What's behind Keir Starmer's decision to back nuclear power?

Yahoo

a day ago

Keir Starmer has committed the UK to its first significant stake in a new nuclear power plant since the 1980s.
The decision to invest almost £18bn of taxpayer money into the Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk was welcomed by Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, as the beginning of a 'golden age' of nuclear investment that would be critical to the government's net zero goals.
The government said on Tuesday it would commit £14.2bn to the project, including the £2.7bn it earmarked for Sizewell C in the autumn budget. It has already committed £3.6bn to Sizewell over the past two years.
Britain's nuclear renaissance will also include spending about £2.5bn of taxpayer money building some of Europe's first small modular reactors (SMR), after the government gave the green light to plans for Rolls-Royce to build three in the UK by the early 2030s.
For critics, the technology's high costs and lengthy construction time have always eclipsed the benefits of abundant low-carbon electricity, given Hinkley Point C's current price tag of up to £35bn and its repeated delays. There are also persistent concerns over the safety of nuclear reactors, and the disposal of nuclear waste.
But questions over whether countries can meet the growing demand for electricity without fossil fuels, and avoid blackouts, mean many governments now believe nuclear represents a price worth paying.
Megawatt for megawatt, nuclear power is far more expensive than most renewable energy technologies. But, unlike wind and solar farms, nuclear reactors do not need investment in battery backup technologies to provide a steady, reliable source of low-carbon power.
The guaranteed electricity price offered to Hinkley Point C was initially £92 per megawatt-hour but this will fall to £89.50/MWh with the go-ahead for Sizwell C, under the terms of the government's contract with French state-owned EDF. By contrast, the guaranteed price for offshore windfarms that were successful in last year's subsidy auction was just under £59 per megawatt-hour.
'The upfront cost [of nuclear] is undoubtedly high,' said Dr Iain Staffell, an associate professor at Imperial College London. '£14bn could fund around 10 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind versus just 3.2 GW of nuclear. But, these reactors will run day and night, especially valuable when the wind is not blowing.'
Prof Mark Wenman, also at Imperial College London, added that the costs needed to be balanced against the fact that these reactors 'will produce low-carbon electricity for 80 or possibly 100 years, 24/7, providing around a 10th of the current UK electricity needs'.
'Once paid for, nuclear reactors produce the cheapest electricity of any kind, so this investment should be seen as future-proofing the UK electricity system,' Wenman said.
Experts believe that powering a country on 100% renewable energy is technically possible. But there is clear evidence that grid systems running predominantly on wind and solar power can be more expensive in the long run, and could be at higher risk of blackouts.
This is because renewable energy cannot help to keep the electrical frequency of the grid stable at around 50Hz in the same way that the spinning turbines of power plants have done in the past, by creating inertia.
The answer, according to the government's National Energy System Operator (Neso), is to encourage renewables to become the backbone of the energy system while keeping alternatives such as nuclear, biomass and gas to provide backup for when renewable resources are low and grid stability is needed.
The government's independent climate advisers agree. The Climate Change Committee recommends that the UK's nuclear capacity doubles by 2050 because while it is 'relatively expensive on a levelised cost basis' it can provide 'valuable zero-carbon generation at scale'.
Britain risks losing the benefits offered by nuclear plants by shutting its ageing nuclear reactors faster than it can build new ones – leaving a gap in the UK's supplies of low-carbon electricity at a time when demand for clean energy is growing.
The UK's five existing nuclear power reactors generated 14% of the country's electricity last year, down from the industry's late-1990s peak, when 18 nuclear reactors provided more than a quarter of Britain's power.
Four of these plants are due to close before the end of the decade, even with plans to extend their lifetimes, while only one nuclear power plant is under construction. Hinkley Point C in Somerset was originally due to begin generating electricity by 2017 but it has been delayed until the early 2030s.
Driving Britain's nuclear renaissance is the tech industry's appetite for nuclear power. Starmer unveiled plans for a once-in-a-generation nuclear expansion earlier this year alongside an open invitation to tech companies such as Google, Meta and Amazon to invest in AI datacentres in Britain, which could be powered by small modular reactors.
This is because the world's biggest tech companies are investing in extending the life of nuclear plants and building small modular reactors to help meet the enormous power demands of their datacentres. This growing demand is expected to accelerate with the adoption of artificial intelligence.
Earlier this month Meta struck a deal to keep one nuclear reactor of a US utility company in Illinois operating for an extra 20 years, to help supply the company's datacentres with low-carbon power. It follows a similar deal from Google to supply its datacentres with nuclear power from half a dozen small reactors built by a California utility company. Microsoft has paid for the restart of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, the site of the most serious nuclear accident and radiation leak in US history.
'They are very keen to get the datacentres in and they're very alive to the fact that the power is a big issue,' Starmer said.