WHY NEW NUCLEAR?

New nuclear power stations will play a key role in meeting the UK's future energy needs and reducing its carbon emissions.

Why we need new nuclear power stations - the challenge

Moving to a low carbon economy while maintaining affordable and secure supplies of energy represents one of the biggest challenges the UK faces. It is a challenge that the energy industry is working hard to address.

Under European legislation, around 30 per cent of the UK's existing coal and oil-fired power stations are due to close by 2015. In addition, older, existing nuclear stations are already closing and according to current plans most will have closed by 2020 as they reach the end of their operational lives.

Despite ongoing efforts to improve energy efficiency, demand for electricity is expected to increase and if power plants are not replaced, the UK could face a major shortfall in electricity supply.

With many power stations set to close over the next 10-15 years, the UK will require between 20-30GW of new generating capacity by 2020.

Why we need new nuclear power stations - our solution

Replacing this shortfall in generation will require an investment programme running to hundreds of billions of pounds. Concentrating on a single technology or fuel would mean all plants of that technology could be affected single unfavourable market development or temporary shortage of any one fuel source, including wind.

Any investment must also help to reduce carbon intensity and fledgling technologies need to be balanced with tried and tested methods of low carbon generation. We see nuclear playing an important part in this transition as part of a broad mix of generation technologies including renewables, gas and coal generation.

Nuclear power is a well-established, internationally proven, low carbon technology capable of providing large scale, baseload, generating capacity in the near future. Its total lifetime carbon impact is comparable with other low carbon technologies such as wind power (Source: IAEA).

This takes account of emissions associated with construction and decommissioning of nuclear plants and with mining, transportation, enrichment, fuel manufacture and spent fuel storage.

In addition, the uranium required to fuel existing and potential new stations is readily available and can be found in politically stable countries in different geographic locations to the sources of gas, coal and oil supplies.