Wylfa Newydd: Hitachi to halt work on UK nuclear plant

Hitachi has announced it will suspend work on a £20bn nuclear plant in the UK because of rising construction costs.

The decision puts thousands of jobs at risk if the Wylfa Newydd facility in Anglesey, north Wales, is scrapped.

The Japanese firm had been in talks with the UK government since June about funding for the project, which was being built by its Horizon subsidiary.

The government said it had failed to agree terms with Hitachi. The nuclear industry said it was “disappointing”.

About 9,000 workers had been expected to be involved in building two nuclear reactors, which were due to be operational by the mid-2020s.

Hitachi said the decision would cost it an estimated 300bn yen (£2.1bn) in expenses, plus another 300bn yen as “extraordinary losses”.

It said it was suspending the project “from the viewpoint of its economic rationality as a private enterprise”.

Policy questions

Duncan Hawthorne, chief executive of Hitachi’s Horizon subsidiary, said the Anglesey site remained “the best site for nuclear development in the UK” and that the company would “keep the option to resume development in future”.

• What’s Wylfa and why is it important?

The new nuclear plant had been intended to have a generating capacity of 2,900 MW and have a 60-year operational life.

The decision puts the UK’s nuclear policy under fresh scrutiny.

In November, plans to build a nuclear power station at Moorside in Cumbria were halted after Toshiba announced it was winding up its NuGeneration subsidiary, which was behind the project.

A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said: “As the Business Secretary [Greg Clark] set out in June, any deal needs to represent value for money and be the right one for UK consumers and taxpayers.

“Despite extensive negotiations and hard work by all sides, the government and Hitachi are unable to reach agreement to proceed at this stage.”

The department added that the land was owned by Hitachi, which had indicated it wished to retain ownership while it discussed future options with the government.

Shadow business secretary Rebecca Long Bailey said the government’s nuclear strategy was now “lying in tatters” and had “escalated into a full-blown crisis”.

‘Disappointing’ move

The news was greeted with dismay by the Nuclear Industry Association.

Tom Greatrex, chief executive of the association, said it was “disappointing, not just for the Wylfa Newydd project but for Anglesey and the nuclear industry as a whole”.

“The urgent need for further new nuclear capacity in the UK should not be underestimated, with all but one of the UK’s nuclear power plant due to come offline by 2030.”

Justin Bowden, the GMB union’s national secretary for energy, said the decision raised “the very real prospect of a UK energy crisis”.

“While the government has had its head up its proverbial backside over Brexit, vital matters like guaranteeing the country’s future energy supply appear to have gone by the wayside.”

If the Wylfa Newydd project is scrapped, it leaves the Hinkley Point power station in Somerset as the only new UK reactor still being built.

The British and Japanese prime ministers met earlier this month, but did not discuss the Wylfa Newydd nuclear power plant.

“We have been working with them, but it will be a commercial decision for the company,” Prime Minister Theresa May said at the time.