State intervention in nuclear power?
A report by former UK energy minister, Malcolm Wicks, appointed by Gordon Brown as his special representative for international energy issues, says 'the time for market innocence is over' and that the Government needs to do more to safeguard electricity and gas supplies.
The UK should therefore, says the report, take a more 'interventionist' approach to ensure new nuclear reactors are built — and in greater numbers — than currently planned. The publication Energy Security: a national challenge in a changing world, recommended that the UK should generate 30-40% of its electricty from nuclear power stations by 2030.
Other recommendations from the report include that the UK should remain at the forefront in developing and demonstrating CCS technology.
What do you think this means for the UK nuclear industry?
New Nuclear Power Stations
Building should start right now and the Govt should bulldoze this through, sweeping aside any planning issues where building is alongside existing nuclear plants
Clive
New Nuclear
I'm in agreement with Malcolm Wicks. The UK can only continue to use fossil sources for so long. We need a nuclear baseload and, as happens so often, the views of the very few outweigh those of the many in restricting building of power generation.
I do believe that we should continue to develop CCS etc. but this can only be a stop-gap measure before we must change to a more long-term and sustainable generation technology.
We should have been building new nuclear a few years back...
Ian T