Energy Market Analysis
Are Nuclear Power Projects Finishing Faster Than in the 1970s and '80s?
New book says much-delayed projects in England, France are outliers in a rapidly advancing global sector
The twin nuclear power station at Hinkley Point C in the UK has taken delivery of its second nuclear reactor. The first arrived in 2023 and is already installed and welded in place on Unit 1 of the power station.
Nuclear power construction projects in England and France, years late and billions over budget, reached milestones in recent weeks. In January, a project in Somerset, U.K., took delivery of its second reactor. In December the other project, in Normandy, France, powered up fully for the first time.
Instead of being examples of a bad trend, a prominent British supporter of atomic energy says those projects are outliers and nuclear power developers and contractors are building new power plants faster than in the 1970s and 1980s.
"We're actually faster now," writes Tim Gregory, a nuclear chemist and author of "Going Nuclear: How Atomic Energy Will Change the World" (Pegasus Books, 2025).
The French state-controlled utility, Electricité de France (EdF), is developing both the English and French projects as European pressurized water-type power plants.
The completion of the U.K. project, Hinkley Point C, will likely stretch from an estimated seven years to 12 to complete, Gregory writes.
The first reactor arrived in 2023 and is already installed and welded in place, EdF reported. Work is proceeding faster on this later phase of work due to experience with the first reactor, the company wrote.
In Feb. 2024, following recent news of additional delays and cost hikes on the 3,260-MW power plant, EdF forecast completion to between 2029 and 2031, with costs rising to a range of $39 to $43 billion. The previous completion target set in May 2022 was June 2027.
At the Normandy project, EdF announced that it had reached full power in a test before operation of its EPR reactor, called Flamanville-3.
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The ramp-up followed the approval by the French nuclear safety and radiation protection authority to go beyond the 80% power threshold, EdF stated. The plant was scheduled to be connected to the grid Dec. 30, EdF told NucNet.
Gregory notes in his book that the project will be finished at a cost many times what was first estimated in 2004.
Nuclear power's role as a carbon-free source of energy is likely to grow, he writes, but cost and schedule woes have plagued many recent projects.
Hinkley Point C and Flamanville-3, argues Gregory, are not indicative of a broader trend.
Citing an International Atomic Energy Agency report from 2024, Gregory writes that Europe in those decades built nuclear power plants at a median time of 7 years and 2 months. France actually built numerous nuclear power plants slightly faster because it had picked a standardized pressurized water reactor design and built it over and over.
Slower Post-Chernobyl Build Times a Localized Issue
Following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, Europe's median build time reached 13 years as the continent "forgot how to build quickly," Gregory writes.
But China, he says, has built 51 nuclear reactors since 1990, with a median build time of under six years. South Korea, too, has built 27 nuclear reactors since the 1970s. Although that country's three newest reactors took more than eight years to build, South Korea built 27 nuclear reactors since the 1970s in a "decade-on-decade" build time of under six years, says Gregory.
Cutting construction time will lead to savings, Gregory states. "Delays to nuclear power stations are bureaucratic and managerial," he writes, and "it's not beyond our wit to make them cheaper by building them faster."
While nuclear reactors are built on time and budget in some parts of the world, says Gregory, "We need the motivation to do it again in Europe and the USA."
