Duncan Hawthorne, CEO Horizon Nuclear Power on British Energy, 9-ll, space monkeys and the future of Wylfa

摘要

The technology behind nuclear power is inspirational, the advances being made are mind-boggling, but financing these multi-billion pound projects is perhaps the industry's hardest challenge of all. Few people know that better than Duncan Hawthorne, currently the embattled yet unfailingly optimistic leader of Horizon Nuclear Power, the company tasked with delivering one of the UK's next big moves in the nuclear game. Hawthorne, who started out as an instrument craftsman in an oil fired power plant, has been through enough boardroom battles to know the lay of the land. From his ups and downs of British Energy, through his time at Bruce Power, Canada, where he turned a site consigned to history into the world's biggest nuclear facility, to the recent challenges at Wylfa, in Wales, where a project that was on course to become the UK's next nuclear solution has been knocked off the rails - temporarily, insists Hawthorne - by the departure of technology partner Hitachi.