In the UK, there are plans to build 10 or more new nuclear power stations over the next 15 years.
# Nuclear power is safest way to make electricity, according to study – Washington Post
# Nuclear power in the UK – Wikipedia
With the new Government in place, Mr Huhne (LibDem) a previous Energy Secretary, has confirmed these new nuclear power stations will go ahead but will be totally financed from the private sector.
EDF and E.ON are actively planning new construction and this will create thousands of new jobs in the nuclear power industry.
It is essential that new nuclear power stations are built as time is running out for the use of burning fossil fuels.
More action is essential and unless hard decisions relating to severe cutting back of the use of carbon fuels takes place, then mankind will reap the severe consequences in the years to come.
Everyone is affected by this problem and we need to be prepared for life style changes in years to come. (Is carbon rationing on the horizon?)
Background: Strategies of different countries worldwide vary greatly depending on forces between the highly controversial environmental and commercial needs and opinions.
Currently there are 10 active and 13 closed nuclear power stations and all the presently active nuclear power stations will be closed by 2025. Compare this to France which believes in the value of nuclear power and which has 60 nuclear power stations run by EDF (Electricitee De France) and Germany with 17.
The question over the past 15 years has been how to generate sufficient electricity to meet the needs of the homes and industries. Pressure from environmental and ethical groups has caused delays in attempts to find alrenative solutions. Wind, wave, solar, bio and hydro power have been researched extensively.
Finally the realisation in the UK is that energy requirements are far greater than what can be generated from natural resources.
Which means that 10 new nuclear power stations are in proposal or planning stages to be built over the next 15 years in the UK. Together with decommissioning of old power stations, this will represent massive opportunities within the operations of nuclear power in the UK.
In November 2009, the UK Government published a draft National Policy Statement for Energy Infrastructure. The Foreward by the Secretary of State, Ed Miliband, sums up the situation as follows.
He said [1]:
“The country faces a major energy challenge over the next decades: we need to overhaul our power infrastructure.
The threat of climate change means we need to make a transition from a
system that relies heavily on high-carbon fossil fuels, to a radically different system that includes nuclear, renewable and clean coal power.
Change is also needed for energy security. In a world where our North Sea reserves begin to decline, it is not just climate change that leads us towards greater diversity in our energy supplies. A more diverse energy mix is a more secure energy mix, less vulnerable to fluctuations in the availability of any one fuel.
This transformation has begun. We are increasing our use of low-carbon energy sources and we already have more generation capacity under construction or with planning permission than is currently due to go offline by the middle of the next decade.”
[1] PDF report – article removed. Click here for latest DECC news.