A Place to Stand

The earliest a new nuclear reactor is likely to be running is 2018, as gaining consent from safety and planning authorities is expected to take five years and construction another five.

This is unlikely to prevent blackouts since most of Britain's reactors will have closed by then as will the high emission coal generators since new EU rules come in in 2015.

The EU is, at least officially, pushing for acceptance across the EU of each other's reactor licencing standards. We could quite easily decide that designs which have been licenced & working in France for decades would work under the laws of physics on this side of the Channel too. We could do the same for Canadian designs if we thought Canada as reliable as France :-) Building new reactors at the sites of current reactors, which makes economic sense since it means the sites don't have to be greenfielded, the distribution infrastructure is already there & so is the trained manpower.

There is no excuse whatsoever for spending 5 years, or indeed more than 5 weeks doing paperwork before actually allowing the builders to build. On the other hand it does ensure gainful employment for legions of parasites & is likely to double the cost & give plenty of time for introducing lots of useless & expensive regulations. The eco-fascists, having promised repeatedly that nuclear is expensive & slow to build will do anything to artificially fulfil their prophecy but we know that reactors can be built in 4 years because it has been done & can produce power at 1.3p a unit because it also has been done.