Nuclear Power UK: The Real Cost

'Taxpayers ‘will pay billions’ for nuclear plants'
Dan Box and Dominic O’Connell
The Times Business 26 June 2005

A new generation of nuclear power stations could be built only if the government is prepared to put billions of pounds of public money into the project, according to a leading economic think tank. The report by Oxera, published tomorrow, concludes that the potential returns on investment in new nuclear power stations are too small to justify the risks for private companies. Unless the government provided them with huge capital grants or debt guarantees, the required eight new nuclear power plants would not be built by industry.

Britain has 12 nuclear power stations generating about 22% of the country’s electricity; all of them are due to be decommissioned in the next two decades.