A Primer on Britain’s Nuclear Industry
Britain's convoluted relationship with fission has has made expansion difficult. With nuclear power now favoured by elites, what is missing is a real strategy.
After a hiatus, Dr. Syn is back, this time focusing on Britain’s convoluted relationship with nuclear energy. This is not a piece related to the physics of nuclear fission, the workings of reactors, the nuclear fuel cycle, or the economics of nuclear power. We will not touch greatly on different reactor technologies, small modular reactors, or fast-breeder reactors. Soon, I hope to talk about the viability of nuclear power in privatized energy markets, but that is for another time.
This is primarily about understanding the global environment for modern nuclear power, the basics of the British nuclear industry, recent attempts to resuscitate it with the help of the Chinese, and the current plans for expanding nuclear fission.
Fission is a Western technology driven increasingly by the East
Nuclear power has recently been a static electricity source in the West. A combination of antinuclear sentiment, regulatory vetoes, and institutional failure within the nuclear industry itself has led to most countries opting for hydrocarbons and intermittent renewables to power their economies. France, the country thought of as the poster child for nuclear fission, has not connected one new reactor to its grid in the 21st century.
Figure 1: EU and U.S. Nuclear Fission Generation 1965-2022
The U.S., still the largest nuclear player by capacity, has not fared very well either. The Watts Bar 2 reactor in Tennessee and the Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors in Georgia are the only reactors to be brought online since 1996, with no more currently under construction.
Vogtle is the most expensive reactor in recent history at over $14,000 per KWe. As can be seen from the chart below, there is a huge variation in the costs of modern nuclear plants. South Korea and China seem to have cracked building plants at close to or under $3,000 per KW, making them competitive with coal for initial capital costs. This is not counting for fission’s advantages in low fuel costs, high utilization rates, lack of pollution, and energy return on investment (EROI). Western nations appear to be getting worse at building, with France, the UK, and the U.S. all struggling with their latest projects.
Figure 2: Prices of different nuclear construction projects in 2023 US dollars from 1987 to 2023. Orange bars denote plants that have yet to establish a grid connection. Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
Germany, which once got 30% of its electricity from fission, erased its nuclear industry after government-mandated phaseouts that began with the electoral success of the Green Party during the turn of the millennium. Angela Merkel, initially receptive to nuclear power, accepted the phaseout after Fukushima in 2011. This meant German companies like Siemens, which had built up considerable expertise in building nuclear reactors, left the market. German nuclear expertise is now scattered between decommissioning, nuclear clocks, fusion research, and helping the Chinese nuclear industry.
Recently, however, there has been an about-turn in favor of nuclear power. The most notable reversal has been in France. The French nuclear industry has faltered due to the failure of the state-owned holding company Areva in 2015 and the costly delays of the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR). The Hollande government instituted laws leading to the gradual displacement of nuclear generation in favor of renewables. But post-covid, the utility EDF has taken over most of the civil nuclear industry’s assets and has itself been fully nationalized. This reconsolidation is a reversal by Emmanuel Macron, who as a finance minister in 2014 approved the sale of French company Alstom’s turbine unit to General Electric. This unit, based in a factory in Belfort, manufactures the world’s most powerful turbine; the Arrabelle, which helps generate electricity for multiple nuclear plants. Macron has bought this asset back under French control, and is undertaking what he hopes will be a nuclear revival. France is less competent than it was during the initial nuclear buildout, but recent regulatory lightening suggests Macron sees a revival as key to his legacy.
Swedish utilities are exploring an expansion of nuclear power in their country. Finland’s Olkiluoto 3 reactor, after many delays, finally began running in April 2023 and is providing cheap electricity. Poland has shifted decisively towards building nuclear plants. The Netherlands is talking to suppliers. Canada, and particularly the state of Ontario, is over 50% nuclear-dependent, and fission is expected to remain the biggest source of generation alongside hydroelectric power by 2050, with capacity set to double. Japan, which shut its reactors down after Fukushima, is reestablishing nuclear power as a key energy option. South Korea, after a brief attempt at phasing nuclear generation out, has doubled down on its fleet and is targeting expansion at home and abroad.
