I wonder how much of that is due to real technological problems and how much profiteering unforeseen expenses.

I do not comprehend how it can be so late and so expensive for a 'known' design. I know Dungeness B went WAY over but they were basically designing the darn thing as/after it was being put together. I believe we managed to build Sizewell B relatively on time and budget.

One of the reasons we went with the AGR in the 60's was that we could do it 'in house'. No huge forged pressure vessel and used the same turbines as coal fired stations.

Did the UK gov not look on check a trade?

I always thought the Hitachi ABWR or the Westinghouse PWR was a better alternative to the EPR.

I do not comprehend how it can be so late and so expensive for a 'known' design.

Is it possible that not much (if any) plans were made to de-commission those reactors?

Let's concentrate on building, dismantling can be planned later and is [1]somebody else's problem .

Are electricity suppliers run by the government in the UK or why do tax-payers have to provide the funds to de-comission the plants?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_else%27s_problem

I was talking about the EPRs, the costs listed are purely construction at this time. EVERY EPR build has gone hugely over time and budget.

When we built the MAGNOX there were no thoughts given to end of life. A little more thought was put into the AGRs but not a lot.

the costs listed are purely construction at this time

The article states EDF estimates the costs of decomissioning at £23.5bn exceeding what the government put into the Nuclear Liabilities Fund (£14.8 billion). This is what i have been referring to:

Last year the government injected £5.1 billion ($5.8 billion) into the Nuclear Liabilities Fund – now valued at £14.8 billion ($17 billion) – which it set up in 1996 to meet the costs of decommissioning AGR and Pressurized Water Reactor stations. But EDF's latest cost estimate to decommission the stations in March last year was £23.5bn ($27 billion).

Plus the loss of capacity. Scotland just shut Hunterston and this year opens our biggest ever offshore wind farm... which won't quite cover the shortfall, assuming it produces as expected.

We should have been building more Nuclear decades ago.

Folks today do not seem to be talking about the other draw backs of nuclear powered electricity production.

It sounds like yoiu are comparing rotten apples to rotten pears.

Please look elsewhere for the massive amount of electricity needed to run our science experiments and the rest of us can avoid power cuts by switching off our lights.

I think they want us to switch off our brains.................

ALF

And the drawbacks are?

No viable solution for the disposal or long-term storage of high-level radioactive waste with half-lives measured in millenia.

It would be a very good idea to do that before making any more of the stuff.

We have not had a real energy policy in this country for 30 years. "Let the market decide" was the mantra from the shut-everything-down Tories. They said the future is services like banking for dictators, not engineering. That works only during the lifetime of the power stations, dunnit? When the electricity cuts come these same let-the-market-decide pinheads will be telling us something like "at least the cuts are not as bad as in, ahhhh, Cambodia or Equatorial Guinea". They will not admit that they were wrong all along.

-> taxpayers would have to make up a multibillion-pound shortfall to decommission nuclear power stations

-> now valued at £14.8 billion... latest cost estimate... £23.5bn

That's nuclear for you. How much money do you have? They will take every last penny, and more. Just borrow more if you don't have it.

Meanwhile China has plans to build 150 nuclear power stations, and given their evident ability to manage large scale infrastructure projects (their high speed rail system dwarfs every other country in scope) they will likely do it. What do we do to please the USA? We block China from building here. We will go the more expensive slower-to-build route. All so the politicians can sit like poodles at the table of the American lords, and occasionally be fed the odd scrap.

Is 'murica involved in the EPR build? I thought China was involved as well as helping to finance.

The US is rabidly anti-nuclear so not sure why they would help.

In all fairness, new reactors were greenlit in 2009, but were shelved by the coalition.

As I have said elsewhere, Sizewell B was the CEGB's prototype for a whole new fleet of generators. Thatcher rolls in, stops the whole plan and goes with Gas burning instead.

Now the North Sea is depleted, we are rushing up Windmills which are good (some of the time) and importing Gas for the remainder.

Having a plan means looking beyond surviving the next election. And no parliamentary party of the last 40 years has done that. (Though I am as up for a change from the Tories as anyone else).

Thacher was pro nuclear as it helped to kill off the coal miners unions. Once that happened and we found cheap gas she got much less interested.

The projected costs are stupid because of hopelessly strict radiation guidelines. (No one in the next 10,000 years should be exposed to the same level of radiation that many people experience naturally in Cornwall due to the traces of uranium in the rocks there.)

A much more realistic way of decommissioning nuclear power stations

1) Remove the fuel rods

2) Wait 10 years to allow the short lived (under 1 year) radioisotopes to decay to low levels

3) Fill the reactor core with concrete

4) Surround the reactor core with 20 feet of waterproof concrete (the Roman volcanic ash and seawater mix)

5) Use some bulldozers to create a small artificial hill (50 feet above the reactor core) and make it into a park

This would still meet the requirement of very low exposure risk but would take the cost down to well under £1billion per reactor.

@VoiceOfTruth

"We have not had a real energy policy in this country for 30 years. "Let the market decide" was the mantra from the shut-everything-down Tories"

I havnt seen much of the market being allowed to do anything for energy. We have power generation but we must shut it down because of the new religion. Nukes have been planned then blocked by govs fearing greenies who have opposed nukes until very recently. Vast amounts spent on monuments to the sky god in hopes it will fart at the right time to produce some electricity. Fossil fuels will be banned by the gov in a couple of decades but then they cry there is a lack of gas storage that has no ROI due to green madness.

"Meanwhile China has plans to build 150 nuclear power stations, and given their evident ability to manage large scale infrastructure projects (their high speed rail system dwarfs every other country in scope) they will likely do it."

Nukes coal and more, China seems serious about improving itself while we westerners hobble ourselves. I must admit to a little amusement that Germany is removing wind turbines so they can mine lignite coal.

From The 70s:

"When you're cold, hungry and out of work....................eat a conservationist!"

FTFY

"When you're cold, hungry and out of work....................eat a conservative!"

The public won't tolerate daily blackouts after sunset, so we will likely have to do the same thing as California, grant a liabilities waiver to the old nuclear power plants and allow them to ignore safety regulations.

Too late, they have shut them down and restarting would be VERY hard.

Plus our fleet of AGRs is in much better state than the reactors in California.

How can the UK have energy problems. It cant be possible. We spent so much on monuments to sky gods and was promised all this plentiful free energy. Surely our energy bills are falling and we have an abundance of energy?

There was a report published in the 90s - The Busby Report I think - that said we weren't planning and building enough generating capacity. I seem to remember various people and organisation poo-pooing it. Oh well.