The NAO overall savings for households from the plant could be outstripped by the cost of supporting its construction until almost halfway through its 60-year operational life. Photograph: Chris Radburn/Reuters
National Audit Office says potential benefits are ‘considerable but uncertain’ while risks are ‘immediate and substantial’
The cost of the government’s £38bn nuclear plant in Suffolk is subject to “significant uncertainty” and may outweigh the benefits for UK households until at least 2064, according to the government’s spending watchdog.
The National Audit Office (NAO) has warned that although the potential benefits of the Sizewell C nuclear plant are considerable, they remain uncertain. The risks, however, are “immediate, substantial and borne by the public”.
The government claims the nuclear reactor, expected to generate the equivalent of enough low-carbon electricity to power 6m homes when it begins operations in the late 2030s, could save £2bn a year from the electricity system compared with using other low-carbon technologies.
However, for households the overall savings could be outstripped by the cost of supporting its construction until almost halfway through its 60-year operational life. The project could take even longer to “break even” if there are cost overruns or delays, the NAO warned.
“Sizewell C is a project of exceptional scale, complexity and significance for taxpayers,” said Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the chair of the public accounts committee, which oversees the work of the NAO. “Experience from comparable nuclear projects in the UK and overseas highlights their vulnerability to delays and cost overruns.”
…
Stop Sizewell C said the risks surrounding the project “could easily turn Sizewell C into a financial disaster” while the funding model meant its investors were “the only ones who can’t lose”.
The NAO has urged the government to mitigate the risk by using “close monitoring, greater transparency to parliament, and by securing value for money from the significant public and private investment”.
A government spokesperson said investing in large-scale nuclear power was the “only way to get our country off the rollercoaster of volatile global gas markets”.
What about big renewable then e.g. generation from tides? We reliably have huge tides.
US President Donald Trump signs an executive order related to nuclear power in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on May 23, 2025. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
“In its eagerness to short-circuit reactor safeguards, the Trump administration is once again doing what it does best—demonstrating a complete disregard for the law,” said the head of Beyond Nuclear.
A coalition of advocacy groups on Monday took aim at President Donald Trump’s nuclear power plans, including a recently proposed rule that would allow developers using federally approved reactor designs to bypass required safety reviews, which the organizations called “ill-advised and contrary to law.”
“In its eagerness to short-circuit reactor safeguards, the Trump administration is once again doing what it does best—demonstrating a complete disregard for the law,” said Linda Pentz Gunter, executive director of Beyond Nuclear, in a statement.
“But nuclear technology is too inherently dangerous to operate as an outlaw,” she stressed. “Ignoring those dangers will put millions of Americans at risk of another catastrophic nuclear accident.”
Beyond Nuclear and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) have submitted multiple formal comments to the administration, on behalf of overlapping coalitions, blasting its ongoing nuclear policymaking, which has been guided by a series of executive orders signed by the president last May.
The first coalition comments focus on the US Department of Energy allowing firms that build experimental nuclear reactors to seek exemptions from legally required environmental reviews. That filing was submitted in early March, a month after DOE announced the “categorical exclusion for authorization, siting, construction, operation, reauthorization, and decommissioning of advanced nuclear reactors for inclusion in its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) implementing procedures.”
Then, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last month unveiled a proposed rule to expedite NRC reviews of commercial nuclear power plant applications involving reactor designs already approved by DOE or the Department of Defense (DOD)—which Trump has dubbed the Department of War. That prompted more comments from Beyond Nuclear, NIRS, and allied groups last week.
“Along with the DOE’s environmental ‘free pass’ policy, the whole ‘expedited licensing’ regime the administration is attempting to set up appears to be illegal,” NIRS executive director Tim Judson, who co-authored the recent comments to the NRC, said Monday.
“The White House is trying to create a ‘regulatory tunnel’ around NRC’s safety regulations,” he warned. “That would mean DOE’s biases and obviously false assumptions about the safety of nuclear power plants become the new normal, exposing the public to unacceptable dangers to our health and safety.”
“And while the law allows the DOD to build its own nuclear reactors,” Judson added, “it does not allow the NRC to skip safety reviews for civilian nuclear plants just because they use the same designs. The military routinely exposes its personnel to dangers that civilians are supposed to be protected from.”
