The UK may build up to seven nuclear power stations within the next three decades in order to secure domestic energy supply and cut dependence on energy imports, Kwasi Kwarteng, UK Secretary of the State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, said on Sunday.
“There is a world where we have six or seven [nuclear] sites in the UK,” Kwarteng told The Sunday Telegraph newspaper. He specified that this should be done by 2050.
According to the publication, the government is set on launching a new development mechanism, dubbed Great British Nuclear. Its goal is to identify sites for the new plants, to speed up the planning and certification process and find reliable private companies to run the sites.
The UK is scheduled to announce its new energy security strategy next Thursday and, according to the Telegraph, it will push plans to construct at least two new full-scale nuclear power plants by 2030, as well as a number of small modular reactors.