Britain's nuclear future
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 615 Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2017
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Britain's multi-billion pound nuclear dream. EDF is building the country's first new nuclear power station in decades at Hinkley Point C in Somerset. But that's just the start. Two other companies also have dreams of bringing nuclear to sites in Cumbria and on Anglesey. But the financing and logistics of these projects are tough. Power stations cost billions to build and investors won't see returns for more than five years. Critics of the nuclear option argue that renewables - wind and solar power - would be a better option to generate electricity. Just what are the options and the costs involved? Three nuclear rivals join Evan Davis.
Guests: Humphrey Cadoux-Hudson, managing director, nuclear new build, EDF Energy UK Duncan Hawthorne, chief executive, Horizon Nuclear Power Tom Samson, chief executive, NuGeneration Nuclear Power Dame Sue Ion, chair of the Nuclear Innovation and Research Advisory Board.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:02.5 | Hello, thanks for downloading the bottom line podcast. |
| 0:05.6 | You might have seen in the news that the American Power Company Westinghouse has filed for bankruptcy |
| 0:09.9 | following huge losses in its U.S. nuclear construction projects. |
| 0:14.3 | So the big question Evan Davis is asking his guests this week is, why is it so hard to make a profit from nuclear power? |
| 0:20.5 | Hello and welcome to the program. And we're going to talk through the business and |
| 0:24.6 | economics of nuclear power today, fascinating sector, such a strange cost profile, huge |
| 0:31.0 | upfront costs followed by the promise of secure power and cheap running costs thereafter. |
| 0:37.0 | We know that Britain is committed to a nuclear |
| 0:39.1 | investment at Hinkley Point C, but that is just the start. And today we have a unique panel of |
| 0:45.7 | guests representing the three key groups hoping to deliver new nuclear in the UK. We'll let them |
| 0:52.6 | argue the case for nuclear power together and we'll'll let them argue the case for nuclear power together, |
| 0:55.0 | and we'll also let them argue over whose nuclear is the best, and we also have an expert on hand |
| 1:01.0 | to help us negotiate our way through that. Let me introduce them. First up is Humphrey Cadoo Hudson, |
| 1:07.0 | managing director of Nuclear New Build at EDF Energy UK. |
| 1:11.7 | Just bring us up to speed on Hinkley Point C, Humphrey, and where we are on that. |
| 1:15.9 | We're in full construction on site. |
| 1:18.0 | We have over 1,600 people on site. |
| 1:20.7 | We have machinery covering the whole 2 by 1 kilometre site. |
| 1:25.0 | The job at the moment is moving Earth to go and create the imprint for |
| 1:28.7 | the new power station that will be built off the back of the movement of Earth. So that's moving |
| 1:33.5 | 5.6 million cubic metres of rock. We have a site covered with Earth moving machinery that's |
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