This is to say nothing of the enormous expansion of nuclear fission in China, the continued success of Russia in building reactors at home and abroad, the increased demand for reactors in India, and even the nuclear aspirations of more functional Islamic states like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt.
In summary, fission remains a key energy technology and is seeing increased interest as countries seek to decarbonize while keeping electricity prices low. Britain is also part of this story, with plans for establishing 24 GW of nuclear capacity (25% of generation) by 2050.
From Magnox to EDF
Despite being a pioneer in fission, Britain has struggled relative to other nations to develop a strong internal nuclear industry.
The country has built 45 reactors in total. 36 are permanently shut down. Nine are active. A further two are under construction at Hinkley Point. There are two more planned at Sizewell and another two proposed at Bradwell. Further proposals exist but have not been actioned.
Overall, the UK has the 12th highest nuclear capacity at 6 GW, a marked decline from a high of 13 GW in 1997. The U.S. has the top spot at 95 GW, with France having 61 GW and China having 53 GW (rising rapidly). Today, Britain has less capacity than Sweden or Spain.
Britain never had its bespoke commercial reactor designer. Instead, its reactors were designed by the government-led UK atomic energy authority (UK AEA). The two relevant generations; Magnox and the advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR), were indigenous in design. This agency was initially very successful at developing expertise but struggled to build a commercially viable fleet. In 1956, The UK AEA built a magnox reactor at Calder Hall, the first commercial nuclear reactor in the world.
Calder Hall: Wonder victory achieved
What was Magnox? The name refers to the magnesium-aluminum alloy used to clad the fuel rods that are used to control the fission process. It was a gas-cooled reactor design that was optimized for the dual purpose of electricity generation and creating plutonium as a byproduct for military use.
Magnox used carbon dioxide gas as a coolant to transfer heat from the reactor and graphite (carbon) as a moderator. A moderator is a material used to slow down the neutrons released from fission within the reactor. Carbon has benefits as a coolant because it does not require uranium to be enriched. Natural uranium (or U-238), progressively produces plutonium during the fission process. Plutonium is critical to nuclear weapons development. Given that the U.S. had a near monopoly on enriched uranium in the early years of civil development, this was a critical reason to choose gas-cooled reactors over the light water reactors (LWRs) designed by the U.S. companies Westinghouse and General Electric.
Magnox was never intended to be the foundation of a commercial nuclear fleet. The proliferation of uranium enrichment techniques made shifting to more enriched uranium fuel inevitable. This led to the design of the advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR). This maintained many aspects of Magnox, including using graphite as a moderator and carbon dioxide as the coolant. But it also involved enriched uranium.
France, like Britain, had built its original gas-cooled reactors. As civil nuclear aspirations grew, both countries had to decide whether to stick with their domestic reactor designs or accept the more popular light water reactors that had been developed by the U.S.
For both Britain and France, pro-indigenous lobbying centered around the military establishment and the civil nuclear bureaucracies, who wanted to develop independent design capacity, maintain a potential supply of plutonium for weapons, and eventually, compete with the Americans on the global export market. Those supporting the licensing of American technology generally were the regulated utilities; in France’s case EDF, and in Britain's case, the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB).
The decision on Americanization had powerful political ramifications, and would ultimately be a vote of confidence in the domestic economy’s ability to avoid subjugation to American technical supremacy. This was at a time of acute concern amongst Europeans about being left in the dust by American economic ascendancy. The French writer Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber’s 1967 polemic on American corporate influence in Europe – “The American Challenge” – was an example of this anxiety.
Charles de Gaulle, avowedly dirigiste and distrusting of corporate America’s inroads into European industry, resigned in 1969. His successor, Georges Pompidou, sided with EDF, affirming that the French nuclear fleet would be built on American technology. The 1973 Messmer plan which led to the build-out of French nuclear power would be led by Framatome. This company had been started in 1958 with co-financing from Westinghouse, to specifically license its technology to Europe.
