Are the UK’s nuclear energy plans realistic?

The Labour Government has stated that “More than ever before, nuclear power has a key role to play as part of the UK’s energy mix.” It intends to build a new series of nuclear power stations at sites around the UK, including Sizewell C. However, you may be surprised to hear that these statements date from 2008. Projects started at six sites. Hinkley Point C (HPC) was to be ready by Christmas 2017 and the others by 2030. Sadly, only Hinkley remains and its first electricity will not be generated before 2030.

The twin challenges of Fukushima and the Covid pandemic clearly contributed to this failure to deliver, but that doesn’t explain the 69 reactor builds globally that commenced after 2008 and have started to generate electricity -- 67 of these are in the East. Two are EPR reactors, the same design as HPC. Once again Sizewell C has been given the green light by the government. It is expected to take around 10 years to build, which is similar to the world’s best performance for an operational EPR (China) and significantly better than the European EPRs (around 17 years). Is this realistic?

Agility hampered by slow decision making

Research by MIGSO-PCUBED and UCL has shown that the recent decline in major project performance in the UK is linked to the increased complexity of these projects. The main source of this complexity is sociopolitical. Modern UK megaprojects are delivered with more regulations, more stakeholders, more foreign involvement and more societal concerns. However, the delivery approach being used was developed in the 1950s. This complexity leads to four issues not dealt with effectively in modern projects:

Decision-making is slowed down by increased complexity.
Monolithic designs inhibit agile delivery techniques.
Siloed IT solutions reduce productivity gains.
The approach to collaboration is too adversarial.

If Sizewell is to deliver global best-in-class performance it will need to address these issues. Importantly, they have put significant effort into learning the lessons from Hinkley. The government, too, recognises that Sizewell must be different and new funding models and planning rules are being introduced. However, the internal project complexity remains and this will significantly slow down decision making.

The EPR design is “monolithic” and the opportunity for modularisation is limited, especially when compared to SMRs, which are designed with modularity in mind. The opportunity to adopt agile processes is therefore limited but wherever possible this needs to be incorporated in the project management approach. It’s certain there will be further design issues and agility will be key to dealing with technical challenges.

The potential of digital tools won’t be realised

Sizewell intends to use the latest digital tools, such as digital twins, workflow solutions and enterprise tools. However, there is little connectivity between these tools and this will limit the potential productivity gains available. For example, the use of 5D BIM is a significant step forward, but the time and cost data in the 5D model is not connected to the project scheduling tools. Finally, the research shows that relationship failure is a critical risk for major projects and is often paid the least attention (in the UK anyway). The Sizewell team has put significant emphasis on creating alliance agreements and has included itself as part of the alliance.

However, our research suggests that there are seven “dimensions” to business-to-business relationships and these actions tackle only two of them. Four best practice projects are identified in the research and they deal effectively with most of the dimensions. However, even these best practice projects do not address all seven dimensions and the only UK project we are aware of that is actively measuring its relationships (the seventh dimension) is the UKAEA STEP project.

The Sizewell team has made a significant step forward, adopting many lessons from HPC and international EPR projects. It will likely deliver with greater certainty and confidence. However, the UK is a very difficult place to deliver complex, major projects and as the project develops, they will need to take further steps if they are to deal with this challenging UK environment successfully.