13 things you should know about Starmer's nuclear plan

Keir Starmer is very clear about how he's planning to bulldoze opposition to his new nuclear plan, but he's being deeply deceptive about his motivations, and who the eventual beneficiaries will be

Keir Starmer has announced a new plan to "fire up nuclear power" by restricting people’s rights to object to the construction of experimental new nuclear facilities in their local communities.

He’s very clear on who he wants us to think the bogeymen are, but concerningly reluctant to provide basic details like how much it’s going to cost, and who is going to reap the profits.

Beware the foreign bogeyman

The above statement is a direct quote from Keir Starmer, cited in the government’s press release on this press release about “cutting red tape" and "firing up" nuclear power.

It’s absolutely clear that Starmer is seeking to blame Vlad Putin for the obscene energy price rises we’ve seen in recent years, as if Britain’s a pathetic weakling of a country with no agency of its own.

There’s no acknowledgement of how privatised energy companies have been raking in utterly obscene profits by hiking energy bills way out of proportion to rises in actual wholesale energy costs.

There’s no acknowledgement of the fact the UK has very little direct reliance on Russian oil and gas, and how private UK-based energy companies profiteered by exporting energy to the continent instead of keeping prices lower here.

There’s no admission that the UK energy regulator Ofgem is shockingly complicit with the profiteering energy companies, putting their obscene profits above the welfare of the British public and the wider British economy.

There’s no reference to the way the UK government has failed to intervene directly to protect energy consumers, like what France did with their 5% cap on energy bill increases during the inflation crisis.

Apparently it’s big, bad Putin’s fault, while the UK government and private energy profiteers were blameless, and the only conceivable solution is a plan to rip up public protections and build a load of experimental nuclear reactors in our communities!

It’s a fairy story aimed at the hopelessly gullible.

Beware the bogeymen in our midst

The government’s press release is replete with loaded language and invective.

"Archaic planning rules", "NIMBYS", "ripping up red tape", "delay and obstruction", "unnecessary rules", and "saying no to the blockers who have strangled our chances of cheaper energy".

If the government was honest about its intentions, it wouldn’t need to slather its proposals in the slime of so much loaded language.

At least we know Putin isn’t the only bogeyman though.

Apparently British communities that have exercised their legal rights to seek judicial reviews of major infrastructure projects are also guilty of preventing us from having "cheaper energy".

Privatisation propaganda

You’d have to be hopelessly gullible to actually believe Starmer’s efforts to blame Vlad Putin and [unspecified] "blockers" for high energy prices in this country.

We all know that private energy companies have been raking in tens of billions of pounds in excessive profits while millions have struggled to pay their bills, and small businesses all over the country have had to close their doors due to unpayable energy costs.

Starmer’s using pro-privatisation propaganda to hoodwink us about the real causes of energy inflation because he’s in hock to the private energy profiteers.

Crushing internal dissent

A Guardian article on Starmer’s proposals said that he wouldn’t tolerate dissent from Labour MPs who might try to block his proposals to foist experimental reactors in their communities.

Crushing internal dissent is one of Starmer’s favourite themes, and he loves telling the hack pack about his desire to turn the Labour Party into a a monolithic block with no tolerance for dissent or diversity of opinion.

I mean, how dare Labour MPs consider actually representing the views of their constituents, when Starmer’s already told them what to do?

Obfuscation

Starmer has been very clear about how he intends to rip up the rules and crush dissent, but the government’s press release says precisely nothing about how much public money this project is going to cost, nor who the eventual private sector benefactors will be.

The government press release dedicates over 1,200 words to quotations praising the plan, but it contains absolutely zero information on how much public money this is going to cost, nor on which private companies are going to collect the profits.

The whole thing looks like an exercise in obfuscation, rather than an explanation of what the plan actually is.

What will it cost?

Worldwide there are currently zero functioning examples of the kind of mini-reactors Starmer intends to build all over the country, and of the projects that have been started so far, many have already ended up way over budget, and become vast sinkholes of public money.

If the government can dedicate 1,200 words to industry insider bumf about how wonderful Starmer’s plan is, surely they could spare just a few lines to detail how much public cash is going to be sunk into the project, and what measures will be put in place to stop developers from holding the government to ransom for more public funds once the projects are half-completed.

What happens to the waste?

Britain’s nuclear waste legacy is an absolute mess. The National Audit Office predicts that cleaning up Sellafield will cost an eye-watering £121 billion. The huge Drigg nuclear dumping ground in Cumbria is in danger of being flooded and washed away into the sea; and there’s still no sign of a long-term nuclear waste storage solution like the Onkalo Spent Nuclear Waste Facility in Finland.

Will the companies that profit from planting mini-reactors in our communities be required to pay for the massive clean up and storage costs, or will they reap the profits, then leave the public with the bill for the vast waste disposal costs?

Starmer doesn’t deign to even say. In fact there’s zero mention of nuclear waste in the entire press release!

Who gets the profits

There wouldn’t be over 1,200 words of praise from nuclear industry insiders in the government’s press release unless they thought there’s a stack of money to be made.

Starmer doesn’t say who is going to build all of these mini-reactors, nor who is going to reap the profits once (if) they’re operational.

The only things that are clear are Starmer’s vehement ideological hostility to public ownership, and his rejection of the idea that energy infrastructure should be run for the benefit of the British people and the British economy, not for private profit extraction purposes.

It’d sound a lot less fun if he said we’re going rush through applications to build an experimental nuclear plant down the road; restrict your ability to object; then this list of multinational corporations and foreign governments will siphon off the profits.

We’re just expected to believe that this is a really good plan for all of us, despite being given zero information on who is going to get the profits.