The British government had considered light water reactors as a superior commercial design as early as 1955, but after years of independent development into gas-cooled reactors, a 1965 appraisal decisively chose the AGR. While Magnox was an interesting design with fundamental disadvantages in thermal efficiency, AGRs were a disaster. The modeling which justified them over LWRs was faulty. Their overall cost to the economy was over $20 billion. A major problem was the spreading of plant construction projects to different consortia, with as many as five separate construction organizations existing at any one time. This meant while reactors were the same, the design of individual construction projects varied widely, causing costs to spiral. This was an exercise in expensive diversity, leading to delays and failures. Engineers would remark that building the AGR was “watch-making by the ton.”
The advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR): “Watch-making by the ton.”
By choosing the AGR, Britain rejected the industry standard. It did not replace it with an effective novel design but with a boondoggle. It diversified the buildout amongst special interests as opposed to reliable contractors, making the development of technical expertise in building plants impossible. This was exacerbated by opposition from the coal lobby and by the rapid expansion in natural gas and oil production, but most of its failures were self-inflicted.
By 1980, this strategy was acknowledged to be a failure and AGRs were abandoned for future projects. The 1980 order of a Westinghouse LWR at Sizewell B turned out to be more successful. The problem was that, while it was announced in 1980, construction started in 1987 and was not completed until 1995. The construction was not the main issue. Rather it was the seven years of planning purgatory. Overall, the cost of Sizewell B was around $5,700 per KW in 2023 dollars, less than half the $12,500 Hinkley C is expected to cost.
Sizewell B: A moderate success.
Sizewell B’s success was caveated by obscene “stakeholderism”. The planning inquiry lasted from 1982 to 1985 and was at the time considered exorbitantly long and expensive, with the final report tallying over 16 million words. The Labour MP Tony Benn even invited the vociferously anti-nuclear activist group to meetings relating to nuclear power. The French government, by contrast, did not even consult its legislature while concocting the 1973 nuclear expansion. When asked by Benn on how they dealt with consultation, a French Minister replied; “when you are draining the swamp, you do not consult the frogs.”
Successful nuclear buildouts have generally required ministers and technocrats to assert their competence and suitability to take executive decisions; something that incurs considerable opposition in the British ruling class.
Of course today, the Sizewell B inquiry would be seen as dangerously rapid. Regulatory assessments for new reactor designs these days can be expected to last 4 years and can last up to 10. This is just for designs. Since 2012, the Sizewell C project went through no fewer than 4 public consultations before finally getting planning consent in 2022. It now just has to get a final investment decision, with the government and EDF needing to raise £20 billion in financing through debt and equity, which is not guaranteed and is unlikely to be confirmed until 2024. Had financing begun in 2012 or even 2018, the chance of success would have been higher. As far as planning is concerned, yesterday’s Robin Reliant is today's Rolls-Royce.
Sizewell B might have been the springboard for more success, but this did not occur. In 1989 Britain's electricity sector was privatized. Nuclear power was initially cut out of privatization under the government-owned Nuclear Electric in 1990. It was partially privatized as British Energy in 1996 and floated on the London stock exchange. By 2002 it had fallen into financial difficulty and required government assistance. In 2008, British energy, along with the government’s 35% stake, was sold to EDF. This made British nuclear energy a subsidiary of French electricity generation.
Nuclear generation, due to its constant and inflexible nature, has fared poorly in deregulated and privatized wholesale electricity markets. This is a subject for another day. What one can say is that nuclear power tends to function best when owned by state corporations or regulated utilities. Some countries like Spain have plants owned by private actors, but these fleets are on their way out. The UK system of foreign state ownership is rare, with Belgium’s fleet also being partially owned by EDF.
Figure 3: Ownership of nuclear plant fleets by country, Source: WNA
Atoms from Cathay
From 2005, former prime minister Tony Blair actively supported increasing nuclear plant capacity. This was vigorously opposed by the anti-nuclear Liberal Democrats, alongside various activist groups. A judicial decision rebuked the government’s inadequate public consultation in 2007, slowing down initial investment. While the current Tory government is envisioning nuclear power to make up 25% of power-generating capacity, Blair was envisioning as much as 40%, effectively doubling the 2006 share. Blair was pugnacious about this project, eviscerating David Cameron in a PMQ session over the Tory leader’s antipathy towards fission. Unfortunately, Blair’s resignation, the financial crash, and the general turmoil of the late noughties delayed government action.
