the times | Tuesday May 24 2022 39
Business
you can’t just go down the road and
build 200,000 sq ft of shiny labs.”
Farnsworth said developers would
have to think creatively. Some were
looking to turn boarded-up depart-
ment stores into laboratories. Even
with the recent drop-off in the valua-
tions of listed life sciences companies,
he said “funding is still coming through
and these businesses are still growing”.
The imbalance between supply and
demand is forcing up prices. Office
rents in Cambridge used to be about
£20 per sq ft, but now are above £50.
Fully fitted-out labs are commanding
more than £80 per sq ft.
Farnsworth’s Life Science Reit has
already deployed the £350 million that
it raised last November at its initial
public offering. In its maiden set of half-
year results, the company reported a
pre-tax profit of £7.7 million, which
included an uplift in the valuation of
some of its laboratories. Its net asset
value was 100.2p per share.A proposed new nuclear power plant in
north Wales could cost as much as
£17 billion but would be quicker and
cheaper to build than EDF’s Hinkley
Point C in Somerset, according to the
American consortium behind the
project.
Westinghouse, the reactor maker,
and Bechtel, the engineering group,
hope to win government support and
potential taxpayer investment for their
plan to build two reactors at Wylfa on
Anglesey.
They are understood to have shared
initial estimates with the government
that it could cost between £14 billion
and £17 billion to build the 2.3-gigawatt
plant, which could power more than
four million homes. They say that it
could take little more than six years to
build, compared with more than a
decade for Hinkley Point C.
However, the project faces signifi-
cant hurdles before construction can
begin, meaning that it is unlikely to be
able to start up until the early 2030s.
The consortium needs to find a
company to lead the development and
to attract investors, as well as to com-
plete lengthy planning and regulatory
processes. It also must secure rights to
the Wylfa site, which at present is
owned by Hitachi, of Japan, which
abandoned its own plans for a facility
there in early 2019.
The government has placed new
nuclear plants at the heart of its energy
strategy after Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine. It wants up to 24GW of
nuclear capacity by 2050, equivalent to
six more new plants the size of Hinkley
Point and in addition to the Somerset
plant, which is the only one under con-
struction.
EDF, the French energy group, said
last week that the 3.2GW Hinkley Point
project would now cost as much as
£26 billion, up from £18 billion when it
was approved in 2016, and would not
generate its first power until June 2027,
at the earliest. EDF also wants to build
the same EPR, or European pressurised
reactors, at Sizewell C in Suffolk, which
it has suggested will cost £20 billion.
Westinghouse wants to build its rival
AP1000 reactor design, which has com-
pleted initial safety approval for use in
Britain. Mike Waite, director of new
plant market development at Westing-
house, said: “Compared with the EPR
technology used by EDF, the AP1000
plant is significantly simplified in its de-
sign due to its advanced passive safety
systems and hence will have a lower
construction cost.” He said the reactor
used “natural forces instead of pumps,
motors and back-up diesel generators”,
allowing for “a huge reduction in
safety-related equipment, while in-
creasing levels of safety”.
However, if the project were to cost
£17 billion, the top end of the cost range
that the companies shared with minis-
ters last year, it would be only margin-
ally cheaper per gigawatt than Hinkley
Point, while at the lower end of the
range it would be comparable to esti-
mates for Sizewell.
Westinghouse and Bechtel arehoping to secure about £20 million
funding from the government’s Future
Nuclear Enabling Fund to conduct
further engineering and design work.
Ivan Baldwin, head of the UK civil
nuclear market for Bechtel, said that
this would enable the developer to
“provide to the government an estim-
ated project cost” and “to determine the
optimum construction schedule at the
site”. However, he said it was “likely to
take around six years from first nuclear
concrete to fuel load”. The first power
generation would be expected to follow
some months later.
