Nuclear power output to hit record in 2025, is nuclear power back in favour?

CGTN Europe

Associate Fellow at Science Policy Research Unit of University of Sussex Paul Dorfman spoke to CGTN Europe on Hinkley Point C nuclear power station delayed and global nuclear power output.

Transcript

00:00 The International Energy Agency predicts that global nuclear power generation is going to hit an all-time high next year.

00:06 Let's talk to Dr. Paul Dorfman, who's Associate Fellow of the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex.

00:12 Welcome to the programme, Paul.

00:13 So let's talk about what's going on at Hinkley Point first.

00:16 Warnings of delays there, higher costs, and this has altogether been a very problematic...

00:21 Well, in fact, according to the Financial Times, they're talking about plus nine billion.

00:26 Not three billion, but plus nine billion.

00:29 The initial estimate was 18 billion for Hinkley Point.

00:34 And on 2050 money, it's about 34 billion.

00:38 But in today's money, you're talking about 46 billion pounds.

00:44 So this is the most expensive nuclear power plant ever built,

00:48 with EDF facing a 17 billion euro shortfall on their construction.

00:56 Now, what's kind of interesting about this is that the UK government knew about this very significant price increase,

01:05 even before they announced a couple of days ago that they were going to put about 1.3 billion into a new reactor at size World Sea.

01:12 Now, this new reactor is about... is the same reactor, the same EPR reactor, the same corporation, EDF Corporation,

01:22 and they're expecting it to go well, which has significant implications for UK nuclear policy.

01:27 In other words, where is UK energy policy?

01:31 Well, so we have the size World Sea reactor, we have Hinkley Point, the UK obviously trying to invest in nuclear power.

01:38 Globally, we have other countries adding reactors, China, for example, India.

01:42 Are we at a point where nuclear power is now back in favour?

01:47 Well, if you look at... there's a big nuclear push, PR push on at the moment.

01:50 But if you actually look at the numbers, the figures, the facts,

01:53 last year, 96% of all new power capacity generation worldwide, new power capacity generation worldwide, was renewables with nuclear nowhere.

02:05 The recent International Energy Agency report states that renewables are set to displace coal as the top source of electricity by 2025.

02:18 So there's a very strong difference between nuclear public relations and the reality on the ground.

02:27 You talked about that PR push that nuclear was doing.

02:31 We are seeing different rates of growth in different parts of the world.

02:33 Do you think that nuclear power still has something of an image problem?

02:38 You think of Chernobyl, what happened in Fukushima?

02:42 I suppose that's kind of in the past. What we're really looking about is the economies of nuclear.

02:47 I mean, America just finished a very good summer nuclear power plant, again, hugely over cost and hugely over time.

02:56 With the Americans saying this may well be the last large nuclear power plant they ever will build.

03:01 The IPCC, the International Panel on Climate Change, in the most recent report,

03:06 states that renewables are 10 times better than nuclear at CO2 mitigation.

03:11 The problem with nuclear is essentially it's very slow to put down and very costly.

03:18 The UK government states that it takes up to 17 years to build just one nuclear power plant.

03:23 Now, in terms of the energy crisis and more importantly, the climate crisis, we may not have time for new nuclear.

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