The British Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) believes that it is still possible to deploy the £16bn (€18bn) Wylfa Newydd nuclear power project in Anglesey, in North Wales (United Kingdom) in the 2030s if a financing model can be agreed. According to the BEIS, one main driver behind the failure is the difficulty to finance it, due to the abundance of cheaper alternatives such as renewable energies. Even though the project was scrapped by its proponent Hitachi in January 2019, the government is now investigating the possibility of setting up a different funding model such as a regulated asset-based one. Updates on this issue are expected for summer 2019.
The Wylfa Newydd project would have comprised two Advanced Boiling Water Reactors (ABWRs) with a combined capacity of 2,760 MWe on the site of the former 980 MWe Wylfa nuclear power plant. Its cancellation is a major blow for the British nuclear industry and for the country's energy policy. Hitachi became the second company in two months to scrap a major nuclear project after Toshiba decided to withdraw from the 3.8 GW Moorside nuclear power plant project in West Cumbria in November 2018.
The abandonment of the Moorside and Wylfa Newydd projects means that the government has a huge gap to fill in a decade’s time after old nuclear and coal plants have closed. The two projects were expected to deliver about 15% of the UK's power demand (7% each).
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