Nuclear plan needed in UK to help meet emissions targets

New nuclear power plants are needed in the UK to meet goals to cut carbon emissions, MPs have have warned.

The government is hopeful that private sector companies will deliver reactors on time and on budget, despite delays and cost overruns in other countries.

A report by the Energy and Climate Change Committee has raised concerns that if the planned series of reactors are not delivered on time, there will be an urgent lack of available energy for industries and homes.

The committee's report says that a failure to get new nuclear reactors built on time could leave the UK relying on more gas for electricity, risking the security of energy supplies as the country could be more dependent on imports.

If the new projects are not successful it will undermine investor confidence in the nuclear sector and make it difficult, or impossible, to get any further reactors built, the report warns.

The latest data from the Department of Energy and Climate Change showed that almost 30 per cent of the UK's electricity now comes from low-carbon sources, and the lion's share of that - at over 70 per cent of the clean energy total - comes from nuclear. The government's climate advisers have said that the electricity sector needs to be largely decarbonised by 2030 if the UK is to be on track to meet legally binding targets to reduce carbon emissions by 80 per cent on 1990 levels by 2050.

However, all but one of the UK's existing nuclear plants are set to close by 2023, and while there are plans for a new fleet to be online by 2025, the MPs said they had been told the proposals were ambitious and even unrealistic.

One of the key concerns is the guaranteed price suppliers will be paid for low-carbon electricity from nuclear plants under long-term contracts which aim to give investors the certainty to pay the high capital costs of ­nuclear power.