The UK government has released a list of eleven sites in England and Wales where new nuclear power stations may be built. Its initial approval of these sites follows nominations by companies interested in building the power stations.
The sites were nominated by EDF, E.On and RWE, together with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which owns the sites of the UK's older generation of Magnox reactors, many of which are no longer in operation. Nine of the locations have previously housed nuclear reactors, while the other two are close to the Sellafield fuel processing facility in Cumbria, England, where a small nuclear plant, Calder-Hall, widely acknowledged as the world's first commercial plant, was built. When it closed in 2003 campaigners and protesters gathered at the site to proclaim the end of the nuclear era.
The NDA is currently auctioning land on these sites while a month-long public consultation period takes place. The intention is that the first of the new reactors should be operational by 2018.
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