It would be “absolute madness” for the next prime minister not to press ahead with the Sizewell C nuclear plant, Boris Johnson has warned as he confirmed £700 million of government investment in the project.
In what was billed as his final speech before he leaves No 10 Downing Street next Monday, the PM told an audience at the Sizewell B nuclear plant in Suffolk that the next government should not take the “short-termist” approach that had bedevilled nuclear power policy in the past.
He said the government is putting up to £700 million into the Sizewell C project, which is part of the £1.7 billion earmarked in last year’s budget to enable a final investment decision on at least one major nuclear power station during the current parliament.
“I am absolutely confident that it will get over the line and we will get it over the line because it would be madness not to,” said Johnson, urging his successor to “go nuclear and go large and go with Sizewell C.”
He also said that while nuclear has been criticised on the grounds of cost, the controversial £92.50/MWh strike price agreed in 2017 for Hinkley Point C “doesn’t look so expensive today” in the context of current electricity prices.
“Nuclear always looks, when you begin, relatively expensive to build and to run but look at what is happening today. Look at the results of Putin’s war.
“It is certainly cheap by comparison with hydrocarbons today,” the PM said, adding that if Hinkley Point C was already running, it would be “cutting fuel bills by £3 billion”.
He also lambasted the failure of UK governments over the last three decades to deliver a single new nuclear power plant since the completion of Sizewell B in the mid-1990s.
Johnson said his “blood starts to boil” at the “short-termism of successive British governments, at their failure to do justice to our pioneering nuclear history, their abject failure to think of the needs of future generations, above all the families that are today struggling with the cost of energy in this country.”
The problem is “myopia” and “short-termism”, he said: “It’s a chronic case of politicians not being able to see beyond the political cycle.
“It is because of that kind of myopia that here in the country that first split the atom, we have only 15 per cent of our electricity from nuclear – and it is falling.”
Johnson also used the speech to refute critics of renewable power, who include prominent colleagues in the Conservative party, by pointing out that offshore wind is now the UK’s cheapest form of electricity, generating at a ninth of the cost of natural gas.
Responding to Johnson’s announcement of a £700 million in Sizewell C, the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA) said said the power station would displace 5.4 billion cubic metres of gas demand each year once operational.
Tom Greatrex, chief executive of the NIA, said: “This announcement is another important step toward starting construction at Sizewell C, cutting gas, cutting bills and creating stable, secure well-paid jobs for people up and down the country,” said NIA chief executive Tom Greatrex.
“The next government should sustain this momentum by giving nuclear the green label it deserves in the sustainable investment taxonomy and getting Sizewell C over the line. Sizewell C should be the start on a new era of nuclear construction to ensure our energy security for the rest of the century.”
Andy Prendergast, national secretary of the GMB union, said the investment is a “belated step in the right direction” that “should have happened years ago”.
He said: “With energy prices going through the roof and all bar one of our nuclear power stations due to go offline by the end of the decade, this does at least provide some assurance on our energy security.
“Years of political failure to make the right decision on new nuclear means we are woefully unprepared for the energy crisis facing us today.
“This same inertia has resulted in a failure to secure our domestic gas supply.”