IEEE Spectrum January, 2014 - 22

nEwS

british and french swap
nuclear enerGy postures
the u.k. builds while france scales back
Nations that are considering
nuclear energy must grapple
with its high capital costs and
Fukushima-scale risk. An
energy- policy riptide along the English
Channel shows how unpredictable the calculations can be: Both France and the United
Kingdom have scrapped fundamental planks
in their energy policies, with one ramping
up and the other dialing down.
In the U.K., where Margaret Thatcher set
off a global movement by deregulating the
power industry, the current prime minister is offering subsidies to attract financing
for new nuclear reactors. Across the water,
France, which staked its economic future
on nuclear power a generation ago, is now
planning that technology's decline. These
policy shifts have been in the works since
2012, but they are coming to a head as both
governments put the finishing touches on
sweeping energy-reform legislation.
A coalition composed of Socialists and the
staunchly antinuclear Greens vows to scale
back France's reliance on nuclear power
from more than three-quarters of electricity at present to roughly one-half by 2025,
delivering on a 2012 election promise made
by President François Hollande. Legislation
to be introduced early in 2014 could include
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jan 2014

nORTh aMERICan

a new nuclear electricity tax, which would
help subsidize an accelerated transition toward renewables. A third-generation reactor under construction in Normandy since
2007 could be the country's last.
The British government plans to sustain
or even enhance nuclear's role, which was
19 percent of generation in 2012, by proffering
taxpayer dollars. Its plan is to inspire construction of a new generation of reactors-enough
to provide up to 16 gigawatts of new generation
by 2025-by guaranteeing a base price for the
electricity. If market pricing falls below that
threshold, a government-backed "contract
for difference" would make up the shortfall.
There is another layer of irony in the crossChannel nuclear-policy split: France, which
plans to tax nuclear generation, is pushing
the U.K. to subsidize it. State-owned utility
Électricité de France (EDF) wants to build two
1600-megawatt reactors at Hinkley Point on
England's southwest coast, where two 1970sera reactors could shut down as early as 2023.
But EDF insists that without the contract-fordifference guarantee, U.K. power prices, as
well as carbon credits that the plant would
earn, are too low and uncertain to justify the
£16 billion (US $26 billion) investment.
In October, British prime minister David
Cameron's government clinched a deal to

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guarantee EDF approximately £93 ($150) per
every megawatt-hour generated at Hinkley
Point. That is more than double the average
price paid to U.K. generators in 2012, and more
than 50 percent higher than the projected
price of offshore wind power in 2020, according to the London-based market analyst ICIS.
In the U.K., subsidies for nuclear energy
are politically unpopular, but building new
nuclear power plants generally garners broad
support. New plants would help meet ambitious greenhouse-gas reduction goals that
call for a near decarbonization of the electricity system by 2030. The U.K. has made
no headway toward capturing carbon dioxide emissions from its fossil-fuel-fired power
plants, and offshore wind farms are growing
too slowly to help. If aging nuclear plants such
as those at Hinkley Point are not renewed,
the task becomes that much harder. "What's
needed is reliable base-load zero-carbon energy," says Bryony Worthington, shadow minister for energy and climate change in the House
of Lords for the opposition Labour Party.
The U.K. government must apply to the
European Commission for an exemption to
allow its contract-for-difference policy, because European open-market rules limit state
aid only to renewable generators. That will be
a long road, says Dörte Fouquet, who heads
the Brussels office of German law firm Becker
Buettner Held and represents the European
Renewable Energies Federation. The U.K. will
have to show that the subsidy does not have
anticompetitive effects. In Finland, for instance, new nuclear generation has saturated
the power market and dramatically slowed investment in renewable energy. "This is a huge
amount of megawatts being put into a market.
If you massively support nuclear, renewables
don't have a chance," says Fouquet.
Fouquet predicts that legal challenges
against the U.K. subsidy from competing
generators will take years to resolve, denying investors such as EDF the certainty
they need to start building. So in the end,
the British and French may go their separate ways on nuclear policy, but their reliance on nuclear power may yet fade away
in harmony. -peter fa ir ley

charLy triBaLLeau/aFp/getty images

the enD: This nuclear reactor, under construction
in northwest France, could be the country's last.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum January, 2014