It’s finally happened. After weeks of speculation, and despite a hastily called review by Theresa May, the government has given a green light to the most expensive white elephant of a project in British history.
The nuclear power station proposed at Hinkley Point is no ordinary piece of infrastructure. Indeed, according to Greenpeace it will be the most costly object ever built on Earth. A large chunk of the funds for the construction will come from China as part of a deal that will see it lead on the development of another reactor in Bradwell, Essex.
EDF, an energy company owned by the French state, will stump up the rest of the construction costs. Just months after people in this country voted to “take back control”, ministers want to place a big chunk of our energy system in the hands of foreign governments.
The amount of cash for this project that is set to be provided by UK taxpayers is eye-watering. The National Audit Office produced a detailed report in July on the viability of nuclear power in the UK, significantly revising its estimates of the “contract for difference” subsidies, up from £6.1bn to £29.7bn. Essentially, UK bill payers and businesses are underwriting the whole project through a promise of unjustifiably high payments for every unit of electricity produced.
This is a terrible deal that has been slammed by economists and environmentalists alike for locking us into paying twice the current wholesale electricity price for 35 years.
Though the case against Hinkley can easily be made on financial grounds alone, it’s not only wasted money that marks this project out as extremely risky. At the heart of the problems with nuclear energy is the stark fact that there is still no solution to the nuclear waste problem. Over its lifetime Hinkley will produce waste equivalent to 80% of all the waste so far produced in the UK in terms of radioactivity. Having such highly dangerous spent fuel on site for up to 200 years will be a massive challenge.
Earlier this month a terrifying exposé by the BBC revealed the risks associated with handling nuclear waste, with allegations that years of neglect have led to the nuclear-processing facility at Sellafield being “riddled with safety flaws”.
Added to the waste issue are serious concerns about the viability of the reactor planned for Hinkley. It’s known as the EPR, and has not yet been shown to work anywhere in the world. Indeed every project in Europe and China using this kind of technology is facing huge cost overruns and delays. Vincent de Rivaz, EDF’s chief executive, had promised that Hinkley would be cooking Christmas turkeys in 2017, when even under best-case scenarios the project will have barely even been started by then. In fact, Hinkley is unlikely to provide power until the late 2020s – far too late if we’re serious about weaning ourselves off fossil fuels with the haste that’s needed.
Perhaps the most absurd aspect of this project is that fact that it’s being waved through while cheaper and cleaner alternatives are being blocked. According to the National Grid’s energy scenarios, by 2020 small-scale distributed generation will represent a third of total capacity in the UK. But the government is now actively undermining progress. Beneath a layer of green spin, ministers are demolishing the UK’s renewable-energy and energy-saving policies. Last week it was revealed that only 10 new community energy organisations have been registered so far this year, compared with 76 last year.
The evidence for alternatives is clear: smart meters, home and grid-scale batteries that store and release excess renewable power, and other modern solutions would be cheaper and more efficient than building new power stations to meet extra demand during relatively short periods. The cost of wind and solar has dropped significantly, and we know that a nationwide scheme of home insulation would hugely reduce demand, keep people warm in their homes and provide jobs in every constituency for a fraction of the price of Hinkley.
With the evidence against Hinkley so overwhelming, it has been puzzling to see Labour swing behind the project. Indeed, just a week after Jeremy Corbyn launched a genuinely decent plan to decentralise energy production in Britain, it is baffling that his party now backs this monstrously expensive, centralised project that is going to be part-owned by the Chinese state.
Ultimately the government, and opposition parties, need to decide what kind of Britain they want to build. Do we keep ploughing billions into mammoth infrastructure projects such as Hinkley, or do we refocus resources and build up an energy democracy from the bottom up?
Make no mistake, nuclear power will suck resources away from building the energy infrastructure we need, and threaten our climate change targets because of the snail’s pace at which it will be built.
Politics is all about choices. I’m urging ministers to choose a future where power is in the hands of the many, not the few – and where Britain puts to use its most abundant resources: the sun, sea and wind.