Hinkley Point C: Chinese nuclear plant fault may delay UK power plan
By Paul Homewood
Key safety components in the UK’s first new nuclear power station for 30 years may need to be redesigned and the project could be delayed after defects were detected at a similar reactor in China.
The £22 billion Hinkley Point C plant in Somerset is already well over budget and a decade late but the defects mean that the scheduled date for starting electricity generation, of June 2026, may have to be revised.
The same power plant design is due to be used for another nuclear power station, Sizewell C in Suffolk, which is planned but has not yet been approved.
An investigation is still under way into the cause of the problems with the plant in Taishan, in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. It was shut down in August after reports of damage to fuel rods, which hold nuclear materials used to fuel the reactor.
The plant is operated by China General Nuclear Power Group and owned in partnership with the French state-controlled EDF, the two companies involved in building Hinkley Point C.
The Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity, a French association created in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, said that a whistleblower had reported that a design flaw in the reactor pressure vessel could be the cause of the problem at Taishan.
An industry source told The Times that the investigation was likely to show that the pressure vessel was “demonstrably safe” but it might also show that design changes were needed.
Paul Dorfman, a nuclear expert at the University of Sussex, said: “If the news we are hearing from the Taishan EPR [European pressurised reactor] is right, then it’s beginning to look like there’s a potential generic fault with the key safety mechanism of the EPR reactor design itself.
“If so, this is serious news for ongoing construction at Hinkley Point C and plans for Sizewell C.
“There’s a couple of ‘ifs’ there, but the thing with nuclear is the very limited scope for safety error. We’ve learnt, to our cost, if something goes wrong, picking up the pieces is costly in economic, environmental and human terms.”
A spokesman for EDF’s UK division said: “Inspection work on reactor one at Taishan is still under way. The cause of the issue with a number of fuel rods will not be known until the end of these studies and the findings will benefit future reactor operations, including those in Britain.
“Fuel performance issues are not unusual in nuclear operation and this issue does not pose a risk to people or the environment.”
The spokesman declined to comment when asked if the issues at Taishan might delay the start-up of Hinkley Point C.
If it is built by 2026, Hinkley Point C would be completed 31 years after Sizewell B became operational.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
A whistleblower got this into public domain.. Hmmm we still trust China with building nuclear capacity for OUR country tho of course. More questions need to be raised on safety linked to transparency!!
Our Government seem to be blind to the Chinese global influence, soft colonisation, debt traps, wuhan, etc. The UK should be reversing out of any dealings with this corrupt totalitarian regime. Once leaders in technology the UK seems to now be leaders in economic suicide and power deprivation. The only bright spot at the moment for the economy is not being attached to the euro, that will soon be the next European meltdown, Brussels cannot keep its head in the sand for much longer. Johnson is right about the opportunities out there, but seems clueless as to take them.
Our Government seem to be blind to the Chinese global influence, soft colonisation, debt traps, wuhan, etc. The UK should be reversing out of any dealings with this corrupt totalitarian regime. Once leaders in technology the UK seems to now be leaders in economic suicide and power deprivation. The only bright spot at the moment for the economy is not being attached to the euro, that will soon be the next European meltdown, Brussels cannot keep its head in the sand for much longer. Johnson is right about the opportunities out there, but seems clueless as to take them.
There seem to be two (un)related problems – the pressure vessel and the fuel rods. It is not obvious how one affects the other. We know that manufacturing the pressure vessels is not easy, but they ought to have got it down to a fine art by now.
As far as I’m aware, the EDF design being used for Hinkley C has not been made to operate successfully anywhere as yet.
That was my thought as well.
With RR ready to start on (relatively) cheap, (relatively) quick small-scale units why are we still insisting on buying these over-priced, over-engineered, foreign behemoths?
Not that I’m opposed to foreign goods (though I would prefer a pact with the devil to one with the Chinese) but when we have the technology and the expertise why do we insist on not making use of it?
We are, allegedly, the fifth, sixth, or seventh wealthiest nation on earth depending on which way the wind is blowing at any given moment, but somehow we can’t manage to build our own Nuclear power stations.
We are persistently sold by politicians that we are one of the most technologically able country’s in the world, and we’re relying on 14th century windmills for electricity.
Sometimes I really can’t blame the radical leftists for wanting to topple our current system of governance. It is morally and intellectually moribund, run by an egotistical fantasist and his Cabinet of yes men. Not that it’s been any better since Thatcher; Major, Blair, Broon, Cameron and May, all dismal failures who abandon the country with their pockets stuffed full.
Second jobs??? Most of them shouldn’t be paid for the job they barely accomplish as MP’s. Why are they all not on performance related salaries? Mind you, that would just be fiddled to have them walking off with huge gold plated severance packages.
These imbeciles must be held accountable for their performance and decisions in government, nor do I mean at the ballot box, which is the feeblest of consequences imaginable.
I couldn’t agree more. We need a crash national programme to develop our nuclear industry. The half-hearted government support of the Rolls Royce SMR programme is lamentable.
BEIS is stuck in the mindset of Generation 2 reactors while the rest of the world is developing Generation 4 or 5.
I don’t think the adjective ‘crash’ is appropriate in this context. 🙂
If you remember, the anti-nuclear lobby has been influential for many years. I remember the communist influence in Italy, I think in the ’60s, that stopped nuclear development there. It was why it dawned on me then that, for some Engineering projects, the Science and Economics was a small part of the equation. And there was always the link to the Nuclear Deterrent that could be deployed. COP26 didn’t allow the nuclear industry to feature because it wasn’t green enough, and now it’s supposedly flavour of the month.
