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Nuclear Power? Yes, please!

Last Modified: 23 May 2007
By: Julian Rush

The government has concluded that Britain's future energy needs should be met by a mix of sources, including nuclear power.

It has launched a five-month consultation into the role nuclear power stations can play, and it wants the private sector to draw up plans to build them.

But ministers said the energy mix also had to include renewables such as wind and wave power, which could generate 15 per cent of electricity by 2015.

Tony Blair said nuclear was essential to combat carbon emissions and guarantee energy supplies, which could be disrupted by countries like Russia.

Woking Council has cut its carbon emissions by 80 per cent, pioneering technologies like solar panels that will power the railway station.

Self-contained lights for a car park get all their electricity from the built-in wind turbine and solar panels.

The combined heat and power plant both generates electricity for the council offices and heats them too. Any surplus is sold back to the grid.

The government says its aim is to encourage solutions like these. But they are not enough. Britain needs new nuclear power stations too, to meet the twin challenges of climate change and energy security

Energy white paper

Gordon Brown gets to make the final decision, but new nuclear power stations are in the public interest, says the white paper
The next generation of renewables, like wave and tidal power, get a financial boost
There is backing for carbon capture and storage. A new, mandatory national carbon trading scheme for large companies, including banks and supermarkets, is planned to encourage them to save energy
And for consumers to do the same, there will be free "smart meters" which display gas and electricity consumption in real time

Sizewell was the last nuclear plant to be built. A court case won by Greenpeace has forced a 20-week consultation on the need for nuclear.

However, quite how the feedback might influence ministers who seem to have made up their minds isn't clear.

Private companies will have to meet the full costs of both building new nuclear stations and dealing with the radioactive waste at the end of their lives too.

British Energy, which runs most of the existing stations, has been looking for partners since February, talking to the big, foreign-owned utilities, France's EDF and Germany's EON.

Energy security figures large in the justification for nuclear. Tony Blair warned today that Britain's future gas supplies were at risk because they arelargely in the hands of countries like Russia, willing to turn the tap off as a political weapon.

And energy is not just electricity. It is heating homes and fuelling transport, too - both are big energy guzzlers. But the white paper is vague on policies to deal significantly with them.

And to cap it all, to the considerable consternation of officials, Mr Blair signed Britain up to an EU committment to source 20 per cent of all energy from renewables by 2020. It's a target the white paper admits means further measures that go beyond what has been proposed today.