The UK government’s chief scientific adviser, professor David King, has called for a revival of the country’s nuclear plant building programme as the central feature of a new energy policy devised around the commitment to cut carbon emissions. Although professor King also backed the implementation of a programme aimed at encouraging renewables, as outlined in the PIU’s energy review for the government, he pointed out that the nuclear decommissioning programme will remove 27 per cent of the UK’s electricity supply in the non-carbon sector, which, even if all the Kyoto aims are met, will leave the country in the same position as before on carbon emissions. A new nuclear build programme is therefore needed merely to avoid a large fossil-fuelled build. Such a programme, he stated, should run alongside a determined research effort aimed at discovering improved methods of nuclear waste disposal. We have to deal with nuclear waste whether or not we continue with nuclear power, he said.
Meanwhile British Energy and BNFL, Britain’s two biggest nuclear companies, have put aside a dispute over a long term reprocessing contract to make way for an agreement to run a one year assessment programme on the feasibility of the Westinghouse AP100 advanced pressurised water reactor. Along with the Candu reactor produced by Atomic Energy of Canada it is being considered as a potential replacement design for BE’s existing nuclear power plants when they reach the end of their planned operating lives – most of them before 2020. This is a long term plan – the chief executives of both nuclear companies have stressed that current UK energy prices make it impossible to justify invenstment in any type of new power station. Although the PIU energy review carried out for the prime minister ruled out public subsidies for new nuclear plants, the same report recommended that they should be exempted from the proposed carbon tax.