UK spends twice as much paying wind farms to shut down as on small nuclear reactors

Since 2021, the UK has disbursed £5.1 bn in constraint payments to wind farms, forcing them offline when the grid cannot handle excess generation, with £1.04 bn paid up to August this year, a 60% rise on the previous period. The Nuclear Industry Association reports that ministers intend to allocate £2.8 bn toward small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) by the end of the decade, a figure roughly half of the wind-farm payments.

Scottish grid costs have surged following the 2022 closure of Hunterston B, and are expected to climb further as the Torness plant retires in 2030. While the UK government highlights the need for network upgrades and clean-power transition, the Scottish government and the SNP criticize SMR projects as expensive, slow, and producing long-lived waste. The debate underscores tensions over how to balance renewable intermittency with reliable baseload supply and who should bear the financial burden.