Mark Gilbert , Columnist

The U.K.'s Nuclear Gamble

The Hinkley Point reactor may enhance energy security. But at what cost?

September 15, 2016 at 1:29 PM UTC

Mark Gilbert is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering asset management. A former London bureau chief for Bloomberg News, he is author of “Complicit: How Greed and Collusion Made the Credit Crisis Unstoppable.”

The hair-raising cost of energy security.
Photographer: JENS SCHLUETER/AFP/Getty Images

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The U.K. government had to perform two distinct calculations in deciding to proceed with building a nuclear power station at Hinkley Point, one political and one economic. The political reckoning was always going to argue strongly against abandoning the project. The economics, however, went the other way. The sums don't seem to add up, and the result may be that the country ends up paying dearly in the coming decades for the decision.

Incoming Prime Minister Theresa May was right to review the Hinkley deal. After all, at 18 billion pounds ($24 billion) it will be the single most expensive construction on the planet (the Large Hadron Collider at CERN cost about $6 billion). But her maneuvering room was always limited.