Kwarteng warns against ‘turning our back on nuclear when we need it’

It would be “odd” for the UK to dismiss new nuclear power, the energy minister has admitted, amid mounting speculation that small modular reactors (SMRs) will be one of the technologies receiving support when the long-delayed energy white paper is published.

Energy minister Kwasi Kwarteng told a fringe meeting at the virtual Conservative party conference yesterday (5 October), organised by the thinktank Centre for Policy Studies, that it is “likely” the UK government is going to take more of an interest in nuclear.

He said: “We will need a lot more electricity generation and it would be odd to turn our back on nuclear when we need it.”

Kwarteng also highlighted the “huge potential” for developing SMRs, relatively cheap mini-reactors that can be rolled out on smaller sites using modular construction techniques.

“To turn our backs on that is a very big call because clearly a lot of innovation is happening in the nuclear supply chain.”

He said support for civil nuclear would also bolster the UK’s atomic weapons capability, adding:  “The kind of skills you would need in military and defence space can be honed and delivered in the civil nuclear space: there are synergies between the two.”

But acknowledging that issues remain about how to fund new nuclear development, he said “conversations” are “ongoing” within government about how it will be delivered.

Hitachi has recently abandoned plans to build a new nuclear station at Wylfa in north Wales after it was unable to persuade the UK government to provide more financial support for the project, while EDF is pushing the Treasury to approve the application of the Regulated Asset Base financing infrastructure model for its proposed plant at Sizewell in East Anglia.

Kwarteng’s backing for nuclear was echoed by Phillip Dunne, the Conservative chair of the House of Commons environment audit committee, who also spoke at the fringe event.

There is “not much choice” about whether the UK should deploy nuclear if it wants to meet its target of net zero emissions by 2050, he said: “If we are going to head to net zero, it’s hard to see how renewables can achieve that unless we are going to use nuclear capacity.”

He said that while opportunities for increased renewable power are “exponential”, it is “inconceivable” that the UK will be able to generate sufficient baseload electricity without bringing forward more plants.

He also said that the construction of new nuclear stations next to sites, which were used for the first generation of plants, would help to ease their passage through the planning system.

“We are talking about replacing existing reactors with new ones on specific sites, therefore the whole political battle going through the planning process is going to be vastly reduced.

“From a land use point of view, you are not talking about the kinds of delays you inevitably get from a contentious planning issue. With modular reactors, if they were to go on new sites, you have not got the planning challenge of being accepted by a local community.”