Ministers could have ‘salvaged’ Moorside nuclear project

The government could have stopped Toshiba from pulling the plug on its plans for a new nuclear plant in Cumbria if it had offered similar support to that proposed for other projects, according to one of the area’s local MPs.

John Woodcock, whose constituents in the area backed the aborted Moorside project, told the House of Commons last night (13 November) the people of Cumbria had been “thrown under a bus” by ministers.

Last week, Toshiba’s board decided to close down NuGen, its UK nuclear arm which was set up in 2010 to deliver a 3.4GW nuclear power station at Moorside.

Woodcock, who secured an emergency Commons debate on Toshiba’s decision, said: “It is not good enough for the government to hide behind the idea that this is simply a commercial decision, because [Greg Clark] knows that if the government had offered terms to NuGen, to Kepco, to Toshiba that were on a par with those that they have offered on other sites in the country, this deal could have been salvaged.”

Business and energy secretary Greg Clark said that he had been told by Toshiba’s board that the decision had been a “commercial one” when they met in Japan last week.

He said: “It wants to concentrate on its activities away from international nuclear. The announcement is a consequence of that.”

“The decision is ultimately a matter for Toshiba and we fully understand the challenging circumstances that that company has faced over the past 18 months.”

Clark said the ownership of the Moorside site, which sits to the north of the redundant nuclear plant at Sellafield, will revert back to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

He added that despite the cancellation of Toshiba’s plans the government is “fully committed to new nuclear being part of a diverse supply of energy” and the UK has a “substantial pipeline” of new nuclear and other clean power projects.

Former energy and climate change secretary Ed Davey called on Clark to reverse his decision earlier this year not to support plans for a tidal lagoon plant in Swansea Bay.

“It can provide the firm reliable power that new nuclear offers and be built much more quickly than a new nuclear power station,” he remarked.

“There were plenty of such setbacks and delays to new nuclear, and they really worried me. I was worried about how we would keep the lights on in the 2020s and 2030s, given that the forecasts were reliant on so much new nuclear, so I looked at contingencies, particularly tidal lagoon power.”

Responding, Clark dismissed the project as unaffordable. He said: “The Swansea tidal lagoon proposal was so far out of being able to be financed that it was not value for money for either the taxpayer or bill payers.”