KICK NUCLEAR April 2025

The monthly newsletter of the Kick Nuclear group

THE EVER-RISING COSTS OF 

NUCLEAR POWER

Taxpayers are now bankrolling Sizewell C to the tune of £6.4bn At the beginning of April UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband confirmed a further investment of £2.7bn. in the project to build a nuclear power station consisting of two European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs) at Sizewell C in Suffolk. This brings the total investment of taxpayers’ money in the project to £6.4bn.

The original projected cost of building Sizewell C was £20bn but experts’ assessments have increased this figure risen to around £40bn. As the UK government now owns £83.5% of Sizewell C, they need to find some £33bn to pay its share of the costs. It is therefore some £26.6bn short. With the French government refusing to invest and the French company Electricité de France (EPR) refusing to increase its stake, now 18.5%, the £26.6bn is still lacking. The UK, by pouring money into the project, had hoped to attract new investors, but has so far failed to do so. The final investment decision on building Sizewell C was supposed to be arrived at this year but with a large black hole in finances, the only sensible investment decision would be to cancel Sizewell C.

Also in the UK, The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s latest plan for consultation states “Current plans indicate it will take 100+ years to complete our core mission of nuclear decommissioning and waste management.” This lengthy undertaking to deal with the legacy of nuclear power will clearly cost billions of pounds

Meanwhile the informed completion date estimated for the similar two EPR reactors being built at Hinkley Point C in Somerset, range from 2031 to 2035. (The original completion date was 2025) The cost of the project was originally £18bn. It has now risen to £46bn, according to The Chemical Engineer and Construction News.

Four EPR power stations are operating internationally, with none being built apart from at Hinkley Point. Only two are in operation in Europe, in France and Finland, both of which have been an epic failure in terms of completion on time and under budget

The single EPR reactor in France at Flamanville 3, came into operation in December 2024, 12 years later than estimated when building started. Meanwhile its estimated cost rose from an estimated £2.6bn to £11.09bn, with a French ecological journal reporting in April that Flamanville 3 was offline for 76 of its first 100 days since then because of serious technical problems, indeed using more electricity than it produced during this period.

The single Finnish one at Olkiluoto 3 began building in 2005 with a completion date of May 2009, but only became operational in April 2023, almost 14 years late. The cost of building was estimated at £2.57 in 2005 but the eventual cost was £9.42bn. This reactor has also suffered periods offline because of technical and operating problems. The latest one was in March, described by the plant owners as due to “human error”. It involved 100 cubic metres of radioactive reactor coolant leaking from the reactor pool inside the reactor into “containment rooms”, but also into the “floor drain system”, through a hatch into the reactor pool not being properly shut. EDF claimed the leak posed no risk to personnel, the environment or nuclear safety. Nevertheless the reactor was shut down for 74 days after the accident.

The other two EPR reactors operating in the world are both at Taishon in China, Taishon 1 and Taishon 2. Taishon 1 started building in 2009 and Taishon 2 in 2010 with planned connection to the grid respectively of 2017 and 2018. So they only missed their target dates by about a year! However the original estimated cost of £5.67bn for building both the reactors had increased to £8.32bn.

Both reactors have suffered breakdowns. In July 2021, China General Nuclear, shut down Taishon to replace damaged fuel rods after an increase in radiation levels had been detected. The increase was found to be caused by damage to the cladding in a small number of fuel rods. However the damage took 13 months to repair before the reactor was reconnected to the grid.

In Japan the core melt-downs of three reactors at Fukushima in the March 2011 disaster produced 88O tons of highly-radioactive melted fuel debris that fell to or burned through the bottom of the reactors.

Attempts to remove these debris have continued since, but with little success. These attempts included the use of remote-controlled robots to gather samples of the melted fuel, but the high radiation levels of the fuel often causes the robots to break down and it was only in November 2024 that there was a successful retrieval of such a sample from one of the reactors that melted down.

• The clean-up is indeed expected to take several decades, with the government and TEPCO initially aiming for completion by 2051. However, experts suggest the process may take longer, potentially even a century or more.  

The work involves significant challenges, including high radiation exposure for workers, potential technical difficulties, and the need to develop new technologies for fuel debris removal and storage. After more missions to gather samples, it is panned that experts will determine a larger-scale method for removing the melted fuel, The expense of all this will be enormous.

Meanwhile a growing number of workers are reported as expressing concerns about safety and radiation exposure, highlighting the stressful and challenging nature of the clean-up.

FUKUSHIMA SUFFERING

The people of Fukushima still suffer

Houses, schools, colleges, shops, libraries

still lie empty

Normal life is a forgotten life of the past

A deadness pervades the destroyed land

as insects, birds, wildlife and biodiversity

struggle to survive

Workers at the Dai-ichi Nuclear plant

still die from radiation sickness

Fish in the sea near Fukushima

still swim in contaminated water

These waters still infiltrate the oceans of the

Pacific and Atlantic

The Silent Killer is always on the move

Only Earth herself realises that her life

hangs on a thread

Optimism breathes out small puffs of green hope

created by Wind turbines strong energy release

and works constantly with campaigners in peace.

(By Anne Garrett, who read it out opposite the London Japanese Embassy at the 2025 ceremony held there every year there on March 11 to mark the anniversary of the disaster.)