Wind power blows nuclear industry into the wilderness

In the 1960s nuclear power was the force behind Harold Wilson's white heat of technology. In the 1970s Tony Benn, no less, lauded it as the cheap and secure energy source of the future. It was given a new lease of life in the 1980s with the opening of the Sizewell B station and, even as late as the 1990s, its prospects still seemed healthy enough for the Tories to risk privatising it. But today, the outlook for nuclear power has rarely been bleaker.

Supporters of nuclear power were seeking to put a brave face yesterday on the Government's energy White Paper, which places renewable energy and energy efficiency at the top of the agenda. But Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, could not have spelt it out more clearly if she had appeared wearing one of those "Nuclear power, No thanks" badges that were all the rage with environmental campaigners 20 years ago. Nuclear power has had its day.

The White Paper pays lip service to the possibility that at some point in the future Britain might just need to build more nuclear stations. But the presumption now is that the country no longer requires nuclear power. "Its current economics make it an unattractive option for new, carbon-free generating capacity and there are also important issues of nuclear waste to be resolved," the White Paper states bluntly.

Contrast this with the much more positive reception given to nuclear power only a year ago in Downing Street's energy review. "The option of new investment in nuclear power needs to be kept open and practical measures taken to do this," said the report from the Cabinet Office performance and innovation unit.

"Nuclear power offers a zero-carbon source of electricity on a scale which, for each plant, is larger than that of any other option. If existing approaches both to low carbon electricity generation and energy security prove difficult to pursue cheaply then the case for using nuclear would be strengthened."

Ms Hewitt ducked the question yesterday of the circumstances in which she could conceive of approving a new nuclear power station. It is, say her officials, an eventuality she does not expect to arise.

Why, in government circles, has nuclear gone from being the route to a low-carbon economy to a pariah in the space of 12 months? The answer to a large extent lies in the collapse of the country's biggest nuclear power company, British Energy, which has only survived with the aid of a £3bn government bail-out.

This time last year, the nuclear industry looked to be on the point of renaissance. British Energy and the country's other nuclear generator, British Nuclear Fuels, had combined forces to promote a new generation of super-efficient reactors. Ten new stations costing £20bn would be built on the sites of existing nuclear reactors to minimise public opposition and cut the cost of connecting them to the National Grid.

The catastrophic meltdown at British Energy has changed all that. As Brian Wilson, the pro-nuclear Energy minister, ruefully observed: "There has never been a moratorium on new nuclear build but someone has got to want to do it and right now there is not exactly a queue forming at the door."

Quite the opposite, in fact. Last year, 23 per cent of the UK's electricity came from nuclear power stations. Unless something radical and unexpected happens to bring nuclear back into vogue, by 2020 its share of the electricity market will have dwindled to low single figures and by 2025 there will only be one nuclear plant still operating in Britain. As Friends of the Earth put it: "Goodbye nuclear, hello wind."