Power struggle: developing the UK's nuclear manufacturing capacity

The UK was the world’s first nuclear-powered nation, with the first grid-connected nuclear reactor, Calder Hall, coming on stream in 1956. At the forefront of nuclear technologies for several decades, the country stepped back somewhat from nuclear with changes in government policy, public attitudes, and costs. And following the privatisation of the energy industry in the 1980s and 1990s, R&D spending dropped away, and with it the UK’s capability to build nuclear power stations.

Now, as we teeter ever closer to the start of the programme to build new nuclear power stations in the UK, it seems inevitable that most of the dozen reactors on the planning slate will be made overseas. The declared players in the new-build arena — EDF and Horizon Nuclear Power — are set to build European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs) at Hinkley Point in Somerset and Sizewell in Suffolk; the major components for these will come from the facilities of Areva, like EDF owned mostly by the French state, in southern France (see box). Horizon, owned by Hitachi, is planning Advanced Boiling Water Reactors (ABWRs) at Oldbury in Gloucestershire and Wylfa in Anglesey; while the company has stated that it wishes to establish a UK supply chain for a proportion of the manufacture, the mighty presses of the Japan Steelworks on the island of Hokkaido are likely to be involved.