The coalition’s latest filing details how the administration’s actions are “inconsistent” with the Administrative Procedure Act, Atomic Energy Act, Energy Reorganization Act, and NEPA, “as well as the constitutional requirement for due process in a democratic society.” It also emphasizes that nothing in Trump’s orders “can excuse” the alleged legal violations.
“Fifty years ago, the Atomic Energy Commission was abolished because they became too much of a promoter and lost the confidence of Congress and the public over safety,” Paul Gunter, director of the reactor oversight project at Beyond Nuclear, explained Monday.
“The NRC was established to provide a regulator that prioritizes safety and is obligated not to take shortcuts for a production agenda,” he continued. “Instead, half a century later, we are on the same dangerous collision course, casting aside the NRC in favor of the DOE, which doesn’t have the experience or the staff to get the industry in line with safety and security. This capitulation to the Trump agenda could lead to the NRC being abolished altogether, because nobody will have confidence in them.”
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Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Tehran, Iran on November 30, 2025. [Ahmet Serdar Eser – Anadolu Agency]
The Iranian foreign minister said Saturday that “radioactive fallout will end life in GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) capitals, not Tehran,” following the US-Israeli airstrikes that hit Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant, Anadolu reports.
“Remember the Western outrage about hostilities near Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine?
“Israel-U.S. have bombed our Bushehr plant four times now. Radioactive fallout will end life in GCC capitals, not Tehran,” Abbas Araghchi said through US social media company X.
Attacks on Iranian petrochemical facilities also reveal “real objectives,” Araghchi argued.
Earlier in the day, US and Israeli strikes hit Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant, killing one person.
The attack came as regional tensions have escalated since the US and Israel launched a joint offensive on Iran on Feb. 28, killing over 1,340 people to date, including then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Tehran has retaliated with drone and missile strikes targeting Israel, as well as Jordan, Iraq, and Gulf countries hosting US military assets.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Straight of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/
A view of a civilian vehicle caught fire as people gather around it after the Israeli army, violating the ceasefire, targeted it on Salah al-Din Street in central Gaza Strip, Palestine, on April 04, 2026. [Screengrab – Anadolu Agency]
Around 20 boats preparing to join the Global Sumud Flotilla’s “Spring Mission 2026” are set to depart from the southern port city of Marseille, France, as part of an initiative aimed at delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza and challenging the ongoing Israeli policy, with vessels readied for weeks at L’Estaque Port by the France Campaign coalition, including the Thousand Madleens to Gaza movement and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, on April 03, 2026. [Esra Taşkın – Anadolu Agency]
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The groundbreaking ceremony of Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, held in Bushehr, Iran on November 10, 2019 [Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency]
Russia started a large wave of evacuation on Saturday from Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant following US-Israeli attacks that killed one of the plant’s security personnel, Russian media reported.
Citing Alexey Likhachev, the head of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom, state news agency Tass said 198 employees are expected to return to Russia within two or three days. Russia helped build the plant and, as of last year, had some 700 personnel working there.
Likhachev underlined that developments around the plant are unfolding according to an “undesirable scenario.”
“As they say, our bad premonitions were not wrong. Overall, the escalation of the conflict around the Persian Gulf is leading to corresponding consequences near the plant,” he said.
One member of the plant’s security personnel was killed when it was hit on Saturday, Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency reported.
The outlet said that one of the plant’s auxiliary buildings was damaged by the blast and shrapnel.
The region has been on alert since the US and Israel launched a joint offensive on Iran on Feb. 28, killing more than 1,340 people to date, including then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Tehran has retaliated with drone and missile strikes targeting Israel, as well as Jordan, Iraq, and Gulf countries hosting US military assets.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Straight of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/
A view of a civilian vehicle caught fire as people gather around it after the Israeli army, violating the ceasefire, targeted it on Salah al-Din Street in central Gaza Strip, Palestine, on April 04, 2026. [Screengrab – Anadolu Agency]
Around 20 boats preparing to join the Global Sumud Flotilla’s “Spring Mission 2026” are set to depart from the southern port city of Marseille, France, as part of an initiative aimed at delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza and challenging the ongoing Israeli policy, with vessels readied for weeks at L’Estaque Port by the France Campaign coalition, including the Thousand Madleens to Gaza movement and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, on April 03, 2026. [Esra Taşkın – Anadolu Agency]
