The British government wants to increase the country’s energy security and therefore plans to build more nuclear power plants. London is also not concerned about the safety of nuclear energy and plans to allow modern modular reactors to be built everywhere.
London wants a park of modular reactors built next to large nuclear power plants. To this end, the government plans to relax the current rules. The new rules would allow modular reactors to be built virtually anywhere, the Times reported.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak believes nuclear energy can solve the country’s energy problems. Authoritarian countries also use oil and gas as an energy weapon. Britain now wants to reduce its dependence on fossil energy sources and achieve its ambitious climate targets.
Already in 2022 Boris Johnson’s government has published a new energy security strategy. According to the strategy, Britain will focus on nuclear energy, which is expected to provide a quarter of the country’s electricity by 2050. The country plans to build eight more nuclear power plants as part of this strategy
Sunak sticks to Johnson’s plan to get a quarter of electricity from nuclear. The eight planned nuclear power plants would have a total capacity of 14 gigawatts (GW), but would require 24 gigawatts. The government plans to fill this gap with modular reactors.
Therefore, the country needs new places where such modular reactors can be built. Developers are now asked to site such reactors according to new safety regulations.
According to the new regulations, modular reactors cannot be built in areas with more than five thousand people per square kilometer. Elsewhere, current restrictions will be greatly eased. Officials expect that developers will want to build modular reactors near industrial areas or in areas with qualified propulsion and modern infrastructure.
2024-01-12 13:56:00
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