March 17, 2009

scientists comment on Gordon Brown’s nuclear speech

The PM has pledged new support for nuclear power in the UK, and spoke about its role globally.

Dr Susan Ion, Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said:

“Clearly the PM’s enthusiasm for nuclear energy as a means to both combat climate change and give security of affordable secure energy supplies is welcome, albeit a bit late in terms of the UK’s own energy issues. Although the prospect of 32+ units per year for the next 40 years is a big ask in terms of engineering and global supply chain resources, it is possible with a positive will. In the industry’s early heyday of the 1980s, units were being delivered on the global stage at a rate of 30 per year. It will, however, take some years to get to this sort of deployment.

“The supply chain is only just beginning to mobilise after a generation of stagnation in the western developed world; the emerging Chinese and Indian markets are just beginning to take off and many nations ‘new’ to nuclear energy such as the UAE have real plans and supporting policies in place. The real questions are not whether such large programmes can be supported and sustained but rather where does the UK stand in both the demand queue and in the ability of its manufacturing base to compete in a growing global supply chain? Here the Government needs to give much more attention to the practical measures needed to underpin policy and planning, and give certainty to a nervous investor, utility and supplier base. Not to do so will jeopardise our future energy supplies and deny UK manufacturers and engineers a generation’s worth of business worth billions of pounds to the UK economy.”