Britain’s Nuclear Renaissance Faces Mounting Cost Pressures
Kansas Fed Pres Warns Oil Price Shock Might Not Be Transitory Felicity Bradstock is a writer and journalist based in Mexico City.
She writes for energy websites and covers several other industries, as well as writing… The United Kingdom is focused on diversifying its energy mix away from fossil fuels to boost energy security and support decarbonisation aims.
This includes expanding its nuclear power capacity with the development of two large-scale nuclear plants - Sizewell C and Hinkley Point C, as well as developing small modular reactors (SMR).
However, its nuclear ambitions have not quite gone to plan, following years of delays and rising construction costs.
Sizewell C in Suffolk, eastern England, received its planning approval in 2022, was greenlit in 2025, and is expected to be operational by around the late 2030s.
Investment for the development comes from the government, EDF Energy, Centrica, La Caisse, and Amber Infrastructure Limited.
The project is expected tocreate 17,000 jobsduring peak construction, including 7,900 in Suffolk.
Once operational, the nuclear plant will produce up to 3.2 GW of clean electricity to power up to 6 million homes.
The government expects the plant to cost around£38 millionto develop and says it could provide around £2 billion a year in savings from the electricity system, compared to using other low-carbon technologies.
However, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the chair of the public accounts committee, which oversees the work of the National Audit Office (NAO), warned that “Sizewell C is a project of exceptional scale, complexity and significance for taxpayers… Experience from comparable nuclear projects in the UK and overseas highlights their vulnerability to delays and cost overruns.” To date, the French nuclear firm EDF has invested £1.1 billionfor a 12.5 percent stakein the project, while the U.K.
governmenthas invested £14.2 billion as the majority stakeholder.
The NAO fears that if not properly managed, construction could run significantly over budget, as seen with other nuclear developments in recent years.
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