Britain's Nuclear Dream
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 4 August 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Britain faces big decisions when it comes to generating electricity - and ones we will all end up paying for. So what's the right choice?
Theresa May surprised many by one of her first acts as prime minister: delaying a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset. She says she wants more time to consider the deal before making a final decision later this year. Hinkley Point C - if it's ever built - would be the first UK nuclear power plant to be constructed in more than 20 years. But the French-built, Chinese-funded project has been beset with delays since Tony Blair first pushed for new nuclear plants in 2005. David Aaronovitch and a panel of experts outline Britain's nuclear dream, find out what went wrong along the way, detail the alternatives and try to answer the question: what should we do next?
Guests: Peter Atherton, energy analyst, Cornwall Energy Malcom Grimston visiting senior research fellow, Imperial College London Steven Thomas, professor of energy studies, Greenwich University Lisa Waters, economist, Waters Wye Associates
Producers: Joe Kent and Mike Wendling Researchers: Alex Burton and Kirsteen Knight.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Alex. I work on the briefing room. You've probably been hearing quite a lot recently about Hinkley Point. |
| 0:06.4 | I have two and I started looking into it and what I found out actually made me realise for the first time just how important Hinkley Point is. |
| 0:16.2 | So we have made a programme about it. Here it is. Here's David Aronovich with the briefing room. |
| 0:27.4 | Good evening. It would be the most expensive project in British history. So should Theresa May |
| 0:34.1 | decide to build the Hinkley Sea Nuclear power station in Somerset or not. |
| 0:39.1 | Step inside the briefing room with me and I'll try and discover the costs and the benefits |
| 0:44.1 | of the Hinkley decision. |
| 0:51.7 | Joining me in the briefing room are four energy experts who have been following the Hinkley saga right from the beginning. |
| 0:57.8 | But before I talk to them, reporter Alex Burton is here in the briefing room to explain how we got to this point. |
| 1:05.6 | Yes, David, you can trace Hinkley right the way back to 2005 when the then Prime Minister Tony Blair ordered a big |
| 1:12.7 | review of the UK's energy infrastructure. Now, there are a couple of things that they hope this |
| 1:17.5 | review would sort out for the government. First of all, it needed to find a way to bring down our carbon |
| 1:22.1 | emissions. And second, it needed to start replacing our old ageing fleet of nuclear power stations, which |
| 1:28.8 | all have a shelf life. Now, at that time, nuclear power was sort of in the political wilderness. |
| 1:33.9 | It was thought that it was too expensive for them to start building new nuclear power |
| 1:37.3 | stations. So what changed? Well, in the course of this review, the government clearly had a change |
| 1:42.0 | of heart, and by 2006, nuclear was back on the agenda with a vengeance. That's Tony Blair's words. Still, the government clearly had a change of heart, and by 2006 nuclear was back on the |
| 1:44.8 | agenda with a vengeance. That's Tony Blair's words. Still, the government knew it had to find a way |
| 1:49.5 | to get these power stations built without loading billions of pounds in debt onto the public |
| 1:54.5 | balance sheet. So the plan right from the beginning was to get industry to finance the whole lot. |
| 2:00.2 | So industry would pay to design |
| 2:01.5 | and build and operate all these new nuclear plants. There are companies that actually do that? |
... |
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