Hinkley Point C nuclear plant costs could rise to £46bn, delayed to end of decade

In 2022, the cost of the plant in Somerset was estimated at £26 billion in 2015 prices. But French firm EDF, which is developing the plant, has now raised its estimate to £31-35 billion in 2015 prices, which could be as much as £46 billion in today’s prices.

Its target completion date had been June 2027 but Stuart Crooks, managing director of Hinkley Point C, said he now expected the plants first unit to be operational “around the end of the decade”.

In a project update, Crooks said, “Restarting the British nuclear industry has been hard. We’ve had to train a new workforce, teach suppliers how to build nuclear, and like any other developer, change our design to meet British regulations. That means 7,000 design changes and 35% more steel and 25% more concrete.

“Like other big infrastructure projects, we have found civil construction slower than we hoped, faced inflation, labour and material shortages, on top of Covid and Brexit disruption.”

Towards the end of last year, contractors at the nuclear plant site lifted a dome into place on the first reactor building, two years later than originally planned. The closure of the building means that work on installing the first reactor can start.

Crooks put 15 months of that delay down to the pandemic. Crooks said, “Beyond Covid, we’ve lost nine months since we began. That’s not perfect, but for the first nuclear plant to be build in Britain for a generation, it’s not too bad either.

“The good news is that our pioneering work has rebuilt an industry which will serve the country and its nuclear programme for decades to come. It’s very clear that once we learn something, there is a big improvement in performance when we do it again.

“At Hinkley Point, we’re building an identical second unit and it’s typically 20-30% faster. As someone who has been in the industry for almost 40 years, I can tell you that repeating a design is always easier than building a one-off.”

Finding suppliers and manufacturers for the fit-out of the plant has also taken longer than expected, he said.

But he stressed that cost overruns on the project will not cost UK taxpayers more, after EDF agreed to take on the project risk and pay the full cost of construction, including any increases.