Despite being ambivalent about the technology, the Cameroonian government overpowered their Liberal Democrat partners and made nuclear power buildouts viable. Then-Chancellor George Osborne hoped that Chinese state-owned nuclear energy developers would, alongside EDF, invest in British nuclear plants. This was part of a wider attempt to expand UK-Chinese economic cooperation. In hindsight, such a pivot was doomed as long as the UK envisioned maintaining its established relationship with the U.S..
The Chinese partner of EDF and the UK government was China General Nuclear (CGN). CGN is one of the two major nuclear state-owned enterprises in China, alongside China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). CGN is a comparatively young enterprise centered around building and operating nuclear plants in China’s south. It has overtaken CNNC in the number of plants it builds and operates. Today it is responsible for 54% of China’s nuclear capacity.
Importantly, CGN is the first company to have successfully built and connected Framatome’s EPR reactor to the grid, with two EPRs operating at its plant in Taishan since 2018. A further reactor came online in Finland in 2023. EPRs at the Flamanville plant in France are, after many delays, expected to come online in 2024. This highlights that, regardless of the problems with the EPR design, jurisdiction is a huge factor in the delivery of plants.
CGN partnered with EDF to develop three plant developments in the UK; Hinkley C, Sizewell C, and Bradwell B. The new reactors at Hinkley and Sizewell would be EPRs. CGN would own 33.5% of Hinkley and 20% of the Sizewell project, with the rest owned by EDF. The new reactor at Bradwell B would be a Chinese-developed Hualong One PWR, with CGN owning 66% of the project to EDF’s 33%. The project helped cement ties between CGN and EDF, and for the latter opened up the possibility that more EPRs might be built in China. It was also an opportunity for French suppliers and contractors like Alstom and Bouygues to expand their business in the UK. The false privatization of British electricity had degenerated to a point where state involvement was fine for building new infrastructure as long as it was a foreign state.
But these projects came under intense scrutiny on national security grounds. These national security questions were very much exaggerated, much as with the concerns over Huawei and rare earth metals. Reliance on Chinese industry is problematic, but the likelihood of Beijing shutting down nuclear plants is a dubious proposition, given such an act would jeopardize their future export prospects. Similar attempts at weaponizing rare earth exports have been very limited. The threat of Huawei does not relate to any technical details, but rather that it is a big important company that is Chinese.
Perhaps an example of the folly of this thinking is Ukraine. The embattled country’s fleet of nuclear reactors is Russian in origin. They have largely continued operating as normal since 2014 and even since the full-scale invasion. While energy infrastructure attacks have resulted in blackouts, the plants Ukraine still occupies remain operable for the coming winter. Currently, plants are proving more resilient in wartime environments than dams or pipelines.
Russia cannot make Ukrainian plants redundant by withholding the specific fuel used in their reactors, as such fuel is only needed in small quantities and can be duplicated. Ukraine has agreed with Westinghouse to replace all Russian nuclear fuel imports. Westinghouse is providing the same service to the Czechs. Were China to block nuclear fuel exports to British plants, there would be a plethora of options to duplicate the fuel, and it would directly hurt Chinese export prospects.
Hinkley C is too advanced at this stage to back out of and is going ahead. In November 2022, the British government enabled CGN’s exit from Sizewell C, taking a 50% stake in the project. As of now, Bradwell B is in limbo, even though the proposed Chinese reactor has been approved for development. This means that the UK regulator (the office of nuclear regulation) has spent four years approving a reactor design it will likely never be able to accept due to anti-China political pressures.
The government has patronized nuclear power but lacks a plan
Today’s government has indicated it is tilting towards nuclear power. From 2022, governmental plans are to achieve 24 GW in nuclear capacity by 2050. This would triple our current capacity. The government’s plan does not align with the forecasts of the influential climate change committee (CCC), which envisages between 5 to 10 GW of nuclear capacity. Other analyses suggest 56 GW of nuclear capacity would be necessary by 2050 to meet 30% of demand.
