LONDON — Philip Hunt, the unassuming Labour peer put in charge of rejuvenating U.K. nuclear energy, has a favorite joke about how slowly the industry moves.
Hunt — who was first an energy minister from 2008-2010 and retired from his second stint in government just last month — liked to roll out the gag at Westminster receptions, according to one industry figure who saw him in action.
“I came back after 14 years,” the minister would say, “and everything was exactly as I left it.”
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It was a way to bash the Conservatives’ decade-and-a-half in power, but also an admission of the glacial pace of the nuclear world.