I have seen reports, from years ago, describing the Nuclear Industry as having to defend every safety issue raised by the opposition, valid or not, to an ignorant audience (somewhat like we do about the Climate Emergency), on an ad-hoc basis and never getting the chance to introduce the latest ideas into production, with the necessary prototyping. It was always adding an extra safety module to the existing system, somewhat like a ‘very established titled family’ adding to their country pile, over several centuries! It creates an interesting result, but not what is needed.
And we need results ASAP, especially as our Wind isn’t as plentiful as the Greens thought.
I recommend The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear, by Petr Beckmann. Fred Hoyle & son also produced an exemplary analysis
I’m not against MPs having a second salary if it has nothing to do with their parliamentary positions, but I have an increasing worry that the direction of the country’s economy, health and welfare are far more directed by crooked MPs than we realise. And with the shocking Ed Davey revelations we need a tooth and branch investigation into the private incomes of every MP., and those found guilty of lining their pockets when giving huge contracts to companies should be kicked out of parliament, prosecuted and sent to prison.
They should not be judged by their colleagues, but by an outside body.
“And we need results ASAP, especially as our Wind isn’t as plentiful as the Greens thought.”
Agreed. A new fleet of NOAK coal fired power stations does the job for me.
Looter parties have influenced policy through spoiler vote leverage since the 1870s. Libertarian parties have been directly reversing the trend, but for 50 years–only a third as long. Spoiler votes are cumulative and leveraged–like product replacement logistics curves– and libertarian parties are not anti-energy.
Oil translator,
if CO2 reduction is the target, and it seems impossible to stop that particular snowball despite evidence to the contrary.
Nuclear is the only way to do that and maintain power security, especially as our unthinking government is intent on loading the grid with evs and heat pumps.
It is historically the safest form of electrical generation.
A good read on nuclear vs other power sources, also exposing the faux “green” movement & its Nazi & Malthusian roots is nuclear PhD engineer Robert Zubrin’s Merchants Of Despair.
It should be pointed out that Paul Dorfman is a UK academic who is opposed to nuclear technology. He appears in a list of sixteen “academics and consultants” in the Wikipedia article on “Anti-nuclear movement in the United Kingdom”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_the_United_Kingdom
Way OT, but the tendency for Autumns to be especially warm in recent years continues, 2021 was the 6th highest in the entire mean CET.
No wonder some of my apple trees are still in full leaf and have set fruit from Autumn blossom. Crazy!
But 1729/30/31 are all in the top 10 too – so it’s unusual but not totally out of bounds.
Off this topic, but about climate policy impacting food supply:
I recall we had a functioning nuclear industry in the UK until Mr Blair and his cohorts came to power in 1997.
So, why aren’t we reviving that expertise, why are we depending on foreigners?
I worked for BNFL in the 80s. Our expertise in power generation was largely sold off to Westinghouse. A lot of AEA guys went abroad and would be coming up for retirement anyway. We’d need to start again I think
John,
It’s an excellent question to ask, but it is my understanding that we will struggle to find enough nuclear engineers to run a nuclear power station let alone build one.
Once you lose an expertise, and it is half a working lifetime now, it is very hard to pick up again. We are quite good at de-commissioning though.
Amid great publicity Bridgwater & Taunton College have started offering vocational nuclear courses up to degree level, particular emphasis on personnel requirements for Hinkley. Several questions arise such as do we have enough qualified people to do the training, and what will the graduates be doing in the decade before Hinkley starts up?
I think Gordon Brown sold it to the Japanese.
Excellent point ! When political clowns are in power, only the worst can occur:
* In your opinion, Blair was one (not beeing british, I can’t have opinion) for 1997
* Jospin in France did destroy France’s huge capability in ’98 and 2002:
Political closure of the 1200 Mw fast reactor (just debugged); Knowledge disappeared only to reappear in Russia, operating 600Mw and 800Mw only fast reactors in operation
Political disbanding of french nuclear industry managerial / technical team, that one having straightforward built 64 reactors in 20 years and having started 8 of them in one single year 1981.
Present Okiluoto and Flamanville resounding fiascos are the logical outcomes.
I am sorry to think that the West is so much under MSM direct brain control that never the nuclear industry will recover: we are mentally set to bear the miseries of renewables, coal and gas dictatorship for one century.
It is surely evident that we should not be building an EPR at Sizewell. We need off the shelf, proven technology that can be built rapidly and reliably and much more cheaply, and we need to tell the ONR it should accept certification by other competent authorities, and concern itself with ensuring that procedures and manuals are properly translated to English if that is needed. We probably need to start with a programme of at least 5-8GW, particularly given the risk that Hinckley Point becomes an inoperable white elephant. Building several to the same design will help lower the cost.
Then we can pursue SMRs in the 2030s to fill in more capacity.
I don’t know how that c got in there. Hinkley, not somewhere in Leicestershire.
Are SMR’s the “off the shelf, proven technology that can be built rapidly and reliably” ?
Not with the British regulator in charge.
The Abu Dhabians are halfway through commissioning a 4X1600MW nuclear power plant built by the Koreans. It is running only about 2 years late.
If memory serves, those plants are costing about 50 – 60% of Hinkley, per MW installed?