Westinghouse’s AP1000 reactor
originally was destined to be built in
Cumbria by Toshiba, the former owner
of Westinghouse, but huge delays andcost overruns building the same
reactors at Vogtle in Georgia in the
southern United States led to Westing-
house filing for bankruptcy in 2017 and
to Toshiba abandoning the Cumbrian
project. Westinghouse has since been
acquired by Brookfield, a Canadian
investor, while Bechtel was brought in
as a contractor to complete the Amer-
ican project. It has cost more than twice
its original budget and is about seven
years behind schedule.
Waite insisted the AP1000 was “now
a very mature, proven design” and that
crucial suppliers were “now experi-
enced and qualified”. “The Westing-
house-Bechtel delivery team can bring
significant experience from the Vogtle
project, from the operating plants inChina and from the development pro-
jects across Europe,” he said.
The groups need to find a developer
to lead the project and to bring in inves-
tors and are eyeing the government’s
new Great British Nuclear Vehicle,
which is expected to invest in EDF’s
Sizewell project, as a potential solution
for both.
It is understood that the companies
had told ministers last year that the
plant could be delivered by 2034.
Baldwin said: “Since then, government
priorities for nuclear have grown sig-
nificantly and become increasingly
urgent.” He said there were “potential
opportunities to streamline pre-final
investment decision activity” so as to
“accelerate project delivery”.Americans offer new nuclear option
Emily Gosden Energy Editor
The original Wylfa nuclear power plant was closed in 2015 after 44 years in operation, but now it is hoped a new generator can be developed on an adjacent siteCHRISTOPHER FURLONG/GETTY IMAGESOne of the North Sea’s largest inde-
pendent oil and gas operators has re-
affirmed its commitment to the basin.
EnQuest said it expected this year to
be its busiest for investment in UK
waters since 2014. That includes several
drilling interventions to boost produc-
tion from its assets, as well as decom-
missioning work on older fields.
The London-listed group has the
bulk of its production in the North Sea,
although it has some interests in
Malaysia. It also runs the Sullom Voe
processing terminal on Shetland. Yes-
terday it said that production had been
equivalent to 50,361 barrels of oil per
day in the first four months of the year,
compared with 45,158 in 2021.
Declines at some of its more mature
UK sites were offset by the acquisition
of a stake in the Golden Eagle field,
which contributed about 7,500 barrels
per day. Production at the Magnus field
Landlords ‘name their rent’
for scarce laboratory space
Tom HowardThe landlords of laboratories can
“almost name their rent”, such is the
shortage of lab space in the “Golden
Triangle” between Oxford, London
and Cambridge — the nucleus of
Britain’s life sciences industry.
Delays in the planning system and a
shortage of land on which to build are
said to be partly to blame. However, the
supply squeeze also comes as the sector
is expanding rapidly.
“We were talking to a robotics and
artificial intelligence company in
Oxford the other day and the owner
said he was fed up with working in
chicken sheds,” said Simon Farns-
worth, 54, managing director of Iron-
stone Asset Management, which runs
Life Science Reit, the laboratory owner.
“If you’ve got the right product,
some landlords are saying that they
can almost name the rent at the
moment. [In the Golden Triangle]T
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entrepreneurs thetimes.co.uk/tenEnQuest plans a wave of
investment in North Sea
Greig Cameron has been restored on two wells and a
further three will be drilled. EnQuest is
working with its partners on a field
development plan for Bressay.
Amjad Bseisu, 58, chief executive,
said EnQuest had a “long-term com-
mitment to investing in the North Sea”.
It is also considering opportunities at
Sullom Voe to adapt the terminal for
alternative uses in the transition to net-
zero emissions, such as carbon capture
and storage and hydrogen production.
Bseisu expects production for the
whole of this year to be in the range of
44,000 to 51,000 barrels of oil per day.
Analysts at Panmure Gordon said
EnQuest had delivered a strong per-
formance so far this year, helped by
high commodities prices. They warned
there was “little scope for growth” from
the present work programme and that
production was likely to remain flat if
there were no big developments.
Shares in EnQuest were down ¼p, or
1 per cent, at 35p last night.
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