Jan 7, 2024 at 1:53 PM Update: 2 minutes ago
The United Kingdom wants to be the first Western European country to produce the advanced fuel HALEU. The fuel, which consists of a form of enriched uranium, is needed to generate energy in the latest generation of nuclear power plants.
“This will be crucial for energy security at home and abroad,” British Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho said in a statement on Sunday. The British government is earmarking 300 million pounds for the necessary investments, equivalent to more than 348 million euros.
The measure is also intended to become less dependent on Russia. That is the only country where HALEU is currently commercially available.
It is expected that it will not take until the 1930s before the first HALEU factory in the northwest of England is operational. In the United States, HALEU is currently being produced in a factory of uranium enricher Urenco. But that does not happen there on a commercial scale.
The UK wants to obtain a quarter of its electricity from nuclear energy
The British government has previously set itself the target of obtaining a quarter of electricity production from nuclear energy by 2050. In this way, the country wants to become less dependent on gas and coal. This should also limit emissions of harmful greenhouse gases.
Last year, the government also announced new subsidies for the development of smaller nuclear reactors. They would be much cheaper and also faster to build.
More countries have plans to increase their use of nuclear energy. Not only the British, but also the US, France, the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates, for example, supported a call at the recent climate summit in Dubai to triple the amount of nuclear energy in the world by 2050.
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2024-01-07 12:53:53
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