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Plans to build a new nuclear power plant in Suffolk are under review and could be delayed or scrapped as the government seeks to make sweeping spending cuts.
Sizewell C, which would sit alongside the existing Sizewell B nuclear reactor on the Suffolk coast if built, was expected to provide up to 7% of the UK’s total electricity needs and plug a looming gap in Britain’s nuclear capabilities.
When complete, the reactor, which is estimated to cost £30bn, with taxpayers expected to foot about a fifth of the bill in partnership with private funding, was expected to generate electricity for 6m homes for up to 60 years.
“We are reviewing every major project, including Sizewell C,” a government official told the BBC.
Plans for Northern Powerhouse Rail, a high-speed line across the north of England sometimes referred to unofficially as High Speed 3, are also under review.
The review of major projects comes as the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, prepare to announce tax and spending plans on 17 November.
The Sizewell C site is one of eight new nuclear reactors that the former prime minister Boris Johnson had planned to give the green light to over the next eight years.
Last month, the then UK prime minister, Liz Truss, and France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, pledged “full support” for Sizewell C, which is set to be jointly developed by the French energy company EDF.
Most UK plants will be shut by 2030 – Sizewell B is due to close in 2035 – and the energy crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine has put the focus on national energy security solutions.
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While campaigning for the Conservative leadership in the summer, Sunak pledged to uphold Johnson’s plan to build eight new reactors.
He also argued in favour of reforming licensing laws to allow the government to build more nuclear plants in an attempt to achieve energy independence by 2045.
The government said that some major infrastructure projects were forging ahead, such as the rail line HS2, with one nuclear project set to be approved.
“HS2 is under way, within budget, and supporting 28,000 jobs,” a spokesperson for the Treasury said. “We are also seeking to approve at least one large-scale nuclear project in the next few years and aim to speed up the delivery of about 100 major infrastructure projects across the UK.”
However, Grant Shapps, the business secretary, gave a firm indication that the former prime minister Truss’s pledge to eventually connect Northern towns and cities from Hull to Liverpool, through Bradford will at the very least be scaled back.
“There wasn’t really much point in going and blasting new tunnels through the Pennines … It’s not true to say we’re not delivering on what we said we would do on levelling up the north,” they told the BBC.
