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ABSTRACT
In September 2015, the UK government announced that future taxpayers will underwrite the construction of two European-designed nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset. Partly financed by Chinese utility companies, this announcement presents a fait accompli with little democratic input. Few, if any, historic lessons evident from previous attempts to manage its nuclear industry appear to have been learnt. This paper discusses the announcement with reference to the governance of the UK’s historic nuclear legacy—specifically dealing with control, stakeholder engagement, and transparency—and its implications for a nuclear renaissance.
Notes
1. Sellafield employs approximately 10,000 staff plus contractors.
2. Call for Evidence ‘Managing Radioactive Waste Safely: Review of the Siting Process for a Geological Disposal Facility’:13/5/2013. URN 13D/105.
3. EDF is the French utility company Électricité de France, largely owned by the French government.
4. See www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029392-500-how-uks-first-nuclear-reactor-for-25-years-will-work/
7. The two EPRs at Taishan, China, are expected to be completed in 2015.
8. EDF is a utility that operates nuclear plant. Areva is a French state-owned reactor construction company.
9. Areva’s 2014 turnover was 8.3 billion euros, and it has debts of 5.8 billion euros.
10. EDF recorded a profit of 3.7 billion euros on a 73 billion euros turnover, but has debts of 34 billion euros and a negative cash flow.
11. Plutonium, a man-made material produced as part of the nuclear process, has a half-life—broadly, the time taken to lose half its radioactivity—of 24,000 years (NRC, Citation2003)