Besides the fading Chinese involvement, from 2009 there was a plan to build a separate nuclear plant at Moorside near Sellafield. This was initially set up by a consortium of utilities before being offloaded to Toshiba, who in turn tried to offload it to South Korea’s Kepco. This fell through and the project was liquidated in 2021.
One of the reasons for the failed sale to Kepco was the time it would take for the office for nuclear regulation (ONR) to approve the Korean AP1400 reactor. Given it is now accepted for use in the U.S. and EU there is no need for a detailed independent UK assessment. Despite this, if AP1400s were pursued by the government, there would have to be a generic design assessment (GDA). Based on the schedule for other GDAs for the four designs currently certified, this could take four, five, or possibly ten years. There is no reason this process cannot be expedited, but it would require a level of political commitment we have not seen since the decision to prioritize the AGR over American technology in the 1960s.
More recently, the government announced a new agency called Great British Nuclear (GBN). GBN is not a state-run nuclear corporation, but rather a venture arm that facilitates grants. It is incredibly light-touch and does not represent a strategic shift. It has three main components;
A competition to decide on which small modular reactor (SMR) technology to use. This seems loosely based on Canada’s SMR roadmap. But while Canada’s Ontario Power Generation is already building its first SMRs, GBN does not plan to reach a final investment decision until 2029.
£157 million in grant funding packages. A portion of this will go towards developing advanced modular reactors (AMR), a subgroup of SMRs focused on providing heat for industrial uses.
£22.3 million from the Nuclear Fuel Fund will enable 8 projects to develop new fuel production and manufacturing capabilities in the UK.
While perfectly reasonable, this is a very limited intervention, far smaller than the very minor investment in semiconductors. While the government is aware that an industrial strategy of some kind is needed, it is constrained by the country’s troubled finances and the fact that major subsidies could result in misallocation. It is therefore providing small sums of money to placate industry while avoiding costly mistakes. This is understandable, but can only be a placeholder for a much larger intervention if a major nuclear buildout is to occur.
SMRs may be viable as a technology, having already been built by Rosatom and the Chinese. But there is even more uncertainty on their per KW cost than for traditional reactors, as seen below. But currently, they cost more than traditional reactors, and so cannot be viewed as a one-for-one alternative. If targets are to be met, big reactors of the old kind will have to be built.
Figure 4: Small Modular Reactor Costs (Orange denotes plants that have yet to be completed). Sources, 1, 2, 3.
In summary, the government is currently stuck with EDF and CGN for Hinkley and is partnering with the former for Sizewell. There are no other plant plans currently being actioned. Assuming they both get built, that gives us 6.4 GW of nuclear capacity before 2050. This is currently far from sufficient given our incumbent 6 GW, which will shrink due to future decommissioning. Atleast 15 GW, or 10 modern reactors, will need to be built before the middle of the century.
With China no longer a partner, Britain’s options are limited. EDF has an appalling recent record of building plants on time and is likely to be limited to servicing Macron’s nuclear renaissance. Westinghouse has a bad recent record but is receiving U.S. government patronage, so may not be discounted.
South Korea’s Kepco is the obvious choice, being the most effective builder of modern plants, but any planning stage will have to be expedited to get the same performance. The only other major option is to court the Canadian industry, which has succeeded in exporting reactors to China and India and is being revamped at home.
The government has decided to patronize nuclear power, at least understanding that baseload generation is necessary for the future grid. Supporting nuclear power would be well within the global consensus, and the technology has already shown its ability to massively reduce carbon emissions while not creating problems of intermittency. There is the potential for a cross-party consensus on this issue, with Labour having kicked off the original reappraisal of nuclear power under Tony Blair. If the former prime minister is as influential in Keir Starmer’s circle as we are being led to believe, this bodes well for British fission. What is missing is a detailed strategy and an acknowledgment of the funding this prospective buildout needs.