The UK government appears to be working on a plan to revive the country's nuclear industry and is preparing the ground by considering a fast track approvals process for new nukes.
Internal DTI documents including energy policy briefings to ministers leaked to New Scientist magazine make it plain that the UK government has been preparing for some time a policy of encouraging the growth of a major programme of new nuclear power stations. In practical terms, the DTI appears to want to speed up the licensing of new reactors and is discussing ways to soften up public opposition to nuclear power.
According to the leaked documents Britain intends to follow the US lead and bring to an end to the slump suffered by the West's nuclear power industry since the Chernobyl accident 16 years ago. In February, the US energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, announced plans to build a new nuclear plant by 2010, aided by a "more efficient, effective and predictable" licensing process.
The discovery that the DTI is preparing to do something similar comes a few months after the British government's Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU) published a comprehensive review of energy policy. This recommended that the nuclear power option should be retained against the possibility that renewable energy sources and increased energy efficiency fail to produce the necessary pollution-free generating capacity and lower demand.
It now seems likely that the DTI has been working hard behind the scenes to make sure that a White Paper on energy policy due out next year will reflect its ambitions. But some experts regard the DTI's stance as flawed. Gordon MacKerron, an economist involved in preparing the PIU energy report, points out that in Britain a nuclear power station that could compete economically with other forms of energy has never been built.
Perhaps of most significance are DTI plans to change the slow approvals process that resulted in a fifteen year wait for Sizewell B, the UK's last new nuclear plant. Regulations on reactor safety may be overhauled so that new designs can be licensed more quickly and cheaply. There are at least three types of reactor under consideration, in all of which the state-owned company (BNFL) has a stake.
Two - the AP1000 and a smaller version, the AP600 - are advanced light water reactors being developed by Westinghouse, which is now owned by BNFL. Others include the much smaller high temperature reactor, the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, which is under development in South Africa, and the Canadian heavy water reactor Candu ACR. The energy policy briefing argues that power companies will not invest in building any of these reactors if it takes years to win safety approval. "In a competitive electricity market this adds significantly to both capital risk and economic cost," it says.
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