U.K. Nuclear Power: The Next Huawei?

“Several projects were planned but only Hinkley Point will likely go ahead,” Jonathan Marshall, Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), told DW. “Bradwell would be a Chinese project, but is now unlikely for political reasons.”

Bradwell looks surplus to requirements for the reasons the National Infrastructure Assessment (NIC), a government advisory body, outlined in its most recent long-term assessment: “Given the balance of cost and risk, a renewables-based system looks a safer bet at present than constructing multiple new nuclear power plants,” it read.

Financing of Nuclear Plans Unclear
“Sizewell is not dependent on CGN investment,” a spokesman from the the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said.

But not many agree. “Equity funding for nuclear power stations is very difficult for private actors,” Rob Gross, director of the UK Energy Research Centre, told DW. The government’s offer in 2018 to Hitachi to take a third of the equity at the Wylfa nuclear project wasn’t enough to keep the company interested, for example.

As Paul Dorfman of University College London’s energy institute and founder of the Nuclear Consulting Group told environmental news platform electrictyinfo.org, it was hard to see who else might invest in Sizewell if the Chinese pull out. “The market won’t touch nuclear with a barge pole. You only see nuclear being built in command-and-control economies, like China and Russia, and a few outliers,” he said.

One option would be for the government to take either a majority or minority stake in Sizewell. Another option is a Regulated Asset Base (RAB) model, where consumers are charged a fixed price to cover infrastructure costs. But this would hike energy prices in the long term and make it politically hard to justify. Others suggest developing smaller, modular reactors.

U.K. Energy Strategy Shifting?
The fate of nuclear power in Britain —to date seen as a low-carbon way of supplementing renewables — will be decided later this year when the government publishes its plans. The 2011 National Policy Statement (NPS) identified eight sites suitable for new nuclear reactors by the end of 2025, but a new NPS later this year could change that.

“With all but one of the nuclear fleet set to retire by 2030, and uncertainty over the scale of the new build program, it is likely that more electricity from renewable sources will be needed,” Jonathan Marshall, head of analysis at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, told DW.

“It is impossible to say what the UK government will decide on nuclear power later this year since the decision will be political,” Gross said. But there is one thing to bear in mind, he adds, namely that the companies building nuclear power stations are completely separate from the company that controls the national grid and that power generation is privately owned.

 “It’s hard to imagine a threat to security of supply from Chinese investors,” he says.

Jo Harper is a freelance journalist based in Warsaw. This article is published courtesy of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.