Newsround June 2025
12 May – Bridgwater Mercury: An improvement notice has been served to the developers of Hinkley Point C’s construction site after a component failure was found in a crane. The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) told the NNB Generation Company (HPC) Ltd (NNB GenCo) that it must improve monitoring and management of tower cranes at Hinkley Point C (HPC). This enforcement action follows the discovery of a failing component in a tower crane at the site in February this year. An operator undertaking pre-use checks on site found the failure of a pin connecting two mast sections together, and evidence of cracking within a mast section. The findings were reported under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR). The issue was identified before there was any broader failure of the crane, so there were no injuries to any workers. Hinkley Point C site served notice after crane ‘component failure’ | Bridgwater Mercury
16 May – BBC: The UK needs more nuclear energy to power the data centres needed for artificial intelligence (AI), Matt Garman, the boss of the world’s largest cloud computing company has said. Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is part of the retail giant Amazon, plans to spend £8bn on new data centres in the UK over the next four years. UK needs more nuclear to power AI, says Amazon Web Services boss – BBC News
18 May – Times: Welcome to Britain’s biggest building site. There’s a ‘fish disco’. It’s economy v ecology at HPC, which will power a fifth of British homes if it can pull off an audacious plan to protect wildlife. Two miles off the Somerset coast, a strange sound is playing. About 20 metres below the slate-grey surface of the Bristol Channel, a small device called a ceramic transducer blasts out a high-pitched acoustic beam at a frequency far higher than can be detected by the human ear. This machine — once disparaged by the former environment secretary Michael Gove as a “fish disco” — is being tested to see if it can scare off the salmon, herring, shad, eel and sea trout that in six years’ time will start being sucked in their millions into massive water inlets that have been built nearby. HPC is late and over budget
22 May – Guardian: The Environment Agency (EA) has allowed a firm to dump three tonnes of uranium into one of England’s most protected sites over the past nine years, it can be revealed, with experts sounding alarm over the potential environmental impact of these discharges. Documents obtained by the Guardian and the Ends Report through freedom of information requests show that a nuclear fuel factory near Preston discharged large quantities of uranium – legally, under its environmental permit conditions – into the River Ribble between 2015 and 2024. The discharges peaked in 2015 when 703kg of uranium was discharged, according to the documents. Raw uranium rock mined from all over the world is brought to the Springfields Fuels factory in Lea Town, a small village roughly five miles from Preston, where the rock is treated and purified to create uranium fuel rods. According to the factory’s website, it has supplied several million fuel elements to reactors in 11 different countries. The discharge point for the uranium releases is located within the Ribble estuary marine conservation zone – and about 800m upstream of the Ribble estuary, which is one of the most protected sites in the country, classified as a site of special scientific interest, a special protection area (SPA) and a Ramsar site (a wetland designated as being of international importance). Revealed: three tonnes of uranium legally dumped in protected English estuary in nine years | Nuclear waste | The Guardian
27 May – Lincs Online: The new Reform UK leader of Lincolnshire County Council has hit back at accusations of failing to deliver on his election promises regarding a nuclear waste site. The Lincolnshire Conservative group has highlighted that Coun Sean Matthews, recently elected as council leader, has yet to pull out of talks with government agency Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) about a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF)—despite saying he would cancel Lincolnshire’s involvement in the project on day one if elected. Lincolnshire County Council leader Sean Matthews defends stance on nuclear waste site amid criticism from Tories
29 May – Times: Letter David Lowry: Julia Pyke, joint managing director of the planned new nuclear power plant at Sizewell in Suffolk (news, May 26) asserts that the nuclear industry “prices decommissioning and waste disposal into the price of its electricity”. This is misleading. It is true that ministers have established a Nuclear Liabilities Fund, which aims to cover the future costs of dealing with the stewardship of radioactive waste created from nuclear generation and with defunct contaminated buildings at closed nuclear plants. However, resources recovered from the electricity bill payer, included in the cost of nuclear-generated electricity, may not foot the full bill. The problem is that cleaning up the radioactive residue from nuclear power is not a decades-long task, but one that will last centuries. Nobody yet knows the final bill, but experience tells us that it is likely to be higher than projected. The top-up costs will fall to future taxpayers, even though Sizewell C (SZC) will be majority privately-owned.
