£2 billion a year on old electricity

Chris Huhne gave a major speech on nuclear power today which contained one quite amazing line.

Britain spends £2 billion A YEAR on nuclear electricity consumed in the fifties, sixties and seventies because decomissioning estimates were dramatically wrong.

They rocketed from an estimated £2 million in 1970 to £9.5 billion in 1990 and now stand at £53.7 billion, the Energy Secretary said, attacking the UK's historical nuclear strategy as “the most expensive failure of post-war policy-making”.

Huhne was famously anti-nuclear during his time in opposition but has become a convert in Government. Today he repeated his qualified support - that it needs to be part of the energy mix but with no public subsidy - and said of the past mistakes: “This will never happen again."

Craig Woodhouse
Follow me on Twitter @craigawoodhouse