Mark Gilbert’s Blog

I don’t really know whether to be happy or sad that the proposal for EDF to buy British Energy has fallen through. British Energy using their eight nuclear power stations produce 20% of the UK’s energy, with the other 80% being mostly produced in the other 173 large power stations across the country.

I am pleased the deal has gone wrong because I’m not sure I like the idea of another large chuck of UK energy producing capacity being at the mercy of a foreign company. For example of how this can affect us look at what has happened to UK gas prices since we started importing much of our gas from the former Soviet states.

I am sad this deal has turned sour because EDF may have given the British Nuclear industry the kick up the arse and the pair of balls it sorely needs. At this point I think it is fairly clear, we need more nuclear power. France uses nuclear for most of their energy needs and do they suffer from soaring energy prices right now? No. Surprisingly we were ahead of the game 50 years ago, we were one of the first countries to invest in large scale nuclear power production, but have since fallen behind a lot of other developed countries when it comes to nuclear energy production.

If we had kept pushing forward with nuclear energy research we may now have even better waste processing facilities than we currently do at Sellafield, and be a few steps closer to the holy grail of energy production Nuclear Fusion.

Cheers