Kick Nuclear newsletter December 2025

PAYING MORE FOR NUCLEAR

On November 28, The Telegraph reported that Hinkley Point C will put £1bn a year onto UK energy bills the moment it starts generating electricity. The cash will flow straight from households to EDF under a “Contract for Difference” scheme agreed more than a decade ago in which energy companies only get paid out of consumers’ energy bills after a new nuclear power station starts feeding electricity into the grid.

In 2013 the strike price agreed between EDF and then Energy Secretary Ed Davey guaranteed £92.50/MWh [megawatt-hour] for Hinkley’s output, now worth £133 with inflation, and expected to reach around £150 by the time the plant opens in 2030, if it does. If wholesale prices hover near £80/MWh as they do today EDF can then claim roughly £70/MWh from consumers and businesses energy bills to make up the difference.

The building of Sizewell C is being paid for under different scheme. This is for the ongoing cost of building Sizewell C to be added to energy bills from the time it should start building, even though the power station is not now expected to deliver electricity to the grid till the mid to late 2030s, even if the project is ended without the power station having been successfully completed. This scheme was introduced to attract investors who were wary of risking investing under the old scheme. Indeed the levies on energy bills for building Sizewell C have already started, from November 1 2025.

TASC REFUSED JUDICIAL REVIEW

At the High Court on November 12, Together Against Sizewell C (TASC) were refused permission for a judicial review relating to secret safety changes to plans for Sizewell C that involve additional sea defences. TASC wished to argue that is immoral to proceed with Sizewell C without it being shown that the project is resilient to likely extreme sea level rises resulting in future generations having to pick up the pieces from ill-thought out decisions made today.

ROLLS-ROYCE GET WYLFA

On November 13 Starmer announced that Wylfa, on Anglesey has been selected as the site for the UK’s first small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear power plant.

The project will be led by the new nationalised company, Great British Energy-Nuclear, in partnership with Roll-Royce SMRwhich will design the reactors. The government said it would invest £2.5bn in the project. Initially, three SMR units are planned for the site, able to power some three million homes, with the site having the potential to host up to eight SMRs. The project is projected to begin in 2026 with the three reactors generating electricity by the mid-2030s.

The decision faced criticism from Trump for not choosing a US company to build a nuclear plant at the site.

Rolls-Royce remains bullish about its involvement in nuclear power. Chief Executive Tufan Erginbilgic recently told the BBC that the group has the “potential” to become the UK’s highest-valued company, with his optimism built around the company’s role in powering the data centres behind the adoption of artificial intelligence. Erginbilgic estimates that the world will need 400 small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) by 2050, a market he wants and expects Rolls-Royce to dominate.

FISH PROTECTION FIASCO

The company building Hinkley C (of which French company EDF holds a 66.5% share and Chinese Company CGN 33.5%) has spent £700m aiming to protect marine life, particularly salmon, from being sucked into the reactor with the large volumes of water needed to be drawn from the Severn Estuary to keep the reactor cool to prevent a melt-down. The cost will be of course eventually be added to customers’ energy bills.

The “protection” includes continuous noise near the entrance to the inlet pipes, which was supposed to deter fish from the area and stop them being sucked in. However it has been reported that EDF’s own modelling found that the system would only save the lives of under one salmon plus about a quarter life of a sea trout and six lampreys’ lives every 12 years! So, very expensive green-washing!!

UKRAINE NUCLEAR DANGER!

The November edition of this newsletter reported on the dangers posed by Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station by being on the front line of the war between Russia and Ukraine. Its six reactors are all shut down but contain highly radioactive material and if the containment walls were breached a nuclear disaster could result.

We now learn that Ukraine’s Chornobyl nuclear power station, also closed-down, represents a similar danger. On November 8 Raidió Teilifís Éireann, the Irish news broadcaster, reported that a protective shield at the power station built to contain radioactive material from the 1986 disaster, can no longer perform its main safety function due to drone damage caused by a strike in February 2025 which Ukraine attributed to Russia. The International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi said in a statement that an inspection mission “confirmed that the [protective structure] had lost its primary safety functions, including the confinement capability, but also found that there was no permanent damage (this time) to its load-bearing structures or monitoring systems.”

And the Guardian reported on November 9 Ukraine’s foreign minister as claiming the that Russia is launching well-planned drone attacks on substations in Ukraine that power the Khmelnytskyi and Rivne nuclear power plants.

AND IN FRANCE 

On November 3 the Independent Research and Information Commission on Radioactivity (CIIRAD) reported that ALL French nuclear power plants are releasing tritium. Between 2015 and 2024, 16 power plants recorded levels exceeding10 Bq/l (Becquerels/litre) in groundwater, with some, at Bugey, Gravelines and Tricastin nuclear plants, exceeding 1,000 Bq/l. CIIRAD claimed that no power plant has been able to guarantee the permanent prevention of ground-water being contaminated by radiation and that any massive discharge would quickly affect the aquatic environment. According to the French Sortir du nucléaire network the toxicity of tritium has been underestimated, particularly when it is absorbed by the body, where it then enters the DNA of cells.