Why taxpayers will share the pain of cost of building Sizewell C nuclear power plant
Taxpayers will be taking risk alongside other investors in the development of Sizewell C including potential cost-overruns with the total cost to tax and billpayers unknown.
It was as long ago as 1982, back in the pre-privatisation days of the Central Electricity Generating Board, that the idea of building a new nuclear power plant in Suffolk - Sizewell C - was first mooted.
At that time, construction had yet to begin on the neighbouring Sizewell B, which for now remains the youngest of Britain's operating nuclear power plants.
The first planning application was filed as long ago as 1989 and there have been countless false starts since.
The theoretical cost of construction was pushed up when Margaret Thatcher's government insisted that any company building a new nuclear power station would also have to have funding in place for not only its construction but also for the disposal of waste and the eventual decommissioning of the plant.
That proved a major obstacle to new nuclear build which was then further held up by Tony Blair's reluctance to take on opponents of new nuclear build in his own party - although, in 2006, he eventually committed to the cause, as did his successor, Gordon Brown.
Hinkley Point C, the UK's first new nuclear power station in a generation, was the upshot.
-sky news
