EDF Energy's Humphrey Cadoux-Hudson tells Janet Wood a fleet of new nuclear plants could be here in ten years, if the long-term signals are right.

Humphrey Cadoux-Hudson has taken on perhaps the UK power industry's biggest challenge: delivering a suite of four new nuclear reactors. As head of nuclear new-build at EDF Energy he has been placed firmly in the spotlight by EDF Energy chief executive Vincent de Rivaz, who promised - conditions being right - that the first reactor would be in place in time for the British public to cook their Christmas dinners in 2017.

With an education in engineering, and previously chief financial officer of EDF Energy, Cadoux-Hudson does not underestimate the challenge, not least clearing the UK's notorious planning hurdles. "If you look at the history of large projects in the UK you have got to be pretty brave to stand up and be counted for getting into the beginning of that process, let alone being still there at the end and ready to invest," he says.

The new plants should begin to go through the planning process next year. That could mean EDF is applying under a new government, but Cadoux-Hudson says the company has always looked beyond the government of the day. For nuclear power, "you need a cross-party consensus because it takes a good five to six years to build a power station and you need to operate it for 60 years. Then you are looking at full decommissioning after that, so it's an enormously long-term investment we are making." However, he acknowledges: "We need early signals about continuity and some logic behind the planning process to enable us to launch into it and still stick to our time­table."

The Infrastructure Planning Commission has been in the spotlight but Cadoux-Hudson says the use of national policy statements is as important. "We need to be sure that the national nuclear policy planning statement will be used by the planning process, and that's not entirely obvious. That's not what's happened in the past," he says.

Ambitious

EDF Energy's first reactor will be at Hinkley Point and the second probably at Sizewell. The company also bought additional land at Bradwell in Essex, and this is its "reserve" site. A four-reactor programme is ambitious, but Cadoux-Hudson argues that in practice it brings big benefits. "If you just have one, you have a big overhead in getting through the planning and licensing, so there is an attraction, just on that point, to build more than one. But there is also huge traction in building more than one. You get an economy of scale, over the process of building, but more importantly than that you have a fleet effect.

"It is really a big step forward to create one reactor design that goes across national boundaries and it is one of the great strengths of EDF that it is able to contemplate it." That holds true in the operation phase as well. "We want four units in the UK that have the same basic processes for operating them, the same basic parts, so over time we can get the efficiency of a fleet." In France, he says, "you can see from the operation of those stations that they have great benefits from sharing operation, sharing training, being able to move people around - and that's really core to our strategy in the UK".

Cadoux-Hudson wants UK companies to be as closely involved as possible in building the EPR plant, EDF's preferred reactor design. "The first thing to say is that we are going to spend a lot of money building these power plants, and out of that money there is a lot of opportunity for supply chain companies to take their part in it," he says.

He is adamant that companies need to be prepared to be in the market long term. "It is really important to understand we are committed to build the four UK EPRs. We need to encourage supply chain companies to invest to be part of that supply chain," he says. "To be part of a nuclear build supply chain is not something you can get into lightly. You need to be able to demonstrate that you can comply with the very strict quality assurance processes. Don't forget that these plants will run for 60 years after they have been built and there is a very long-term business to be had, not only with the construction period but almost more important, for many companies, in the maintenance."

Framework

Cadoux-Hudson says the investment decision will be taken in a year or so. Echoing comments by de Rivaz, he warns that, at the moment, the government needs to work on the framework for investment. "The European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has altered the short-term landscape, but its design cannot support the necessary long-term investments," he says. "The ETS has been very successful at getting companies to focus on the marginal allocation of production between, for example, gas and coal, particularly in the UK with the half-hourly market but that does not get the new equipment built."

At the moment, "the critical issue on the grid is the need to invest, not a need to allocate between one sort of generation and the next on a half-hourly basis". Still more worrying, he says: "GDP is declining, the amount of carbon emissions from manufacturers and other sources is going down, therefore it looks like we will hit the target without actually having any investment. The EU economy will start growing again in the future, and at that point we will start producing more carbon. If we have done nothing to change the amount of carbon that Europe produces, we have not achieved anything from this trading mechanism."

He explains: "What we are looking for is a signal that is outside the scope of the ETS at the moment. We are going to be producing [power] from 2017 for the first unit, 2020 for the fourth."

Long term vision

Discussions about the 2050 timeframe centre on switching to an electricity generation fleet that emits very little carbon. But Cadoux-Hudson says there is no framework that marries that long-term vision with the short-term ETS, and supports the investment to get us from one to the other. Without a long term policy, the "easy answer in the UK is gas. You need it however much renewables you build because renewables are intermittent".

Cadoux-Hudson lists several mechanisms that could provide the necessary support. "There is discussion around carbon tax. There has been a lot of discussion around a straight ban on emissions, so that you put a ceiling on emissions, much as has been done under the LCPD for SOx and NOx. We [EDF Energy] have put forward long-term carbon contracts, so that if you were going to build low-carbon generation you could enter into a long-term contract that says as long as your production is low-carbon you would get a floor price. It's important that the economic cost of pollution is paid for - this applies to carbon as it would any other form of harmful waste."

Whatever the mechanism, he says, it must also take into account how the network operates. "When renewables are 4 per cent of what you are producing, it's at the margin," he says. "When it's a very large percentage, you need to gain an understanding of the dynamics of the system."

Priority access

EU legislation on renewables calls for "priority access" for renewables. Cadoux-Hudson warns: "If you create a priority for renewables, you are creating the opposite for everything else and you need to make sure that 'everything else' exists.

"As a country, unless you are going to accept that power goes out sometimes, you need a back up when the wind is not blowing. You need to make sure the system works in a way that means people are likely to invest in that equipment, which if it is second priority, still needs to make a return." That is far from the case, he says, even under our current subsidy, the Renewables Obligation.

"There is a point at which [new nuclear] becomes uneconomic under the current system as it is structured. If you take electricity from an offshore windfarm and pay two Renewables Obligation Certificates, it's getting £90 per MWh in subsidy. If renewables have to be economically taken off the system, you have got negative power prices for everyone else. The subsidy on renewables starts taking money away from conventional plant and at some point the system won't work, economically."

It is clear that despite the work put in by government and industry in the past few years there are still hurdles to clear to ensure new nuclear is built. For Cadoux-Hudson that seems to be part of the challenge of a project he says he is proud to be leading. "We have an opportunity to make a real difference to carbon reduction and, at the same time, to deliver affordable energy," he says. "Nuclear is part of the future of the UK now."

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