Sizewell C: Will It Repeat Hinkley's Mistakes?

Another Mega-Nuclear Project. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Sizewell C is a proposed nuclear power station in Suffolk — a near-identical copy of Hinkley Point C. It uses the same EPR reactor design, built by the same consortium, to produce roughly the same output: 3.2 GWe of electricity.

The government gave it the green light in 2022, acquired a 50% stake, and has committed public money to get construction underway. The question every taxpayer should be asking is: will Sizewell C repeat Hinkley's mistakes?

The evidence strongly suggests it will.

Hinkley's Track Record

Hinkley Point C's cost has escalated from £18 billion to ~£48 billion. It's at least 5 years behind schedule. The EPR reactor design has failed to deliver on time or on budget at every single site where it's been built:

Olkiluoto 3 (Finland): 14 years late, 4x over budget
Flamanville 3 (France): 12+ years late, 5x over budget
Hinkley Point C (UK): 5+ years late, 2.5x over budget (and counting)
Taishan 1 & 2 (China): Completed roughly on time, but with fuel rod cracking issues that forced shutdowns

The EPR design is a proven cost and schedule disaster in Western regulatory environments. Sizewell C uses this same design.

"FOAK Learning" — The Promise That Never Delivers

The standard argument for Sizewell C is that it will benefit from "FOAK learning" — first-of-a-kind lessons learned at Hinkley. The theory: because the design is identical, the second build will be faster and cheaper.

This sounds reasonable. In practice, it hasn't worked anywhere:

Flamanville was supposed to teach lessons for Hinkley. Hinkley is still over budget.
Olkiluoto was supposed to prove the EPR concept. It proved the opposite.
Each EPR has encountered unique site-specific problems that "learning" doesn't address.

The UK's own Fingleton Review found that the problem isn't learning curves — it's the fundamental approach of building bespoke, enormous, one-off reactor complexes.

What Sizewell C Will Cost

Official estimates put Sizewell C at £20–30 billion. Given Hinkley's trajectory, independent analysts expect the final cost to reach £30–40 billion or more.

For that investment, the UK gets:

3.2 GWe of electricity
No hydrogen
No desalinated water
No district heating
No industrial co-products
A 60-year operating life

What CFF Delivers for the Same Money

Two CFF sites (£30 billion total at FOAK pricing) would produce:

7.2 GWe of electricity (2.25x Sizewell C)
4,144 tonnes/day of green hydrogen
100,000 m³/day of desalinated water
District heating at £500/yr to ~560,000 homes
Oxygen, fertiliser feedstock, and industrial outputs
A 200-year operating life
~36,000 permanent jobs across both sites

The comparison is not even close.

The Real Problem: Britain Keeps Building One-Offs

Sizewell C is not a fleet programme. It's another one-off megaproject. Even if a third EPR were proposed, the UK has no supply chain, no factory production line, and no standardised regulatory pathway for EPR construction.

CFF proposes 28 identical sites using factory-built HTGR modules — 48 per site, 1,344 nationally. Each build is faster and cheaper than the last. This is the Fleet Effect: the same principle that made Korean shipyards and Japanese car factories the most efficient in the world.

Sizewell C is repeating Hinkley's approach. CFF replaces the approach entirely.

Compare the numbers on the homepage →

Carbon Free Future is an independent proposal by DJ Waugh, a retired engineer from the North East of England.