Pressing the nuclear button has never looked so attractive

We are at the dawn of a new nuclear age, and, this time, it's good news. Increasing the provision of nuclear energy is the best way to stop the lights going out and make the UK less dependent on foreign energy in the future.

By Tracy CorriganLast Updated: 6:22AM GMT 06 Mar 2009

It is also our only chance or hitting very optimistic renewable energy targets in 2020. But there are also important secondary benefits to be gained from the expansion of the nuclear programme: most importantly, it should, if we play our cards right, provide a very timely boost for British industry and British jobs.
Yet so far the UK's nuclear revival looks spectacularly un-British. In the next few weeks, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority will conduct an internet auction of three sites suitable for new nuclear power stations. Potential bidders include Vattenfall of Sweden and Iberdrola of Spain. Not so British.
There are already plans for eight new nuclear reactors in the UK by 2020, four from Ele/ctricite/ de France, which has recently bought British Energy, and another four from Germany's Eon and RWE. Their construction is likely to be undertaken by France's Areva and Westinghouse of the US. Again, not many Brits on the scene.
And Centrica, which is supposed to be buying a stake in the EDF-owned UK nuclear business, is now having second thoughts as a result of the sharp fall in energy prices since the deal was mooted.
The distinct lack of British names in the headlines, particularly if Centrica drops out of the picture, does not look encouraging, but it is less important than you might think. For a start, it is old news. The UK, once at the vanguard of the nuclear industry, let its expertise in designing plants wither away years ago.
More than 20 years after the Chernobyl disaster effectively killed the nuclear power industry, there is an urgent need to build new stations to replace old ones that are due to be decommissioned, as well as supplement diminishing oil and gas supplies. The first wave of nuclear power expansion will be mainly in the UK, where our former pre-eminence now means our plants are the oldest, and the most urgently in need of replacement. But demand for new plants is spreading throughout Europe, where there are similar worries about security of supply – and to the rest of the world.
And big British companies such as Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, as well as many smaller specialists, are well positioned to become the suppliers of choice in the re-emerging global nuclear industry. Many are already active overseas. Apart from actually building and running the reactors, there is almost nothing that can't be done by British companies, given their existing engineering and management expertise (thanks in part to the continuing demands of the British nuclear defence industry). And the experience they hope to gain in the burgeoning British programme will help them expand internationally. A big push is now needed to train a new generation of nuclear scientists and engineers to support the industry's renaissance, now it has finally come.
Sir John Rose, chief executive of Rolls Royce, tells an anecdote about a British politician bemoaning the lack of nuclear physics graduates in the UK, to which Sir John retorted that "if you are smart enough to be a nuclear physicist, you are also smart enough to know that there isn't a nuclear industry in this country". The industry's revival, at a time when jobs for graduates in the City and other service industries are hard to come by, should mean that it has its pick of some of the smartest graduates.
The government seems to get the idea, judging from Lord Mandelson's speech in Mansion House earlier this week: "We should never make a major regulatory or public procurement decision in the UK – on transport, energy or anything else – without asking whether there are supply chain opportunities for UK-based companies to compete for. And if there are, and if it makes long-term economic sense for the UK to compete for them, we have to equip ourselves to do so. Without closing our market and while safeguarding the taxpayer's long-term value of money... Others ask these questions routinely. In Britain we don't ask them enough."
He's absolutely right, though backing British companies' participation while continuing to trumpet free trade and eschew economic nationalism requires a certain finesse. In practice, the government probably doesn't need to intervene much at all.
Foreign companies are about to commit a vast amount of capital to these very long-term projects. It would suit them quite well to have the interests of British politicians – through the creation of British jobs – tied to their own. The opportunity to recreate a highly-skilled British nuclear industry is there for the taking.