Taxpayers facing nuclear missile

New nuclear power stations will not be built unless the government fixes the market price for dealing with waste, according to a nuclear industry expert today.

And rigging the price will, say Greenpeace, mean that taxpayers will have to subsidise new nuclear power stations.

The revelation comes as Gordon Brown is due to meet President Sarkozy of France to discuss nuclear power.

Writing in Nuclear Engineering International, Ian Jackson, who has worked in the industry for over 20 years, says that a “fully commercial price would make disposal far too expensive, killing the prospects of any new nuclear build programme in Britain”.

The government has said that decisions on building new nuclear reactors will be entirely up to the market, and that there will be no public hand-outs.

If companies building nuclear plants in the UK were charged the same rate for waste disposal as overseas utilities – which, commercially speaking, they should be – the costs would come to £201,000 per cubic metre of waste. This would amount to £8.2 billion for ten new reactors, or £820 million each. These costs - 40 per cent of the total construction costs – would scupper any plans for new nuclear reactors.

Ben Ayliffe, head of Greenpeace's nuclear campaign, said: “If nuclear power had to stand on its own two feet in a truly liberalised energy market, there’s no way anyone would be talking about building new reactors.

"Despite telling anyone who’d care to listen that new nuclear would be paid for by the industry and without subsidy, behind closed doors the government has cooked up a way to make nuclear liabilities artificially palatable. Ultimately, this means that the taxpayer is going to have to subsidise new nuclear power stations.

"The estimated costs of dealing with nuclear waste increase every single year. Including a so-called 'significant risk premium' is going to do next to nothing to cover these costs in the long-term. The risk here isn't being borne by the nuclear industry, it's being borne by the taxpayer.

“And while Gordon Brown is bending over backwards to foist new French nuclear power stations across the planet, he’s simultaneously stabbing renewable energy in the back. It’s political contortionism of the highest order.”

Ian Jackson joined the nuclear industry in 1986, working initially at the Atomic Energy research Establishment then later as a nuclear regulator. He is the author of Siting New Nuclear Power Stations: Availability and Options for Government published alongside the 2007 Energy White Paper.

Download Ian Jackson’s article in Nuclear Engineering International.