"Alternatively, we order 10 more NPPs and call it good."
The solar power from the Sahara idea is a moronic one even by the standards of UK energy policy Unfortunately whilst from a tech point of view it's an excellent idea, 10 more NPPs are not a viable solution. We've recently debated the price of Hinkley Point, and that's officially looking like a £46bn outturn and about six years late. Since there is not the spare capacity to build these plants and the highly specialised components, we'd need to build these sequentially, but countries like France have a similar problem thus creating supply chain constraints on vital reactor components eg pressure vessels, high pressure piping, key forgings and the like. So any economies of scale of repeat orders and cookie cutter plans will be wholly eaten by market forces, and then some more - I know this to be true as I was programme controller for hundreds of millions of pounds worth of capital projects in the water sector after privatisation, and that's exactly what happened when demand for asset construction capability caught up with supply. Even specialised non-NPP plant like high reach concrete pumps will be in short supply and with very long lead times, as will skills like test drilling, piling, high integrity welding, control systems, archaeology, social research, environmental impact assessors etc. So ten NPP will cost 460 beeellion quid, indexed up to whatever CPI is at the point we choose to look at the bill. Worth also bearing in mind that there's not a good range of reactor designs. Westinghouse is effectively dead, Kepco have no European experience, and that really only leaves EDF (who had the bankrupt tatters of Areva forced onto them by the French government).
Let's say we ignore the cost and single supplier risks and just get on. Probably reasonable that nationally we can overlap construction of two NNP, each of two reactors as per Hinkley C. Could we overlap 3? I don't think so unless we import the workforce; that's what they did at Oikilyuoto (sp) in Finland, resulting in problems that meant ten years of delays and going so over budget that the Finnish government and Areva decided to stop admitting how deep the hole was, and Areva going bust. Anyway, assume the 10xNPP construction goes ahead at 2 concurrent, we'd need to phase starts, so NPP 1 starts in a year's time (wildly optimistic), and takes nine years (a bit optimistic). So NPP2 build starts in 2030, NPP3 in 2034 (when we get the first power from NPP1), NPP5 build starts in 2039....we don't finish the ten until 2070, at which point it's cost 460 beeellion quid, indexed up to whatever CPI is at the point you choose to look at the bill plus any supply chain squeeze costs.
To give us 10 NPP in any reasonable time scale required a political commitment twenty or thirty years ago. Key villains here are Maggie/Major for privatising the CEGB and surrendering everything to market forces, and to Blair/Brown, whose governments initially rejected nuclear (Margaret Beckett's 2002 energy review), and subsequently dithered on nuclear for their entire time in office. The current shower of piddle's role in this mess is comparatively modest, other than for kicking the can down the road for a further fourteen years.
Meanwhile, whilst the politicians and their mates in Just Stop Oil fart around, dancing around their eco-handbags, China approved 40% more NEW coal generating capacity last year than Britain's TOTAL generating capacity from all fuels. India meanwhile has roughly the same new coal capacity under active development or build as the UK's entire fleet. Somebody's a mug here. We'll not see either British or EU politicians give up on their net zero beliefs, but even if we did that's hardly an option - years of flawed policy means we've lost the design and manufacturing capacity for coal power stations whilst opening our markets to cheap Chinese imports made with coal power.
There are no good answers now - decades of idiotic policies have created a Cat-in-the-Hat mess that magically combines the worst of all possible options into a single unaffordable mess. Nobody liked it before when I mooted trebling our offshore wind fleet, and using gas for standby, but at the moment I've yet to see anything that's both technically and economically better.
I'd suggest a politician + relatives and friends fired power station - organic, sustainable, no shortage of fatty fuels. And no need to shoot anyone - just feed the bastards into the fuel hopper kicking and squirming.