PM’s plan for seven nuclear stations

New ‘development vehicle’ will slash planning red tape to increase Britain’s energy self-reliance

BRITAIN could build up to seven new nuclear power stations as part of a radical expansion of homegrown energy following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the Business Secretary says today.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Kwasi Kwarteng says “there is a world where we have six or seven sites in the UK” by 2050, as part of a dramatic push for self-reliance.

Ministers have agreed to set up a new “development vehicle”, called Great British Nuclear, to identify sites, cut through red tape to speed up the planning process and bring together private firms to run each site.

As a first step, Boris Johnson is preparing to announce plans to significantly expand the existing commitment to back one new large-scale nuclear power station by 2024.

The Prime Minister and Mr Kwarteng have been battling with Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, to secure funding for new plants, in a row first disclosed by this newspaper a fortnight ago. However, a meeting between Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak on Wednesday is said to have ended in agreement on expanding Britain’s existing fleet of nuclear plants, all but one of which are due to be decommissioned by 2030.

The energy security strategy, which is to be unveiled on Thursday, is expected to commit the Government to supporting the construction of at least two new large-scale plants by 2030, in addition to small modular reactors. A government source said: “Nuclear will definitely look larger in the British energy mix by the end of this decade.”

Mr Johnson and Mr Kwarteng then want to more than treble the country’s existing seven gigawatts of nuclear capacity to 24 GW by 2050.

Mr Kwarteng acknowledges that in France, which now generates the majority of its electricity using nuclear power stations, “it has cost a fortune, but it has given them a measure of independence which is envied, frankly, by other people on the continent, by the Germans, for example, and the Italians”.

Separately, The Telegraph has been told that Mr Johnson used a roundtable with renewable energy firms last week to urge the industry to build a “colossal” offshore wind farm in the Irish Sea within 12 months.

The Prime Minister is said to have told industry leaders that he has “a dream” that a giant floating wind farm could provide “gigawatts of energy and do it within a year”, according to a government source. Nuclear and offshore wind energy are expected to be at the centre of the document currently being finalised by No 10. A separate row has been sparked by Mr Kwarteng’s push for a dramatic expansion of onshore wind farms, following a moratorium imposed by David Cameron in 2015.

The strategy is expected to raise the prospect of relaxing planning laws in England to make it easier to build turbines on land.

However, in the face of significant opposition from ministers and backbenchers, Mr Kwarteng acknowledges: “Any movement has to have a large measure of local consent.”

Mr Kwarteng’s remarks appear to backtrack from his recent declaration that, while there “were quite understandable political reasons that people

A US energy developer linked to Elon Musk is in talks with the Government to build a fleet of small nuclear reactors across the UK.

Last Energy wants to build its first “mini-nuclear” power plant by 2025 and has identified its first site in Wales.

The company intends to spend £1.4billion on 10 reactors by the end of the decade. Its goal is to build “hundreds of plants” across the UK, sources close to the company said.

The proposals are a direct challenge to Rolls-Royce, which is racing to secure approval for its own Britishmade fleet of mini reactors.

Last Energy is one of 12 select investments by the start-up backer Gigafund.

Three of these – SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Neuralink – are founded by Mr Musk, 50, the world’s richest person and chief executive of the electric car maker Tesla.

Luke Nosek, Gigafund’s managing partner, sits on the board of SpaceX, the rocket company which made its maiden civilian voyage in September last year.

Mr Musk, worth an estimated $287billion (£220billion), has made little secret of his support for nuclear energy. Last month, he said on Twitter: “It is now extremely obvious that Europe should restart dormant nuclear power stations and increase power output of existing ones. This is critical to national and international security.

“For those who (mistakenly) think this is a radiation risk, pick what you think is the worst location. I will travel there [and] eat locally grown food on TV. I did this in Japan many years ago, shortly after Fukushima.

“Radiation risk is much, much lower than most people believe.”

Last Energy met with Government aides last week to discuss plans. Its reactors are considerably smaller than those of competitors and are forecast to cost £50 million and are prefabricated before being transported by 80 lorries, company insiders said.

Each plant is the size of a football pitch and the height of a double-decker bus – roughly half the size of rival reactors proposed by Rolls.

Representatives from Last Energy are believed to have told Whitehall officials that they want the UK to be the company’s “test bed” and insist that its plants will be up and running years before Rolls-Royce.

It is believed to have asked the Government for a commitment to pay £75 per MWh, considerably less than the £92.50 that the UK is locked in to paying the much larger Hinkley Point C nuclear plant once it is up and running.

Rolls-Royce is throwing its engineering prowess behind so-called small modular reactors (SMR). Last year it received more than £200million in taxpayer support to develop the plants.

SMRs use nuclear fission but are smaller than conventional counterparts. About 16pc of UK electricity generation comes from nuclear power.

Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, has supported Rolls-Royce’s plans, saying that the SMRs offer Britain’s energy sector a chance to “cut costs and build more quickly, ensuring we can bring clean electricity to people’s homes and cut our already-dwindling use of volatile fossil fuels even further”.

Boris Johnson is also thought to be a supporter, discussing plans for a new nuclear energy strategy with industry executives at a meeting last month as part of wider efforts to wean the West off Russian fossil fuel.