The UK has been extensively investing in offshore wind farms but also needs a reliable source of power when the winds don't blow. Nuclear power plants offer a low-carbon option but between commissioning and operation, the project could last years, if not a decade.
GBN has been tasked with increasing nuclear energy's contribution to the energy mix in the UK to 25 percent in the next two and half decades. Currently, the number stands at 15 percent but will drop considerably as plants are shut down toward the end of the decade. Small modular reactors such as those developed by Rolls-Royce offer a quicker way to set up nuclear plants, but at 300 MW, they are much smaller in capacity than conventional ones. The recent progress made by China in putting together aShapps added that the government was stepping in to add more certainty to the nuclear energy market since previous approaches had failed.
Critics of nuclear energy, however, have called this a "bad bet" and pointed out that time-consuming projects take resources away from renewable projects that can be set up quickly. Shapps also pointed out that the funding set aside was not a "spending commitment," and it could take six years to even make a decision on giving the green light to projects,