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Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1)
        Martin Freer is the head of nuclear physics at the University of Birmingham and the director of the Birmingham Energy Institute. He said, with respect to the aging nuclear reactor fleet in the U.K., “It is clear they are showing their age. When they were originally built, they weren’t built to operate as long as they will.” He went on to say that the regulation of the nuclear power plants was very tight and there was no danger to the public or the environment, but there was definitely a need to shutter the old plants and build new ones. He also said that he hopes that the aging plants would make to their scheduled permanent closure dates in the 2020s but he was afraid that some would not. “It may just be a run of unfortunate incidents, or it might be a trend of reducing reliability. My suspicion is not all of them will make it through to the end.”
     EDF has said that it believes that its investments in maintenance will allow the plants to continue to operate at capacity for their licensed lifespans. EDF has spent over one hundred and thirty million dollars in the past six years on the issue of graphite cracking. EDF bought the nuclear power plants in 2008 and their output increases until 2016 but is now declining.
       Brian Cowell is the managing director of generation at EDF. He said, “EDF Energy’s seven advanced gas-cooled and one pressurised water nuclear power stations [Sizewell B] are delivering at ever better levels thanks to sustained investment and the expertise accumulated over more than 40 years of operation.”
      Several of the old power plants are currently going through safety reviews by the U.K. Office of Nuclear Regulation. Heysham 1 and Hartlepool both had their periodic safety review in January. Heysham 2 and Torness will have their reviews next January.
       The Japanese nuclear technology firm Hitachi has been working on a nuclear power project for the Welsh island of Anglesy. It has just notified the U.K. government that it will cancel the project unless the U.K. commits new funding to allow the completion of the twenty-six billion dollar project.
       Last November, another Japanese nuclear technology company, Toshiba, abandoned a U.K. nuclear power project in Cunbrai. U.K. utilities have already pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the National Grid to build the transmission lines that would have been needed to distribute the power to be generated by the planned power reactor. U.K. rate payers will be paying for those wasted hundreds of millions of dollars with surcharges on their electrical bill for decades to come.
       One of the main reasons that these projects may be or have been abandoned is that the cost of renewable energy projects has been dropping rapidly. It is now cheaper to build renewable energy projects than nuclear power projects. Greg Clark is the government minister in charge of the U.K. energy board recently told Parliament, “The cost of renewable technologies such as offshore wind has fallen dramatically, to the point where they now require very little public subsidy and will soon require none. We have also seen a strengthening in the pipeline of projects coming forward, meaning that renewable energy may now not just be cheap, but also readily available.”