Delays to French-built nuclear plants leave UK risking blackouts

DELAYS to French-built nuclear power stations will leave the UK at risk of blackouts by 2028, new research has warned.

A “perfect storm” of increased demand because of net zero, the closure of existing nuclear power stations and delays to the delivery of Hinkley Point C, which is being built by French stateowned power company EDF, will leave the country facing a “crunch point” that risks blackouts.

It coincides with new government data showing consumers will have £2.8bn added to their bills in 2028 – about £100 per householder – to pay power station owners to provide generating capacity.

Analysis by Public First predicts that the UK’S demand for power will exceed baseload capacity by 7.5GW at peak times by 2028 – a shortfall equivalent to the power used by more than 7m homes. A shortfall is expected as ageing British power infrastructure is to close. Ratcliffe-on-soar, the UK’S last remaining coal-fired power station, is scheduled to shut down this year.

Hartlepool and Heysham I nuclear power stations will be decommissioned in March 2026 and Heysham II and Torness come offline in March 2028.

At the same time, demand for electricity is expected to increase sharply as Britain shifts away from fossil fuels and adopts technology such as electric vehicles and heat pumps. The warning comes amid a political row between Westminster and Paris over who will pay for cost overruns on the long-delayed Hinkley Point C nuclear reactor, which was scheduled to open in 2025 at the time of approval but will now not come online until at least 2031.

Bruno Le Maire, the French finance minister, has demanded “an equitable sharing of costs” but the UK Government insisted the Edf-led development must be privately financed. The cost of building Hinkley Point C, which is under construction in Somerset, has risen from £18bn to £46bn – equivalent to £700 for everyone in the UK.

Public First’s warning is politically highly sensitive as it implies the UK could face power shortages and consequent increases in prices, or even the risk of blackouts, around the time of a general election.

The report, Mind the Gap: Exploring Britain’s energy crunch, was commissioned by Drax Power, the owner of the controversial Drax power station that once burnt coal but is now fuelled largely by wood chips imported from “sustainable” forests in North America.

Daisy Powell-chandler, at Public First, said: “Setbacks in bringing new nuclear and offshore wind online, the retirement of generation assets and increasing power demand will create an energy crunch point in 2028.

“But policymakers have a suite of levers they can pull to ensure that we have a more secure, diverse and sustainable energy system in the future.”