Some of the most expensive infrastructure projects in British history are the ones that never get built. Moorside is a case study. For just over a decade, a 200-hectare plot of West Cumbrian farmland north of Sellafield was destined to become the largest new nuclear power station in Britain in a generation - three reactors, 3.4 gigawatts of capacity, a £2.8 billion grid connection threaded under Morecambe Bay to spare the Lake District National Park. Today, the site sits empty. The story of why is a slow-motion corporate disaster, told in press releases and quiet liquidations.
The land came first. In October 2009, a joint venture of Iberdrola, GdF-Suez and Scottish & Southern took an option on 190 hectares immediately north of the existing Sellafield complex - the obvious place for new nuclear in Britain, given the existing workforce, the infrastructure, the local familiarity. The consortium named itself NuGeneration, or NuGen, in November 2010. The plant itself was christened Moorside in December 2011. By 2013, Toshiba had bought out Iberdrola's stake, becoming part-owner alongside French utility GDF-Suez. Toshiba already owned the American reactor designer Westinghouse, which meant NuGen could finally specify its technology: three AP1000 pressurised water reactors, the new generation of passively cooled designs Westinghouse was pushing into markets in the United States, China and now Britain. In July 2015, NuGen formally purchased about 200 hectares from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. The first electricity was supposed to flow in 2024.
On 28 March 2017, the UK Office for Nuclear Regulation issued a Design Acceptance Confirmation for the AP1000 reactor - the formal sign-off, after years of review, that the design met British safety standards. The next day, 29 March 2017, Westinghouse filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States. The company had lost roughly $9 billion building four AP1000 reactors back home in Georgia and South Carolina; the losses had become unsupportable. Westinghouse's UK regulatory triumph and its American collapse arrived less than twenty-four hours apart. The shockwave hit NuGen immediately. Engie - the rebranded successor to GDF-Suez - pulled out of the consortium in July 2017, leaving Toshiba as sole owner of a venture whose reactor supplier had just gone under. National Grid put its £2.8 billion North West Coast Connections project on hold the same year, awaiting clarity that never came.
In December 2017, NuGen named the Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco) as preferred bidder to take over the project from Toshiba. The plan, broadly: swap the troubled American AP1000 for Korea's APR-1400, a design already operating at the Shin Kori plant in South Korea and being built for the Barakah complex in the United Arab Emirates. The substitution would have pushed Moorside's start date into the late 2020s or early 2030s, but the project would survive. It didn't. Negotiations dragged into 2018 without resolution. In July 2018, NuGen announced consultations to lay off 100 UK staff. On 25 July, Toshiba stripped Kepco of preferred bidder status. On 8 November 2018, Toshiba announced it was withdrawing from the project entirely and liquidating NuGen. The £2.8 billion grid connection was abandoned with it. Nine years of land options, regulatory work and corporate manoeuvring ended in a press release.
Even before the dust settled, new proposals appeared. In July 2020, an EDF-led consortium announced interest in building two EPR reactors at the site, a design already under construction at Hinkley Point in Somerset. On 30 June 2020 a separate Rolls-Royce-led UK Small Modular Reactor consortium proposed something different - the Moorside clean energy hub, an integrated facility combining small modular reactors with renewables, energy storage and hydrogen production. The vision is ambitious: a 21st-century answer to the old nuclear-only model, with the same site doing several jobs at once. The land near Sellafield, once intended to host the most conventional kind of new nuclear plant, may yet become the testing ground for what comes after. For now, it remains farmland, near a coastline that has been generating Britain's electricity in one way or another since Queen Elizabeth threw a switch at neighbouring Calder Hall in 1956.
The Moorside site sits at 54.43 degrees north, 3.51 degrees west, on the West Cumbrian coast just north of the Sellafield complex. From the air, the planned plot appears as undeveloped fields immediately adjacent to the existing Sellafield industrial site - the contrast between Britain's nuclear past and its imagined future is visible in a single frame. Nearest airfields: Carlisle Lake District (EGNC) about 33 nm north, Blackpool (EGNH) about 52 nm south. Best viewed from 3,000 to 5,000 feet AGL; expect lively coastal winds and rapid weather changes off the Irish Sea.
Moorside proposed site at 54.43 N, 3.51 W, on the West Cumbrian coast just N of the Sellafield complex. From above: undeveloped fields adjacent to the existing Sellafield industrial site. View from 3,000-5,000 ft AGL; lively coastal winds and rapid Irish Sea weather changes. Nearest fields: Carlisle Lake District (EGNC) about 33 nm N, Blackpool (EGNH) about 52 nm S.