The British government revealed Tuesday it had worked out an agreement to guarantee funding for a 3.4 gigawatt nuclear power plant slated for West Cumbria, an area of northwest England on the coast of the Irish Sea.
The 3-reactor project is planned as a 60-40 joint venture between Japan's Toshiba Corporation and French firm GDF Suez. The partnership company is Nu-Generation Ltd., frequently referred to as Nu-Gen.
The plan calls for a construction of three AP1000 Westinghouse reactors that would provide close to 7 percent of Britain's electricity needs. It is expected to create 21,000 jobs during construction, which is expected to take at least four years.
The government plan to back the nuclear plant was discovered on a list of infrastructure projects that would be discussed Tuesday along with other infrastructure projects endorsed by the government.
Details were to be fleshed out Tuesday, Reuters reported.
The loan guarantee for the Moorside project follows a similar $25 billion deal between the government and EDF for construction of a nuclear power plant in southwestern England – the Hinkley C project that Peter Atherton, utilities analyst at Liberum Capital, mused could end up as the most expensive item ever built on the planet.
Britain's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority estimates the Moorside facility would provide 1,000 permanent jobs with occasional spikes that would employ more than 6,000.
The current schedule calls for a go-ahead license issued in 2018 and a construction start in 2020. Unit 1 would then be operational in 2024 and Units 2 and 3 would be up and running by 2026.