Dreanought sub on track despite increased cost forecast

cheers….

I would need to see your Facts and Figures before replying to that….

I’m afraid you are wrong that labour costs are the issue. The major cost issues are materials (containment is one of the largest concrete structures in Europe and steel),, components (RPV, PRZ, SGs, I&C, fuel, turbines etc), regulatory processes etc. The second issue is that the EPR is an overdesigned pressurized water reactor which is why EDF are going back to the drawing board to redesign it. Combining R&D efforts from Germany and France (funded by the EU framework programmes) was always going to lead to an overdesigned reactor. It was a design by committee as opposed to a design suitable for the market. Sizewell B though originated from an evolution of the SNUPPS (Standardized Nuclear Unit Power Plant System) design and we should (during Thatcher’s days) have rolled these out but the dash for gas (sound familiar to our dash for renewables) put pay to that idea (nutty environmentalists with zero understanding of nuclear technology). Our civil nuclear skills have been denuded very badly and if weren’t for the fact the French (Flammaville), Finn’s (Olkilouto) and Chinese had experience in EPR construction we would have been in deep do-do’s. Don’t forget that both the Finn’s and French had basic issues such as cracks in the concrete basemat (again because nuclear skills had been denuded over decades). Moreover, EDF from the French side is holding our hand as we construct and commission Hinkley Point C. Cheap foreign labour isn’t the problem or the answer. The problem is lack of civil nuclear skills in the UK combined with wages that have been held down by mass migration. We don’t invest enough in our own people and sadly 5.8M are in receipt of some form of government handout (something we should all be thoroughly ashamed of in 21st century Britain). People like you are unfortunately part of the issue in the UK and I wish someone could properly educate you on the issues that policies like cheap labour from mass migration cause (low productivity, expensive housing, social cohesion issues, the minimum wage becoming a ceiling for the working class). There is no flip side to mass migration and I truly wish that people like you would properly educated yourself rather than swallow the treasury orthodoxy that has inflated GDP but caused a fall in GDP per capita and rampant house price inflation. The fact is we do not need mass migration to have a successful economy that benefits everyone and not just the middle and upper middle classes. I would actually say mass migration is an actual existential threat to the UK and worse than that threat posed by Russia.

I was rather making the point that when a lot of my *highly paid, skilled and trained* Polish workers left that I had a sudden loss of skills and productivity.

We spent a ton of money training them for over a decade. Those that were not settled left.

I do not support the idea of cheap foreign labour or mass migration as a panacea. But we had got most of the Eastern European labour force gained up to a decent standard.

I decry, quite often on here, the loss of trades training and skilling through the tech colleges. We desperately need more people who are well trained to make things *efficiently*.

Fixing this was an issue that I did pound on about and I was getting somewhere with it when the rug was pulled from under by feet by Rolls Royce, yes really, who stated that it was up to private companies to train apprentices for the general good. That lead via the useless CITB to the useless Apprentice Levy system – both of which actually make me very angry. Milk bottle top qualifications all round. It tells you something when an organisation like Dyson don’t like the scheme(s).

The political issue is mainly that unions won’t accept that workers have to be indentured ‘pay back’ for the time and money spent training them, yes it can be open to abuse but the Germans manage it, so the private sector has little incentive to do a really thorough job on it. Such skills as are taught are narrow and ‘enough to get the job done’.

I, however, totally disagree with you that the loss of this mid skilled labour has not had a massive impact on civics builds. I would say that on a lot of projects that, at Director level if people are being honest, a 40% loss of productivity onsite since BREXIT/COVID is real.

I mourn the loss of the civil nuclear skills and the wilful destruction of that industry with the final nails in the coffin when coalition government pushed those builds back. Although Thatcher did actually plan for a proper nuclear fleet – it just never got built.

I’d far rather have nuclear than coal although I do see that gas does have a long term role to play for surge generation and ‘gap filling’ – I cannot see a realistic way that we can backfill capacity without gas when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. Building a big enough nuclear fleet to cover that would be crazy money. Wheres it is economically quite realistic to have nuclear covering 25-40% of generating capacity as they can be run at maximum efficiency.

