Government considering investing in a new nuclear station at Wylfa

Prospects for the building of a new nuclear power station at Wylfa Newydd on the island of Anglesey – and perhaps others to follow – have improved a little with the opening of negotiations between developer Hitachi and the UK government. In a statement to Parliament made on 4 June, Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark confirmed previous press reports that the two parties had decided to enter discussions on direct investment by the government in the project.

Clark stressed that, while the two parties had decided to enter into negotiations on the project, no decision to proceed has yet been taken.

He said that, following finalisation of commercial arrangements for the development of the first new nuclear power station in a generation at Hinkley Point C, the government expects future nuclear projects to provide lower cost electricity than the pioneering project. The next project in this pipeline, Wylfa Newydd, is being developed by Horizon Nuclear Power, owned by the Japan’s Hitachi, which proposes to build two reactors with a combined capacity of 2.9 GW.

Hitachi’s reactor design has been deployed in Japan and, last December completed the Generic Design Assessment process run by the UK’s nuclear regulator, said Clark. Horizon had since submitted its application for Development Consent to the Planning Inspectorate.

A key focus of the discussions has been achieving lower cost electricity for consumers, stressed Clark, adding that both the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee have recommended that the government consider variations from the Hinkley Point C financing model. Thus the government will be considering direct investment alongside Hitachi, Japanese government agencies and perhaps other parties.

The government will also engage with other nuclear project developers, said Clark, including EDF over its plans for a follow-on EPR project at Sizewell C, CGN over its proposals for an HPR1000 reactor at Bradwell, and Toshiba regarding the future of the NuGen project at Moorside. But it remains the government’s objective in the longer term that nuclear projects beyond Wylfa should be financed by the private sector, added Clark.

Reaction to the statement fell into the usual categories – support from trades unions, dismay from some environmental groups and protestations by renewables groups over lack of support for that sector.

Nina Skorupska, CEO of the Renewable Energy Association, said there are much quicker and cheaper alternatives to nuclear: ‘The government needs to carefully consider the value for money argument before intervening with significant taxpayer support for the multi-billion-pound nuclear power plant at Wylfa Newydd. Hitachi’s struggles to fund the project privately represent one of the great challenges facing the nuclear industry; that it is highly complex and costly to design, build, operate and maintain a nuclear power station.’

Instead: ‘The costs of renewables are falling all the time whilst the clean technology sector continues to set records for generation – it is much quicker and cheaper to build an energy-from-waste, solar, wind or biomass plant than continue to pursue nuclear investment.’

• Meanwhile, EDF Energy has been discussing with the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) the return to service of nuclear Reactor 3 at Hunterston B following inspections confirming the presence of new keyway root cracks in the reactor core. EDF says it has decided that, while Reactor 3 could return to operation from the current outage, it will remain offline, perhaps for the rest of the year, while the company works with the regulator on the longer-term safety case.