Downing Street this morning unveiled a bold promise: ten new nuclear reactors, a ‘fleet’ of them, to be built across the country. The Prime Minister, in a speech that felt more like a wartime rally, declared Britain would ‘build back greener and stronger’. My first reaction, after two decades of watching politicians promise infrastructure miracles, was a quiet, cynical sigh.
Let’s talk about the numbers, because that’s where the sentimental cut glass shatters. Ten reactors. The last one, Hinkley Point C, is already years late and billions over budget.
EDF’s French engineers are still wrestling with concrete and regulatory hurdles. So forgive my scepticism when I hear we’re going to replicate that feat ten times over, all while the Treasury is worrying about gilts. The cost?
Unclear, but the market’s quiet whisper is a figure north of £100 billion. Where will that money come from? Not from thin air, unless the Chancellor has found a printing press he’s been hiding.
This is a capital-intensive, long-term project. The private sector, my friends, will demand a guaranteed return. They will look at the history of nuclear delays, at the regulatory fog, and they will demand a risk premium.
That means higher energy bills for households already squeezed by inflation. The Bank of England will be watching. Every pound spent on concrete and steel for reactors is a pound not spent on something else, or a pound borrowed at a time when gilt yields are creeping up.
The market will test this commitment. Will the government backstop the costs? If so, our children’s children will be paying off this debt.
The environmental case is compelling: low-carbon baseload power. But the fiscal case is murky. The City is not throwing its hat in the air.
It is watching the details. CapEx. Timeline.
Regulatory speed. The PM needs to deliver more than a speech. He needs a financeable, bankable plan.
Until then, this is a grand ambition that risks being a grand financial liability. The grid needs rebuilding, but the path is paved with billions that no one has yet accounted for.
