Associate Fellow at Science Policy Research Unit of University of Sussex Paul Dorfman spoke to CGTN Europe on Hinkley Point C nuclear power station delayed and global nuclear power output.
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00:00 The International Energy Agency predicts that global nuclear power generation is going to hit an all-time high next year.
00:06 Let's talk to Dr. Paul Dorfman, who's Associate Fellow of the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex.
00:12 Welcome to the programme, Paul.
00:13 So let's talk about what's going on at Hinkley Point first.
00:16 Warnings of delays there, higher costs, and this has altogether been a very problematic...
00:21 Well, in fact, according to the Financial Times, they're talking about plus nine billion.
00:26 Not three billion, but plus nine billion.
00:29 The initial estimate was 18 billion for Hinkley Point.
00:34 And on 2050 money, it's about 34 billion.
00:38 But in today's money, you're talking about 46 billion pounds.
00:44 So this is the most expensive nuclear power plant ever built,
00:48 with EDF facing a 17 billion euro shortfall on their construction.
00:56 Now, what's kind of interesting about this is that the UK government knew about this very significant price increase,
01:05 even before they announced a couple of days ago that they were going to put about 1.3 billion into a new reactor at size World Sea.
01:12 Now, this new reactor is about... is the same reactor, the same EPR reactor, the same corporation, EDF Corporation,
01:22 and they're expecting it to go well, which has significant implications for UK nuclear policy.
01:27 In other words, where is UK energy policy?
01:31 Well, so we have the size World Sea reactor, we have Hinkley Point, the UK obviously trying to invest in nuclear power.
01:38 Globally, we have other countries adding reactors, China, for example, India.
01:42 Are we at a point where nuclear power is now back in favour?
01:47 Well, if you look at... there's a big nuclear push, PR push on at the moment.
01:50 But if you actually look at the numbers, the figures, the facts,
01:53 last year, 96% of all new power capacity generation worldwide, new power capacity generation worldwide, was renewables with nuclear nowhere.
02:05 The recent International Energy Agency report states that renewables are set to displace coal as the top source of electricity by 2025.
02:18 So there's a very strong difference between nuclear public relations and the reality on the ground.
02:27 You talked about that PR push that nuclear was doing.
02:31 We are seeing different rates of growth in different parts of the world.
02:33 Do you think that nuclear power still has something of an image problem?
02:38 You think of Chernobyl, what happened in Fukushima?
02:42 I suppose that's kind of in the past. What we're really looking about is the economies of nuclear.
02:47 I mean, America just finished a very good summer nuclear power plant, again, hugely over cost and hugely over time.
02:56 With the Americans saying this may well be the last large nuclear power plant they ever will build.
03:01 The IPCC, the International Panel on Climate Change, in the most recent report,
03:06 states that renewables are 10 times better than nuclear at CO2 mitigation.
03:11 The problem with nuclear is essentially it's very slow to put down and very costly.
03:18 The UK government states that it takes up to 17 years to build just one nuclear power plant.
03:23 Now, in terms of the energy crisis and more importantly, the climate crisis, we may not have time for new nuclear.