Boris’ empty promises on nuclear power

Boris Johnson excels at delivering “bombastic rhetoric,” said Ben Marlow, but his grand plans are “painfully lacking in substance.” The British prime minister delivered yet another example last month when he promised that, by hugely expanding capacity, Britain would “lead the world once again” in nuclear power by 2050. The claim was “pure fantasy.” Thanks to “our overreliance on foreign partners,” we can hardly maintain the existing capacity of our aging nuclear infrastructure, much less build anew. Under a 2015 deal struck by the government of David Cameron, China agreed to help develop a new generation of plants, starting in Somerset and Suffolk. And as a “quid pro quo” for agreeing to be a minority partner to the French nuclear developer EDF, China’s state-owned nuclear energy company would get to build and operate a third plant at Bradwell-onSea in Essex—a London suburb—using its own untested technology. Even back then, when Cameron downed beers with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and touted a new “golden era” in Sino-British relations, the idea of green-lighting an unproven Chinese reactor 50 miles from London looked to be a tough sell. These days, it’s a nonstarter. With few other sources of funding or know-how, EDF is warning that our nuclear plans could collapse entirely. Talk about vain promises.