Energy Security

The government press release repeatedly references to the concept of "energy security", but it’s highly deceptive to pretend that ripping up planning rules to allow a series of experimental mini-reactors is anything like a top energy security concern under the current circumstances.

How is it even possible to talk about Britain’s "energy security" without noting that our entire fleet of nuclear reactors was flogged off to the government of France (under the guise of the 100% state owned energy company EdF).

In fact the government’s press release on Starmer’s "fire up" the nuclear policy quotes glowing praise from an EdF spokesman, with absolutely no indication that this is actually a representative of the government of France salivating at the prospect of even more opportunities to profiteer in the UK energy market!

If we’re so concerned about "energy security" how come we’ve bribed the governments of France and China into building a new reactor at Hickley Point C with promises to make consumers pay way over the odds for its energy output for decades?

If "energy security" is such a priority, how come we’ve allowed a bunch of parasitical private energy profiteers to bleed the economy dry, rather than taking our vital energy infrastructure back under public ownership and running it for the national good?

And if we were looking for effective ways to defend Britain’s "energy security" why doesn’t the government ban private energy companies from cashing in by exporting electricity to the continent while they milk the British public and British businesses for every penny they can get away with?

Deceptive language

The phrasing in this Keir Starmer quote from the press release is pretty deceptive.

There’s no way that he doesn’t know about the Hinkley Point C project, nor how costs have ballooned from an estimated £18 billion at the beginning, to a whopping £31-35 billion now (both figures in 2015 prices), which would make it the most expensive object on earth when it’s finally completed.

It’s technically true that construction hasn’t finished yet, but it’s deliberately phrased in this way to avoid reference to the mind-bogglingly expensive white elephant that we bribed the governments of France and China into building for us.

It’s obvious why too. Starmer doesn’t want us thinking back to the financial disaster zone of the UK government’s last big flagship nuclear policy while he’s launching the next one.

China

This is an interesting reference to China in the government press release.

I wonder if they’re including Hinkley Point C in the list of nuclear reactors the Chinese are building?

Also, perhaps one of the reasons China’s nuclear industry is thriving like this because they didn’t flog it off for an infinitesimal fraction of its construction costs to a bunch of privatisation profiteers, who then realised they’d make much bigger short-term profits by selling it all on to the government of France, than by running it themselves?

Just a thought.

Magic beans?

As mentioned above, there are currently zero working examples of small and advanced modular nuclear reactors worldwide, so there’s a lot of faith being put into unproven technology.

Mini-reactor projects that have been undertaken overseas have been beset by cost overruns and developers demanding public cash, so where are the assurances that similar projects in Britain won’t pan out similarly?

How does Starmer know that these technologies are cheaper and quicker to build?

Okay, one mini-reactor is going to be cheaper than one conventional reactor, but that’s barely worth stating. It’s like saying that a ride on lawn mower is cheaper than a tractor.

An actually useful price comparison is how much would it cost to construct and operate enough of these mini-reactors to match the output of a conventional power station (or the equivalent cost of renewable energy generation for that matter).

It’s impossible to know, since nobody has ever finished building one of these things, let alone enough of them to match the output of a conventional power station, so either Starmer’s misleading us by comparing tractors and lawnmowers, or he’s making assertions without the evidence base to back them up.

Then there’s the talk of AI datacentres.

Given the $trillion US tech stock collapse upon the release of DeepSeek-R1, is it possible that the value and importance of AI is being somewhat overstated?

The proposal is to use as-yet unproven technology to power more as-yet unproven technology.

I’m not saying the mini-reactors are not going to work, or that AI is completely useless, but are we entirely sure that this isn’t some kind of Matuska Doll of expensive magic beans?

Construction costs

The government press release admits that the UK is "considered one of the world’s most expensive countries in which to build nuclear power", but that’s only telling a fraction of the story.

In reality Britain is one of the most expensive places in the world to build anything.

Take high speed rail as an example.

HS2 has turned into an eye-wateringly expensive national embarrassment, and it’s been cut back so dramatically that it’s only going to connect London to Birmingham, rather than creating rapid transit corridors to Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, and beyond, like it was supposed to.

How come countries like France and Spain can build thousands of kilometres of high speed rail for a fraction of the per-km cost of our embarrassing stump of a line?

It’s a fantasy to pretend that high construction costs, massive delays, and eye-watering overruns are unique to Britain’s nuclear industry, and can be overcome with a bonfire of red tape to enable the roll-out of mini-reactors.

It’s a problem across the board, and it’s been suggested that it’s a lack of central oversight over major infrastructure projects, and infestations of profiteering, corner-cutting middle-men that make British infrastructure development so expensive and inefficient.

Conclusion

If Starmer was being honest (no, stop sniggering at the back), he’d have taken a very different approach to this announcement.

He’d have avoided using so much loaded language and invective, and stuck to the facts.

He’d have been honest about the real threats to Britain’s energy security instead of playing the Putin bogeyman card, blaming blocker-activists, and pretending that experimental reactors are some kind of magical cure-all elixir.

He’d have clearly explained how much all of this is going to cost, and what measures he’ll be taking to stop the kind of delays and cost overruns that have blighted similar projects overseas.

He’d have explained what measures he’ll be taking to prevent this policy turning into another Hinkley Point C style money sinkhole.

Given that he’s so ideologically opposed to public ownership of energy infrastructure, he’d at least tell us who is going to be siphoning off all the profits once he’s abolished people’s rights to object to nuclear reactors in their communities.

And he’d explain what’s going to be done with the waste, and how he’s going to ensure the developers actually pay the clean up costs, rather than relying on public finances to clean up their radioactive messes.

The abundance of rhetoric and deceptive language combined with the glaring lack of specific detail should be enough to make anyone ask questions, whether they think nuclear is an answer to the climate crisis or not.

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