion pounds, or about $60 billion, EDF said. In 2016 the price tag was pegged at £18 billion.

Nuclear power is gaining popularity in the West as a tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with the British government last month announcing the “largest expansion of nuclear power in 70 years.” But nuclear energy's track record in Western Europe and the United States is not encouraging, with recent projects plagued by delays and staggering cost overruns. The fate of Hinkley Point and another project planned on England's east coast in the village of Sizewell could determine whether Britain's nuclear momentum gains or declines.

“The hype is at an all-time high,” said Franck Gbaguidi, a nuclear analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk firm. “Governments will over-promise and consistently under-deliver.”

In what executives say is a total effort to be completed by 2030, EDF has 11,000 people in Hinkley working around the clock. The welders, engineers and electricians, employed by a host of contractors, are ferried to the site in a fleet of white buses from a logistics center and temporary apartments around the faded industrial town of Bridgwater.

There are “an awful lot of workers on site at the same time,” said Susan Goss, vice-chairman of Stogursey Parish Council, the local district. “I think it could be difficult to coordinate what they do,” she added.

Britain once pioneered splitting atoms to generate electricity, building an early series of reactors in the 1950s and 1960s, but the country hasn't completed a nuclear power plant in almost 30 years.

“The UK and the US have, in a sense, forgotten how to build nuclear power stations,” says Simon Taylor, a professor at the University of Cambridge's Judge Business School who has written extensively about Britain's nuclear programme. “We may be able to rebuild that knowledge, but it will take a long time,” he added.

Nuclear power stations are incredibly complex structures, and Britain has lacked both a workforce with the right skills and contractors adept at choreographing the tasks that make up a well-managed project, Mr. Taylor and other analysts said. Furthermore, the UK process for certifying and permitting one of these installations is painstaking and thorough, costing potential developers billions.

It was too much for one developer. In 2019, Japanese conglomerate Hitachi walked away from a nuclear project in Wales after spending £2 billion. The company blamed rising costs.

In 2008, when Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government kicked off the current push to build nuclear power stations, a government study suggested that new power stations could send electricity to the grid by 2018.

Since then, only Hinkley Point has reached an advanced stage, while Britain's nuclear production capacity has shrunk by more than 40 percent as aging plants were phased out, according to the Nuclear Industry Association, a trade group. Last year, nuclear power plants provided about 14 percent of the country's electricity, up from 21 percent a decade ago.

“Relearning nuclear skills, creating a new supply chain and training staff has been a monumental task,” Stuart Crooks, general manager of Hinkley Point, said in a recent memo to staff.

Compounding the problem, the type of reactors being built at Hinkley Point have a reputation for being problematic. The British government allowed EDF to buy most of Britain's existing nuclear power system in 2009, and the company chose a design that the French nuclear industry helped develop, known as the European Pressurized Water Reactor, to build at Hinkley Point .

Promoted as one of the safest and most powerful reactors ever built, the design is now known for flaws, delays and cost overruns, especially at sites in Olkiluoto in Finland, which was commissioned in 2023, and Flamanville in France, which is expected to will come online. this year.

In theory, developers learn lessons every time they build a plant, driving down future costs, but that process doesn't seem to have quite worked out with the reactors at Hinkley, the fifth and sixth of this design.

Roy Pumfrey, spokesman for Stop Hinkley, a group opposed to the plant, believes the plant is “doomed” never to be completed. “The reactor design is just too complicated,” said Mr. Pumfrey, a retired teacher.

In his message, EDF's Mr Crooks placed additional blame for the delays and cost overruns of the UK's nuclear regulations. To meet the requirements, Mr. Crooks said, the original design would need 7,000 changes, including 35 percent more steel and 25 percent more concrete. EDF is owned by the French government.

Britain Office for Nuclear Regulation responded quickly, said in a statement on January 25 that it had requested changes following the 2011 Fukushima accident in Japan, as well as the experiences with other European pressure reactors in Europe and China. As for the additional concrete and steel, the regulator said France had similar requirements.

Yet there are indications that building a nuclear power plant in Britain takes longer and is more expensive. Britain Remade, a group that aims to accelerate economic development, found that similar reactors had been built much cheaper – not only in China, which leads the world in building nuclear power stations, but also in Finland and France, despite delays there.

“It is clear that our approach to reactor planning and financing comes at a significant cost,” two analysts, Sam Dumitriu and Ben Hopkinson, wrote in a recent study.

Despite the disappointments, nuclear power is gaining political support in Britain and elsewhere as a reliable, low-emission energy source. When completed, Hinkley Point C will be able to power six million homes – more than two and a half times the UK's second largest nuclear power station. And the stable nature of nuclear energy is an important characteristic; Sustainable energy such as wind and solar energy are intermittent.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently announced an additional £1.3 billion to help fund the construction of EDF's Sizewell factory, known as Sizewell C.

“Nuclear energy is the perfect antidote to the energy challenges facing Britain,” Mr Sunak said last month as he announced a plan to quadruple nuclear energy production by 2050.

Who will pay for this expansion? That's not exactly clear.

The British government is now the main owner of Sizewell C, having bought a minority stake from China General Nuclear, a Chinese state-owned company. EDF has reduced its stake from 80 to less than 50 percent, and says it is determined to reduce that to below 20 percent. EDF and the UK government are hopeful that the lessons learned at Hinkley Point C will reduce the costs of Sizewell C, which has the same design.

The government, advised by Barclays Bank, is talking to a group of investors about purchasing the Sizewell factory. As an enticement, officials are offering a new financing model that will help developers recoup their investments faster.

A few years ago, Chinese companies were expected to play a major role in the British nuclear program, but the British government has soured on their involvement. China General still owns about a third of Hinkley Point C, but no longer contributes to construction costs, according to EDF, leaving the French stuck with paying to keep the work going. China General did not respond to a request for comment. On Friday, EDF said it was writing down about $13.9 billion on the project.

With so much at stake for Britain, EDF and the French government are hopeful that Mr Sunak will contribute more to help complete Hinkley Point and make the next factory a success.

“It is in the interest of the British authorities that we are a solid partner to deliver the project in the best conditions,” said Luc Rémont, Managing Director of EDF. “And so I am confident that we will find a way through to the British authorities, both at Hinkley Point and Sizewell.”

Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Beijing, and Liz Alderman from Paris.