In an interview with The Telegraph, Kwasi Kwarteng said that “there is a world where we have six or seven locations in the UK” by 2050 as part of a push for self-reliance. Ministers agreed to set up a development vehicle, the Great British Nuclear, for site tracking, bureaucracy to speed up the design process and bring together private companies to manage each site. As a first step, Boris Johnson is preparing to announce plans to significantly expand its existing commitment to support a new large-scale nuclear power plant by 2024. The Prime Minister and Mr. Kwarteng are fighting with Chancellor Rishi Sunak to secure funding for new factories – a controversy first uncovered by The Telegraph. However, a meeting between Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak on Wednesday is said to have resulted in an agreement to extend Britain’s existing nuclear power plants, except for one, to be decommissioned by 2030. The energy security strategy, due to be unveiled on Thursday, is expected to commit the government to supporting the construction of at least two new large-scale power plants by 2030, in addition to small modular reactors. A government source said: “Nuclear power will definitely be higher in the British energy mix by the end of this decade.” Mr. Johnson and Mr. Kwarteng then want to more than triple the country’s existing seven gigawatts of nuclear power to 24 GW by 2050. The Minister for Business acknowledged that in France, which now generates most of its electricity using nuclear power plants, “it cost them a fortune … but it gave them a measure of independence that other people on the continent are genuinely jealous of – from the Germans, for example, and the Italians “.
