BNFL chief says UK must encourage new nuke plants
Date: 10-Sep-01
Country: UK
Author: Matthew Jones
"Nuclear energy must continue to play a significant role in the UK's baseload generation," said Norman Askew in a speech to industry executives in London.
"Without nuclear's contribution this country cannot have a continued secure, diverse and environmentally-friendly energy supply", said Askew.
His comments came as BNFL, one of the world's largest nuclear groups with a turnover of 2.06 billion pounds ($2.98 billion) in 1999/2000, made a submission last week to the government's energy review.
BNFL says it does not intend to build new nuclear power stations itself, although it believes its reactor designs could be used by others.
In June the government declared a root-and-branch review of Britain's energy policy to 2050, looking at tackling global warming while securing mixed and reliable energy supplies at competitive prices.
The government has already expressed concern about the possibility of Britain becoming overly dependent on any one energy source.
Last week, Energy Minister Brian Wilson reiterated those worries when he told an Aberdeen industry conference that Britain faces being 70 percent dependent on gas for electricity generation by 2020 with 90 percent of it being imported.
BNFL'S CALL
In BNFL's submission to the Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU), which is running the energy review, the company said retaining nuclear's contribution to power generation - about 23 percent against a third each for gas and coal - is the only way to make sure Britain doesn't run short of electricity.
If fresh nuclear capacity is not built, nuclear's generating capacity will fall to five percent in 2020 from 23 percent now, the company said.
BNFL has already started shutting down its ageing Magnox power stations and plans to switch the last one off by 2021, leaving only the more modern reactors of privatised British Energy running.
BNFL said such a decline would make it impossible to meet targets of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, blamed by many scientists for global warming, by 23 percent below 1990 levels by 2010.
It said said the government needs to modify its climate change mechanism so that nuclear generation benefits from emitting virtually no greenhouse gases. It said planning and regulatory approval should be improved and a review of long-term electricity contracts was also needed.
If the energy review, expected to be completed by the end of the year, advocates the building of new nuclear generation it will go against the approach taken across much of Europe.
Germany and Sweden have opted to phase out nuclear energy and most other EU states are not actively developing the power source. Even France, where nuclear power accounts for nearly 70 percent of its electricity, is cutting back programmes and considering other energy sources.
Some analysts doubt the economics of nuclear could be made to work in a liberalised energy market characterised by tumbling energy prices given the high cost of building nuclear power stations compared with other plants.
