Scotland had a pioneering role in nuclear power, at Dounreay in the far north and Chapelcross in the far south. <\/p>\n
But the SNP Scottish government has put a planning block on approval of any new developments, for environmental reasons. It doesn’t like nuclear waste.<\/p>\n
That means it loses out on the immense investments which are going to the south of England. <\/p>\n
But new large nuclear was only likely to be built in the south, near the largest population centres.<\/p>\n
The future of Britain’s electricity supply is looking to the north to provide wind power, with the next generation of offshore wind at scale around the Scottish coast, where the wind blows more strongly and more reliably than the southern North Sea.<\/p>\n
Getting that power to the homes and businesses where it is needed requires heavy and controversial investment in grid links, with their pylons, cables and sub-stations. <\/p>\n
These can carry wind power south when the wind blows, and nuclear power from England when it doesn’t.<\/p>\n
Smaller nuclear plants, which are being put into the mix, could be constructed in more locations, and that may put pressure on the Scottish government to ease its restrictions and allow some baseload electricity supply to be located closer to home. <\/p>\n
But, for now, it remains firmly opposed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scotland had a pioneering role in nuclear power, at Dounreay in the far north and Chapelcross in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-173081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114659391608663678","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}