Yes of course it's hit major delays, but my point is in hindsight had we started 5 nuclear plants (sort of as planned) around HPC construction start instead of spending the money on renewables, we'd have 5 plants coming online in (say) 2030. This would be nearly 50% of the entire UK supply. Another ~10 years later you'd have another 5, giving ~30GW of baseload.

And there's no reason we couldn't have used other reactor designs, apart from lack of financing so only EDF gambled everything on the EPR for HPC (again) and failed to deliver on time/on budget (again).

>Hinkley Point C has a contracted price of £133/MWh. I imagine there's some risk-sharing and inflation in the contract so this will probably go up. Compare this to £65/MWh for new solar and £72/MWh for new onshore wind [3]. Plus of course that wind and solar projects don't take 20 years to come online.

In 2012 prices HPC was £89/MWh. AR7 is delivering (in 2012 prices) offshore wind for ~£65/MWh.

But regardless these aren't comparable at all, for the reasons I set out above. That £65/MWh often doesn't include grid upgrades (which aren't required to nearly the same scale for nuclear, as they tend to be nearish existing population/demand centres and have existing grid infra). AND you still need (expensive) backup for that wind. We are building (right now!) new gas peaking plants that are allowed by law to only operate 10 days per year. The cost per MWh if you include that capex is horrendous.

>Lastly, the only way the per MWh costs can even get that low is by giving Hinkley Point C a 60 year lifespan to amortize the cost over a sufficiently large timespan. It's likely that as the plant ages, operational costs will significantly increase beyond what's projected.

Not true, HPCs 'agreement' is for 35 years. After that they just get the market price, so it is not based on the 60 year lifespan per se.