Power To The People

Sam Richards writes:

Ten years ago, on 15 September 2016, ministers gave final approval to Hinkley Point C, then an £18 billion project expected to mark the revival of British nuclear energy. The anniversary is a useful moment to ask how a country that once led the world in nuclear became so bad at building reactors. By the time Hinkley Point C finally starts generating electricity, it will have taken at least 13 years to build and cost roughly £17 billion more than originally budgeted.

At Britain Remade, we reviewed every nuclear power station built since 2000. Hinkley was the world’s most expensive. Per kilowatt of capacity, it costs around six times as much as a modern South Korean reactor. It wasn’t always like this. Between 1956 and 1971, Britain built 26 nuclear reactors, some at less than half of Hinkley’s cost per kilowatt. By 1965, we had more nuclear power stations than the United States, the Soviet Union and France combined. Projects were routinely approved within months and generally connected to the grid within four or five years of construction beginning.

The contrast, as set out in Alex Chalmers’s recent account of Britain’s nuclear history, is extraordinary. When the Government proposed building Trawsfynydd nuclear power station in Snowdonia, concerns about its effect on the landscape were considered at a three-day public inquiry. The inspectors’ final report, including appendices, ran to 50 pages. Hinkley’s environmental assessment ran to more than 44,000. In 1959, Britain’s Nuclear Installations Inspectorate employed 13 inspectors. Its modern successor, the Office for Nuclear Regulation, has more than 400 specialist technical staff.

Britain’s nuclear failure is a story about power in both senses of the word. We have lost the ability to generate cheap electrical power in no small part because political power has been dispersed among institutions that can obstruct development, but none of which is ultimately responsible for ensuring that anything gets built.

Some of Hinkley’s spiralling cost reflects the simple fact that we allowed our nuclear construction industry to disappear. After nearly 30 years without building a new reactor, our skills and supply chains had atrophied to the point that, when construction started, there was reportedly only one nuclear-qualified welder left in the country. Yet instead of ordering a fleet of standardised reactors, we tried to rebuild an entire industry around one enormous project with thousands of bespoke changes.

Building anything, including nuclear power, becomes cheaper through repetition. A credible pipeline gives suppliers the confidence to invest in apprenticeships and equipment, while allowing skilled workers to move directly from one project to the next. Each reactor incorporates the lessons of the last. Welding on Hinkley’s second reactor is already being completed four times faster than on the first, helping to make it an estimated 30 per cent cheaper.

Yet not only were we trying to sprint to the end of one mega-project from a standing start, but we took an existing French design and improved it in the modern British manner: by making it considerably more complicated and expensive. UK regulatory requirements produced around 7,000 design modifications. As a result, Hinkley requires 35 per cent more steel and 25 per cent more concrete than it otherwise would have done. Rather than learning from the costly mistakes made overseas, we made entirely new mistakes of our own.

During Britain’s early nuclear programme, the Ministry of Power was responsible for both regulating and delivering new generating capacity. This system was perhaps insufficiently transparent, but it did contain something today’s system lacks: an actor with both the authority and the incentive to reach a decision. Today, projects must satisfy an ever-expanding constellation of regulators, statutory consultees and arm’s-length bodies, each pursuing its own limited objective. Each of these can impose new costs or cause delay, but none are responsible for balancing those costs against the country’s need for economic growth or energy security.

A prime example: EDF has spent or committed around £700 million on protecting fish at Hinkley. The breakdown is roughly £500 million on low-velocity water intakes, £150 million on a fish recovery and return system and £50 million on an acoustic fish deterrent — the now infamous “fish disco”. A reasonable person might conclude that this is a disproportionate amount to spend on fish. Natural England’s position is that even this may not be enough.

Recent trials suggest that the disco works, with the number of protected twaite shad boogying within 30 metres of the intake reportedly falling by 93 per cent when it was switched on. Nevertheless, the environmental quango’s advice is that if any impacts on protected fish remain, they must be fully mitigated or additional compensation secured. The most developed proposal involves creating up to 900 acres of salt marsh around the Bristol Channel, potentially requiring land to be acquired from unwilling farmers.

Natural England denies that it is demanding a salt marsh. It says it merely provides scientific advice to bodies including the Marine Management Organisation; it does not “sign off” nuclear power stations and is unaware of any delay caused by its position. While Natural England is technically right that it is not the decision-maker, without its support the Marine Management Organisation is highly unlikely to issue the permit EDF needs to switch on Hinkley Point C. This is a veto in all but name.

It is worth saying at this point that I do not think protecting fish is unimportant. I do, however, think that after £700 million has been committed, and a trial has shown the deterrent reducing nearby twaite shad by 93 per cent, an elected minister should be able to say: that’s enough, let’s get this thing switched on. Whether any remaining benefit to fish justifies delaying low-carbon electricity for six million homes is ultimately a political judgement. It involves balancing the rights of fish against our nation’s energy security, our household bills, our carbon emissions and the rights of farmers who do not want their land turned into salt marsh. It should be taken by someone whom voters can boot out if they disagree.

This is in fact what is missing from our new Prime Minister’s analysis of power in Britain. Power is not simply concentrated in Westminster; it has been squirrelled away inside hundreds of arm’s-length bodies with little or no democratic accountability. Ministers can fire out press releases about building new infrastructure, but effective decisions belong to the institutions that operate as veto players in the system. Voters cannot remove them, and they bear no responsibility for outcomes beyond their own narrow sectoral interests.

This matters to any credible strategy for cheaper electricity. Onward’s excellent report Firm Foundations envisages 20GW of nuclear capacity and estimates that a system with more firm generation could save consumers £320 billion by 2050. But its authors acknowledge that our current nuclear costs are a major barrier. The closer Britain gets to French or South Korean construction costs, the more real those bill savings become.

If Andy Burnham wants to give power back to the people, he should deliver on his Chancellor’s recent pledge and implement the Fingleton review of nuclear regulation in full as quickly as possible. Designs accepted by trusted overseas regulators like France or South Korea should be recognised by default. Planning permission should settle the main questions once, rather than, as has happened with Sizewell C, allowing them to be reopened across more than 160 permits, licences and consents. Statutory consultees should advise within firm deadlines, but elected politicians must make the ultimate trade-offs. For Hinkley, ministers should declare that £700 million of effective fish protection is enough. If the law does not let them reach that judgement, Parliament should change it.

Setting up a No10 branch office in Manchester will not return power to the people. That requires elected governments having the power to take decisions, and voters having the power to punish them when they decide badly. Hinkley’s reactors will eventually produce electricity. The salient question is whether Britain’s democracy is still capable of producing decisions.