Comment: It is time to get the gigawatts going

Had everything gone to plan when I started working in the energy industry many moons ago, there would now be four, maybe even five, gigawatt-scale nuclear power plants under construction in the UK.

Yet, the sequential collapses of projects in Cumbria, Essex and my home of Anglesey, coupled with delays to Sizewell C, have left Hinkley Point C as the standalone bastion of nuclear new build in modern day Britain.

Being the only player in the game comes with its perks, plenty of media attention, being one of the go-to voices on net zero, a dedicated BBC documentary following the construction, the list goes on.

To say Hinkley Point C has transformed the economy of the South West would be an understatement, with hundreds of companies benefitting from the billions of pounds being invested in the region. The workforce numbers in the thousands, the concrete pours have broken records and 200,000 tonnes of Welsh (yes, I had to get that in there) steel will be brought across the border over the course of the project.

All this, to build the first nuclear power plant in a generation, which will produce enough electricity to power 7% of the whole country from just a few hundred acres.

Inevitably, however, there are the considerable downsides to being the only show in the nuclear town. If Wylfa Newydd and Moorside were under construction, I have no doubt that they too would feeling inflationary pressures on the cost of materials and workforce salaries, as well as the compound hangover of the pandemic on the project timeline. Nonetheless, even for the well-seasoned of us who are used to seeing nuclear projects around the world beset with bad news, the recent headline of £46bn and first power to be achieved no earlier than 2029 almost brought a tear to the eye.

Unfortunately for Hinkley, by being the lone survivor, there’s very little to compare it to, save for other large infrastructure projects like HS2 or Crossrail. However, for me, these are clunky comparisons at best. Ultimately, there’s nothing else out there which can vaguely match the complexities of building new nuclear in the UK, yet there is no escaping the reality of how useless we have become as nation at building big things.

The cost of building new railways in the UK is between eight and ten times more than in comparable countries, we haven’t built a new runway since the Second World War, and we waited nearly thirty years after starting construction on Sizewell B before attempting the same on another reactor.

There was a clip which went sort-of viral last year of Nick Clegg saying in 2010 that nuclear was too slow and that they wouldn’t come online until “2021 or 2022”. Watching that certainly didn’t do anything for my blood pressure… Needless to say, I didn’t agree with Nick on that one.

At this point in proceedings I always like to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Why are we doing this? Why are we even attempting the herculean task of building these goliath infrastructure projects in the first place? Frankly, why are we putting ourselves through the constant misery of dealing with anti-nuclear zealots who seem to hate science? There definitely isn’t much glory in the effort.

In essence it’s very simple, it’s because we have to. The case for nuclear is bullet-proof, and each project represents a critical piece of nationally strategic infrastructure, and had the pessimists (looking you Nick…) been dismissed, we wouldn’t have found ourselves so exposed to international markets when Putin invaded Ukraine. The need is obvious.

Not to embark on these endeavours would be irresponsible and a betrayal of future generations, so now it’s about how we make it as painless as possible.

The recent Nuclear Roadmap certainly provided more detail about the direction of travel than many were expecting, but for me fell short of an actual programme of work about what-gets-built-where, and sadly didn’t give any indication on the future for Wylfa.

Even when this week’s news is taken into account, there’s still no clarity on what’s going to happen at Wylfa, and if recent experience is anything to go by, we’re still up to a decade away from seeing spades in the ground.

So where do we go from here? I’ve always firmly believed getting that crucial second data point to show that costs can come down and schedules can be improved would quell the naysayers and allow us to crack on with what needs to be done. For now, that next project is Sizewell C, and a final investment decision cannot come soon enough.

One thing’s for sure, we can’t afford to let future projects continue in isolation.

Ieuan Williams, consultant for Madano’s Net Zero Transition Practice