Britain’s MPs are not paid to be polite. So it must have been with some restraint that the members of the environmental audit committee described the government’s nuclear strategy this week as “lacking clarity”, not least over small modular reactors.
Lacking clarity? You can think of better ways to describe the financially radioactive shambles, complete with Rishi Sunak’s fantasy “road map”. He’s glibly promising 24 gigawatts of capacity by 2050 — either another seven Hinkley Point Cs or a mix of them and SMRs.
Surely he’s spotted what’s going on with that Somerset nuke? Costs up from £18 billion to as much £35 billion in 2015 prices, or £46 billion in today’s money, with its start-up likely to be delayed six years to 2031. Maybe