The thing that does make me seeth is the scientific illiteracy of the amount of money spent on a carbon paperwork exercise burning wood in power stations. It would be better, for the environment and more honest, to burn coal.

UK have 67M population if you don’t find workers on that mass of people then something is wrong with UK culture.

Hi, having run a factory that made a very substantial part of every SSN and SSBN ….. i am not actually sure that I was allowed to use foreign nationals in the assembly of most of it. Everybody to to with assembly, including me had to be cleared and absolutely no foreign visitors in the assembly bays.

That all makes perfect sense.

I only advised on policy – in a past life.

I never built SSN’s or even bits of them!

While I’m not looking to get into the migration discussion, if you think that the workforce issue on our nuclear projects (and across infrastructure and construction in general) is purely down to letting the skills die away, then respectfully you are mistaken.
The (British) workforce is aging, their productivity is shockingly low, they get into dispute constantly, and they like it that way because it keeps their own wages up and guarantees longer periods of employment on contracts. Unfortunately, there also aren’t enough younger people coming into the trades to resolve this problem any time soon.
I’m not saying that “mass migration” as you describe it is the answer, but I’m telling you that poor British work ethic in the workforce is a problem. And not from the youngsters, from the old boys.
And SB isn’t wrong- it’s a hell of a lot easier to get European tradespeople to deliver to spec in a manner that is acceptable on a UK worksite. Again, not arguing the mass migration issue- just pointing out that European workers are more in line with our quality and safety requirements than those from elsewhere.

i respectfully completely disagree with you. I’m actually involved in the training of engineers. Given proper training our youngster will do a great job (even better than some of the old timers), They have a good work ethic if given half the chance. Our schools are primarily to blame but I have turned around some young people who on the face of it looked incompetent and lazy. They weren’t they just needed someone to help them achieve their goals as they had low self-esteem from the years wasted in awful primary and secondary schools (lack of decent male role models and the feminisation of the curriculum were also issues). A lot of teachers (not all) are left wing activists that don’t want to teach properly but want to indoctrinate. This is because we don’t pay teachers enough to get high calibre people in. We just get the crazy activists instead. Don’t get me started on management in the UK. We had an old saying “sh** floats” and in the UK we have a paucity of good managers and mainly incompetent people get promoted.

I’m glad and grateful for the work you do- my brother is a primary school teacher and is habitually frustrated by the system he has to operate in and how poorly it serves the students he teaches. Some of the ideological stuff he’s had to navigate has boggled my mind…
That said, I am currently involved in infrastructure construction (maybe I’m one of those terrible managers you speak of, but I hope not…!), having spent a decade in the offshore industry. To say that the difference in attitude between the can-do, get-done attitude of offshore contractors compared to the ones I am now dealing with is night and day. As much to say, I am speaking from direct experience in the sector.
I would agree, though, with your statement about younger engineers and tradespeople; if we can get enough of them, and they aren’t adversely influenced by those in the industry already, then I’m sure they’ll do a fantastic job. My concern is there aren’t enough of them and (again, as you say) the government isn’t really interested in getting a functional education system that positively serves the best interests of the country.

Joe I completely agree with you on what you said with regard to government. I used to think it was incompetence but now I’m thinking it is by design for some ulterior motive. Tories, Labour, Lib Dems they all have your snouts in the trough.

When non-specialist Maths lessons prioritise trigonometry over compound interest and percentages, history barely scratches on key points of British history like the Civil War, and you completely strip away almost every opportunity to follow a practical/technical path to employment- you have to wonder, don’t you…?

Like i said above the issue is culture. Politics(activist-journalists, education political complex, arts political complex) make the culture and morals because there isn’t more religion. Seeing the news is like going to the church in the past,

When you have a soft “science” job where things don’t have to work and you get paid much more because of that political favoritism than in a job where things have to work because they are mechanical something is wrong…

That is BS, British Leyland died decades ago, I used to run a very large factory, making substantial precision engineered equipment for Defense and other industries. Our uint was one of the most skilled, economic and competitive in a global group, often having to bail out units in Asia and Europe. Additionally, you think the Nissan investments, at a site already branded globally their most efficient plant is a result of poor efficiency, productivity or skill. Having worked for a global manufacturer, I can tell you that most manufacturing in the UK has very little to learn from almost anybody. National productivity is not a measure of work force productivity as it takes into account other factors, people not economically active etc.