30 May – BBC: Sizewell C nuclear power plant’s decision to open a post-16 college in Leiston, Suffolk, has been described as “fantastic” by some residents, but many still fear the impact of the plant. Leiston residents react to Sizewell C’s plan for a new college – BBC News
2 June – The Observer: Nuclear power has a renewed and geopolitical appeal. nuclear reactor building boom led by Britain, Turkey and Poland is under way in Europe. It is a similar picture elsewhere Vietnam, Egypt and others want nuclear plants. Donald Trump has signed a series of executive orders to start building 10 large nuclear reactors by 2030 and eventually deploy 500gigawatts (GW) of new nuclear capacity in the next 25 years, compared with under 100GW today. Nuclear power has a renewed and geopolitical appeal
4 June – UK Parliament: The retrieval of waste from ageing buildings at Sellafield, the most hazardous nuclear site in the UK, is not happening quickly enough. In its report on decommissioning Sellafield, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warns that the estimated £136bn cost of the project would rise even more if work is further delayed, while expressing scepticism as to whether or not recent signs of improvement in performance could represent another false dawn. Sellafield’s race against time: nuclear waste clean-up not going quickly enough, PAC warns – Committees – UK Parliament
4 June – Stop SZC: Stop SZC tonight projected a series of messages to the Prime Minister onto Sizewell B’s dome, stating that the £40 billion SZC project is a Nuclear Waste of Money. £40 billion projection release – Google Docs
5 June – West Somerset Free Press (WSFP): A new video shows HPC ready for its second nuclear reactor dome lift, showing the progress being made in building HPC. The construction teams are currently readying for a lift of the domed roof onto the station’s second nuclear reactor building this summer. Construction of Unit 1’s buildings is almost complete, as the installation of equipment accelerates inside. New video shows Hinkley Point C ready for second nuclear reactor dome lift | wsfp.co.uk
6 June – Guardian: Plans for SZC and other coastal sites continue even as existing defences become more vulnerable to storm surges. There seems to be an inability among politicians to take in what scientists are telling us about the consequences of the climate crisis. Perhaps the most glaring example relates to the Guardian’s latest report on sea level rise, which said that whatever we do now, the rise will have devastating consequences for coastal communities, causing millions of people to migrate to higher ground. Greenland and the west Antarctic ice caps are doomed to melt. Politicians seem reluctant to take necessary action over sea level rise | Sea level | The Guardian
6 June – SZC: 70% of people in the East believe a new nuclear power station in Suffolk will bring job opportunities while it is being constructed – rising to 76% in Suffolk and 73% in Norfolk. Two thirds of East Suffolk residents (66%) believe the new nuclear power station will have positive opportunities for local businesses. A new East of England poll reveals dissatisfaction with jobs and opportunities in the region. Across the East of England, Norfolk (27%) and Suffolk (30%) have the lowest levels of satisfaction with availability of well-paying jobs. Suffolk residents are least satisfied with opportunities for young people – with only 44% believing there to be good opportunities. East of England poll: majority think new nuclear power station will bring jobs amidst lack of opportunities – Sizewell C
8 June – East Anglian Daily Times: Campaigners gathered to further protest against SZC just days before the conclusion of the Spending Review. Supporters of Stop SZC and Together Against SZC (TASC) met for an ‘Outrage’ rally at Sizewell Beach on 7 June. The weekend rally also paid tribute to former TASC chair and campaigner Pete Wilkinson, who died in January. His daughters, Emily and Amy, spoke at the protest and tied yellow ribbons onto the fence. Group protest against Sizewell C ahead of Spending Review | East Anglian Daily Times
10 June – Guardian: Rolls-Royce has won a competition to be the first company to try to build Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) in the UK, as part of a government effort to push Britain to the frontier of nuclear energy technology. The UK’s Great British Energy announced Rolls-Royce as the preferred bidder for the programme, after a drawn-out competition that pitted the FTSE 100 manufacturer against two US-owned companies. . The SMR approach is unproven, with no sites yet fully operational anywhere in the world. However, Rolls-Royce has argued that the pressurised water reactor technology it has chosen is well understood, and will allow it to start generating power by 2032 at the earliest. The government did not reveal the locations of the first UK SMRs, which some in the industry had hoped for to speed the process along. They are likely to be sited beside retired nuclear power stations such as Oldbury in Gloucestershire and Wylfa in north Wales. Rolls-Royce named winning bidder for UK small nuclear reactors | Rolls-Royce | The Guardian
10 June – ITV: Robert Peston – Wednesday’s announcement by the energy secretary Ed Miliband of a £14bn investment in a new mega nuclear power station, SZC, is not being classified as a financial asset. So, all £14bn of the finance will be added to the value of national debt, rather than the zero net figure. This is what would have happened under the old fiscal definitions, so what on earth was the point of Reeves’s controversial fiscal-rule change? In serious practical terms, it means there is £14bn less to invest in other projects – which is the opposite of what the fiscal rule change was supposed to achieve. In other words, Reeves’s changes to the fiscal rules now seem totally pointless – because if investing in a cutting-edge power plant does not create a valuable and sellable financial asset, then goodness alone knows what would Peston: Why aren’t Treasury and Reeves investing more? | ITV News
10 June – ITV News Anglia: Report on how life around HPC may be replicated in Suffolk. Usual EdeF guff but video clip Includes interview with SH. The ‘nuclear gold rush’: What could Sizewell C bring to coastal community? | ITV News Anglia
11 June – Telegraph: The cost of SZC has doubled to more than £40bn as ministers race to strike a funding deal with private investors and the French government. An official cost estimate for the scheme in Suffolk, which would generate enough electricity for 6m homes, was previously put at £20bn. But that has grown to £30bn at constant prices – or £41bn in today’s money – with the Government set to shoulder at least half of the upfront cost, according to industry and Whitehall sources. The entire scheme will ultimately be paid for by households and businesses via their electricity bills, including through levies that will begin during construction. The power plant’s rising price tag will trigger concerns about future increases as HPC has repeatedly overrun budgets and timescales.
