Nuclear adviser warns against betting on single reactor technology

The UK must not rely on just one type of reactor to power the next generation of its GW-scale nuclear fleet, the government’s nuclear advisor has warned.

Simon Bowen, who was appointed last year by ex-prime minister Boris Johnson to lead the development of the government’s new Great British Nuclear (GBN) agency, was quizzed by the House of Commons science and technology committee on whether the UK should have a diverse range of reactor technologies in future major plants.

EDF has argued that it will be less costly to build new nuclear plants by repeating the use of the EPR reactors being used at its Hinkley Point C plant, which is currently being built in Somerset.

Giving evidence to the committee’s ongoing inquiry into nuclear power, Bowen said there are “cases for both” diversity and consistency in reactor technologies.

Pointing to the outages France’s nuclear fleet has encountered during recent months due to technical problems, he said having a variety of reactors “makes sense” in terms of grid resilience.

“It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t build more EPRs but we need to cast the net wider,” he said, adding that the UK must look again at rolling out more of the “very successful” pressurised water reactors used at 1990s plant Sizewell B.

Bowen also told the committee that in order to meet the government’s target of 24GW of nuclear generation by 2050, it would be “sensible” to build at least another two multi-GW scale plants beyond the next planned project at Sizewell.

The balance of the government’s target could be met from a mix of small and advanced modular reactors, he said.

Bowen, who is former chief executive of nuclear at engineer Babcock, told the committee that he has received “no feedback” personally from current prime minister Rishi Sunak about the yet to be published report on GBN, which he has submitted to government but business secretary Grant Shapps “fully supports” its recommendations.

More broadly, an “over arching strategy” for energy is currently “missing”, including the quantity of nuclear energy that the UK will require, he said: “Energy security is a national imperative.  We need to invest early, we need a plan saying what technologies are needed, when and where. Once we’ve got that, we can build a programme.”

Bowen said that in its early stages, GBN would need to make a “substantial amount” of government  investment but this could be recouped from the private sector once projects were up and running.

He also said that it would be “very helpful” to have a single government minister with authority over the full spectrum of nuclear activities, including environmental consents, and that GBN would require a maximum of100 staff.

Appearing later in front of the committee, energy minister Graham Stuart said that an announcement on the set up of GBN will be made “early this year”.

He also told the MPs that a new nuclear national policy statement will be in place by 2026.