I think you and I are speaking at cross purposes- I’m very glad that British manufacturing is doing well, and hope that it continues and expands.
You seem to have missed that I was talking about Construction and infrastructure though- which is a very different sector and picture of health, unfortunately.
So, please, take a more careful read through what someone is posting before accusing them of spouting BS?

Bravo. It is dismantling the cohesion of this nation from within as too many refuse to integrate. My dad agrees, and he too is an immigrant. Though he didn’t come here to jump on benefits, they didn’t exist, he worked from day one, and being western European there were no culture issues beyond learning English.

He actually had to have a job in place to even be admitted in. What a concept…..

I don’t disagree with the problem of integration- it is not just a UK problem either. My wife is an immigrant, came over at 18 and got a job within 2 weeks- worked her way up and now runs her own company. She has a better work ethic than many British natives I know- and I think that’s part of the problem.
I have no problem with holding on to family/cultural heritage, I think it is great and adds to our cultural richness; it’s not as if “English/British” culture has remained un-influenced since the time of the Celts. But, there has to be a level of integration to make society work, and that often isn’t happening.
But why? I don’t think there’s a lot of incentive for many immigrants to want to integrate. What do they see of British culture that’s admirable and attractive? Love Island? Naked Attraction? A bunch of very rich people in the city of London doing very well for themselves at the expense of everyone else? Value only to be found in celebrity and how little one can work and get paid? It’s unfortunately not that great a draw for many people… Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that’s all the UK is, but it’s certainly what most people see.

Hi Joe. Thanks for that. Yes, why is it not happening. This is an issue that needs nationwide debate, not leftists screaming race, as many are genuinely concerned and simple offhand dismissals like that do not help.

A nation without it’s own identity, culture, with a set of values specific to it and the majority of its people is what exactly?

It’s a country worth fighting for if the people in it get a fair wage etc. Plus you are so inaccurate. ALL EU workers were given the right to stay. Covid was the problem. In the Canaries many of the Spanish went back to Spain and when things opened up wages there went up too because not enough people left to do all the work in the tourist trade.

BREXIT and COVID worked gens in hand.

The ones who were not sure went back to Poland and never came back. That goes for a few who applied for settled status and went back anyway.

A lot of them said they didn’t feel welcome with all the pseudo xenophobic nonsense from the Fromagists.

Sure other countries are struggling with workforce. Workforce got very used to being at home doing very little in lockdown and being paid. The constant bleating about mental health didn’t help much either.

I do have to admit I’m really getting tired of people shouting racist all the time. It’s so intellectually devoid of any meaning as it is has lots all its real meaning. I’ll be honest if you asked me whether I would prefer a culturally homogeneous society from the 1970s and 1980s I would absolutely say yes and that does not make me a racist in any way, shape or form. I’m married to someone from overseas and I respect her culture but she respects mine. British society has not been enriched by the vast bulk of immigration. It has merely balkanised the UK and there is zero chance some cultures will integrate. We have stored massive problems because the false lie that migration leads to wealth of a nation hasn’t been tackled. All mass migration does is lead to reductions in GDP per capita (as shown clearly in recent government data). Some are easier to integrate than others (e.g., Europeans). However, the UK was infinitely better when we had 95% British people. Housing was easier to achieve, disposable income was higher and social cohesion was higher. The mantra we need more migration actually makes me immensely angry and the word “racist” to prevent people complaining makes me incredibly angry because it is simple an utterly false and reprehensible narrative that wrongly tars and feathers innocent people who’s lives are effected mass migration. There are zero (absolutely zero) upsides to mass migration and only negatives but all three major parties are sign up to the same national suicide note.

For immigration control = racism nonsense thank New Labour.