THE Government's announcement on the planned future for British nuclear power has been met with support and criticism in Cumbria.

Grant Shapps, the secretary of state for energy security and net zero, promised in London that the UK will lead a ‘renaissance’ on nuclear energy.

The government has floated a potential £20billion plan backing the development of smaller-scale nuclear technology projects across the UK.

Ministers promised grants of up to £157million to several projects across the UK, as well as a separate competition for businesses to develop nuclear reactors.

From today, companies will be able to sign up with a new arm’s-length government body called Great British Nuclear.

Promising the ‘beginning of a new nuclear age, a renaissance’, Shapps said: “We have learned the lessons of the past... the developer-led approach of the late 90s has just not delivered.”

He promised that under Great British Nuclear (GBN) there would be a ‘more active but arms-length approach’ from the Government as it bids to reach net zero by 2050.

The idea is to design nuclear power plants which are small enough to be manufactured in factories and then transported to where they are going to be used.

Such reactors are planned to be built by Rolls Royce on land near Sellafield.

Cumbria has a rich nuclear history, but no plans to invest in the county have been made as of yet.

Julie Minns, the Labour parliamentary candidate for Carlisle said it was a 'slap in the face' for Cumbria not to have investment announced, and added: “If Cumbria is to continue to be the UK’s primary site for the storage and disposal of legacy nuclear waste then it should also be front and centre of plans for the UK’s new nuclear future.

“But the chaos of successive Conservative governments has put that future at risk.

“Plans set out by the last Labour government would have seen a fleet of new nuclear power plants in operation by now.

“Instead, David Cameron’s government scrapped Labour’s plans and set back our transition to low-carbon energy back by well over a decade.

“Rather than setting out a vision for the future, the Conservative’s Great British Nuclear is a symbol of their past failures."

Gavin Hawton, the Green Party candidate for Carlisle, said: "The solution to the cost-of-living crisis lies in unlocking the vast potential of renewable energy.

"In Cumbria, we have an enormous opportunity to create thousands of jobs while providing cheap and clean energy. 

"Do we really want to burden future generations with hazardous nuclear waste stored under Cumbrian soil?

"We need to think carefully about the path that safeguards our environment and the well-being of future generations."

John Stevenson, the Conservative MP for Carlisle, attended the speech along with Cumbrian colleagues Mark Jenkinson, Trudy Harrison, and Simon Fell.

He said people shouldn’t ‘read too much into’ Cumbria not featuring in a list of initial investment sites, which included Chester, Warrington, and Preston.

He added: “In Grant Shapp’s speech he recognised Sellafield and Cumbria’s future prospects.

“It’s more about the opportunities that GBN offers for the nuclear industry going forward.

“We have many friends in the industry that like to think that Cumbria will be a key player in all this.

“They want to see where will be a potential SMR player, and where they will put them.

“The logical place is existing sites, and that’s where Cumbria comes into its own, they’ll have immediate customers with Rolls Royce.

“I think it will be high up in the list of places that they will build SMRs, and that was seen by having four Cumbrian MPs attending the event.”