Hitachi Welsh nuclear failure puts nail in coffin of UK energy strategy

The only wave created by the decision this week of Hitachi to cut its losses and cancel its new nuclear power station at Wylfa on the Welsh island of Anglesey, is one of apathy in nuclear. The decision in reality was taken back in 2019 when the work was paused, while Hitachi entered talks with the UK government on “fresh” funding approaches – mostly tied to getting cash out of electricity customers today, for a facility that would likely take ten years to complete. Now the project is officially dead. This is the pattern of nuclear everywhere, nuclear power stations take ten years to build and can be late by as many as ten years, and significantly over budget. This…