12 June – Spectator: The Chancellor’s promise of £14 billion for SZC in Suffolk is hardly news. The project has been talked about for 15 years while the existing UK nuclear estate has gradually been shut down and the only other new station, HPC in Somerset, has stumbled to a decade-long delay and £28 billion of budget overruns. Quite some optimism – verging on Milibandian delusion – is required to embrace the idea that SZC will come quicker and cheaper because it will replicate HPC while avoiding its mistakes. And since Chinese money has been ruled out, it’s still a mystery as to who else will pay for the project beside HMG and the French utility company EDF. The Sizewell delusion | The Spectator
13 June – Guardian: Letter Sara Darby: As Nils Pratley says, Great British Energy’s budget has been nuked to divert funding away from local energy initiatives (11 June). But let’s get away from the idea that SMRs are a cutting-edge technology. Rolls-Royce is proposing a 470MW reactor, the same size as the first-generation Magnox reactors. Their “small” modular reactor, if it ever emerges, will use the familiar method of generating a lot of heat in a very complex and expensive manner, in order to boil water and turn a turbine. It will bequeath yet more radioactive waste to add to the burden and risk at Sellafield. In the meantime, if government SMR funding continues, it takes money away from opportunities for cutting-edge technical and social innovation, discovery and training all around the country, as schools, hospitals, community groups, network operators and all of us get to grips with renewables-based systems. This sort of innovation is necessary, it’s already benefiting us and it needs full-on government support rather than uneasy compromises with an increasingly redundant nuclear industry. Spending billions on unclean, risky energy? What a nuclear waste | Nuclear power | The Guardian
15 June – Sunday Mail: Labour’s £14bn ‘fixation’ with new nuclear power ‘won’t cut bills or help climate’. The UK Government last week announced a new ‘golden age’ of nuclear, but academics and campaigners warn it will be a costly energy fail. Now campaigners and academics have warned that nuclear energy is too expensive and plants take too long to build to make any dent in net zero efforts or prevent future blackouts. And they said the result of “inevitable” cost overruns on nuclear projects would lead to a “nuclear tax” on consumer bills. It follows pressure on the SNP to end its block on nuclear projects, with Labour saying it could open Scotland up to SMRs if it wins at Holyrood next year. But Pete Roche, an Edinburgh energy consultant and anti-nuclear campaigner, said: “It’s too late for nuclear. It takes too long to build. “We’re trying to tackle a climate crisis here, we need to be fast – the faster, the better. “You can insulate people’s homes and put up wind farms quite quickly in comparison to how long it takes to build a nuclear power station. “And the worry is when you’re putting all your eggs in the nuclear basket, the money is getting diverted, civil servants’ attention is getting diverted. “We’re not focused enough on getting the energy transition based on renewables off the ground. “It’s a fixation and the UK is not on its own. There’s all sorts of talk in other countries of building nuclear power stations again. “It’s almost like a mass psychosis because if they really investigated properly what the best use of public funds would be, nuclear wouldn’t get a look-in.” Dr Paul Dorfman, of the Bennett Institute at the University of Sussex, said more than £20billion had now been committed to Sizewell C but the final bill could easily be double that and likely more. “The vast majority of that money comes from public subsidy – in other words, the public will have to pay for all the inevitable over-costs and overruns, which is basically a nuclear tax.” Labour’s £14bn ‘fixation’ with new nuclear power ‘won’t cut bills or help climate’ – Daily Record
16 June – Telegraph: Britain’s electricity grid operators will attempt to keep the country’s lights on without burning gas for the first time ever this summer. In a potential glimpse of the future power system, the National Energy System Operator (Neso) – which manages the network – confirmed it was looking at “potential opportunities” for a short period of gas-free generation later this year. If successful, it would make Britain one of the few industrialised countries to have run its electricity system without burning gas domestically.
Roy Pumfrey for Stop Hinkley June 2025