A new independent report out today has suggested that plans to build new nuclear power stations here in the UK risk wandering into the realms of fantasy. The study, The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2007 (pdf), shows that the self-styled "nuclear renaissance" currently being talked up by budding Mr Burns wannabes around the world is actually nothing of the sort.
Today there are 439 nuclear reactors operating in the world - five fewer than in 2002 - while 32 are said to be "under construction". Compare that to the 1990s when 52 were in a similar state. Here in the UK, where half our reactors were out of operation last month, nuclear accounts for just over 18 per cent of our electricity, compared with 22% four years ago.
To live up to the expectations being touted by the nuclear industry about its potential for hammering climate change, the study estimates that an extra 69 reactors would have to be planned, built and operating by 2015. That's roughly one every six weeks. In the following 10 years, 192 reactors (or about one every 18 days) would have to be built and connected to the grid. Given the horrendous construction delays experienced at the site of Europe's latest reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland, the chances of all these reactors every being built at all, let alone on time, are only marginally better than Spurs winning the Premiership this year. They really are that small.
Perhaps most damning for the chances of new reactors in the UK is the crippling lack of qualified engineers needed to build them. Mycle Schneider, the report's co-author, says: "I can't think of any other country where the crisis in engineering is more absolute. You don't educate engineers in Britain any more, let alone nuclear engineers."
So even though Gordon Brown, speaking at the CBI conference in London today, seems to think that nuclear could be part of "the next generation of sustainable and secure energy supplies", and while the likes of British Energy maintain that the future for nuclear is rosy, the truth is probably somewhat different. In fact, scratch away at the veneer of spin and you soon realise that the industry's nuclear ambitions remain radioactive pie in the sky.
