Kick Nuclear newsletter 2025

Posted: 15th August 2025

ANOTHER NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE?

Since the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, a new nuclear renaissance has been periodically announced, while the number of civil nuclear reactors being built has not increased, the cost of building them has increased dramatically, as has the time it has taken to build them and the problem of disposing of nuclear waste they produce mounts up.

Worldwide the number of countries with civil nuclear power recently has recently remained fairly static as has that of operating reactors, Thus in 2015, there were 438 reactors operating in 31 countries, while in 2025 there are 440 operating, still in only 31 countries.

In spite of all this, on June 1 The Observer in its business section carried an article under the title, “Nuclear power has a renewed and now geopolitical appeal.”

Two days later, in The Guardian, published an article by its energy correspondent entitled: “‘Abundant, clean energy’ Why the tide is now turning in favour of nuclear power.” I guess similar articles were published in other newspapers.

So why now this sudden enthusiasm? Is it too cynical to suspect concerted pressure pressure the nuclear industry and government was connected with the pending final investment decision on the building or not of Sizewell C.

The Observer article claims that “A nuclear building boom, led by Britain, Turkey and Poland, is now under way in Europe.”

The claim, as far as the UK is concerned, seems purely wishful. We have one 2-reactor nuclear power station in the process of being built as it has been over the last nine years, with the estimated completion date after 2030 (the original estimate was 2025). The estimated cost has also shot up from £18bn to £46bn in today’s money. Meanwhile, all remaining operating civil UK nuclear reactors, bar one, are due to be shut down by 2030.

Meanwhile Sizewell C, originally chosen by the government in 2010 as one of eight new nuclear power stations to be built, has not started construction pending a final investment decision (FID). This has been delayed because of loss of interest in the project by Electricité de France (EDF), which earlier on had an 80% investment in the project with the Chinese state firm CGN having the remaining 20% investment before this stake was bought out by the UK government over security concerns.

FID was due to be reached this spring, but this was delayed by continued difficulty in finding investors, with the estimated cost of building Sizewell C almost doubling to £38bn the original estimate of £20bn,

The FID was finally reached on July 22. According to this, the UK government is left lumbered with a 44.9% investment in the project, with private firms La Caisse investing 20%, Centrica 15%, Amber Infrastructure 7.6% and EDF a very much reduced 12.5%.

These investors are protected by a scheme where the money the government and firms pay out while building is taking place will be covered by increasing electricity prices to the electricity consumer during building, whether or not Sizewell C is ever completed and goes into successful operation.

We will have to wait and see if and when Sizewell C starts building.

Meanwhile, Together Against Sizewell C (TASC) reported on August 11 that its claim for Sizewell C’s Development Consent Order to be revoked or varied has obtained permission for a hearing in the High Court as to whether the case should go for judicial review, TASC claims that it has been unlawful to delay, for decades, assessment and public scrutiny of plans for two huge additional needed flood barriers, plans for which have been kept secret by EDF since 2015.

The government is also pursuing plans to develop and deploy Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). This involves investing over £2.5 billion in an overall SMR programme, with the goal of using them to power millions of homes. The government has selected Rolls-Royce SMR to build the first three SMRs, with the aim of connecting them to the grid in the mid-2030s.

SMRs have yet to be proved in a commercial setting. There is also no guarantee that they will be immune to significant cost overruns and delays as experienced in building conventional nuclear power stations or to generate less nuclear waste.

We’ll again have to wait and see what the case is if any are ever built.

Are the prospects for nuclear power any better than in the UK for the other countries, Poland and Turkey, cited by the Observer as, along with the UK, as examples of countries enjoying a nuclear building boom?

According to the World Nuclear Association, though Poland has never had nuclear power stations, it “plans to have nuclear power from about 2036 as part of a diverse energy portfolio, moving it away from heavy dependence on coal.” Again, we’ll have to wait and see.

And according to Wikipedia, Turkey also has no operating commercial nuclear reactors , but has four under construction due to come online this year and the government is aiming for 20GW of nuclear, which does perhaps count as a limited “building boom”.

As for the claim that nuclear energy is clean, as I and many others have pointed out before, nuclear is dirty in that, taking the whole process of nuclear energy from mining uranium to building and dismantling power stations to dealing with the radioactive waste it produces, it emits large amounts of carbon dioxide and large amounts of radiation in addition.

UK government plans were originally to have European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs) built at Wylfa in Anglesey and at Oldbury in the Midlands, but it seems they have at last given up on the EPR design, with a different large reactor design being considered for Wylfa and Oldbury for SMRs, though the plans do not seem to be progressing.

THE JELLYFISH MENACE!

On August 11 it was reported that a swarm of jellyfish had forced the shutdown of four reactors at Gravelines nuclear power plant, one of the largest nuclear power plants in Europe.

With two other reactors offline for planned summer maintenance work, this meant the entire nuclear plant, capable of powering about 5m homes, had to go offline.

The jellyfish had entered the water intake systems used to cool the reactors and had packed the filter drums of the pumping stations with a “massive and unpredictable” number of them.

The four reactors began getting back online after four days.

Nothing was mentioned about what happened to the jellyfish!

It appears that jellyfish indeed have a long history of derailing the normal operations of coastal power plants.

Thus the Torness nuclear plant in Scotland had to shut for a week in 2021 after jellyfish clogged the seaweed filters on its water intake pipes, a decade after jellyfish also shut the plant for a week in 2011.

Jellyfish swarms have also closed nuclear and coal power plants in Sweden, the US, Japan, and caused a major blackout in the Philippines in 1999.