In an interview with the London Daily Telegraph newspaper, UK Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Secretary (Cabinet Minister) Kwasi Kwarteng has confirmed that the country would launch a major new nuclear energy thrust in the near future. Although the details would only be revealed with the release of the country’s new Energy Security Strategy (expected on Thursday), he did outline some of its aspects.
“There is a realisation across Government that we could do more on nuclear,” he told the newspaper’s Sunday political editor Edward Malnick. “With energy, you’re thinking maybe 30, even 40 years [ahead]. If we fast forward to 2050, there is a world where we have six or seven [nuclear power plant] sites in the UK. That isn’t going to happen in the next two years, but it’s definitely something that we can aspire to.”
Since the outbreak of the Russo-Ukraine War, and the imposition of Western sanctions on Russia (which in the case of the UK included a ban on buying Russian oil), energy security had become a major concern for the UK (and many other countries). Kwarteng pointed out that France had an enviable level of energy independence, because of its heavy investment in, and reliance on, nuclear power, although this had “cost a fortune”.
Further, there was the issue of climate change. He pointed out that nuclear technology was the third point on the Government’s ‘10-Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution’, released in 2020.
New nuclear programmes in the UK would involve both large nuclear power plants (NPP) and small modular reactors (SMRs). In the case of the latter, should the technology prove successful, up to ten could be deployed on a single site, to generate power equivalent to a large NPP.
To facilitate this expansion of nuclear energy, the UK would create a special development vehicle, currently being referred to as ‘Great British Nuclear’. This was likely to be a State-owned company, similar to HS2 Limited, which was building the HS2 high-speed railway line in England. Great British Nuclear would identify sites for NPPs and SMRs, accelerate the planning process by cutting bureaucracy, and facilitate the creation of private-sector consortia to actually run the nuclear facilities.
“The Prime Minister [Boris Johnson] said, in terms of the energy generation mix, we could see maybe a quarter of that being nuclear,” noted Kwarteng. “I’d say 15 to 25 percent. But obviously in the first three years you’re not going to suddenly have six new nuclear stations in three years [sic]. It’s physically impossible to do that.”