Energy and Climate Secretary Ed Miliband also set out an “ambitious” new policy for the transition to clean-coal generation, and confirmed targets for generating 30% of electricity by renewable sources by 2020.
The announcements were coupled with moves in England and Wales aimed at speeding up planning decisions on new energy projects.
However, the SNP Government remains implacably opposed to the nuclear expansion, and Mr Miliband’s announcement has opened up the debate over whether Scotland should put so much emphasis on renewable energy schemes.
Labour leader Iain Gray, who has the Torness nuclear power station in his East Lothian constituency, accused the SNP of tossing aside 18,000 construction jobs and millions of pounds in investment through dogmatic opposition to nuclear power.
He said: “Several new nuclear power stations are to get the go-ahead, which will create half a million new job opportunities, but Scotland will lose out because of the SNP’s incompetence and dogma.”
He added: “The rest of Britain will be less reliant on energy supplies from overseas and there will be substantial environmental benefits but the SNP have let Scotland down. Instead we will have to buy in electricity or rely on coal and gas.
“The SNP have got it wrong – even Alex Salmond’s own Council of Economic Advisors are telling them, but the SNP won’t listen.”
David Mundell MP, the Conservative shadow secretary of state for Scotland, countered that renewables alone would not be enough.
He added: “Alex Salmond’s position on nuclear power means that Scotland will end up being importers of nuclear energy from England. Once again, he is guilty of hypocrisy – on the one hand calling for a nuclear power-free Scotland but on the other pleading for nuclear power headquarters to stay in Scotland.”
Nine of the new sites are in England, including three in Cumbria, and the 10th is in Anglesey, North Wales.
The first new stations will be available by 2018 but by then none will be built in Scotland, where planning laws are in the hands of the Holyrood Government.
Mike Weir MP, SNP spokesman on energy, said that Ed Miliband’s cheerleading for the nuclear industry was well known but trampling on planning laws was taking his obsession to a new level.
He said that a majority of MSPs opposed nuclear power and that Scottish Labour was in any case split on the issue.
“Labour must recognise that there is no appetite and absolutely no need for new nuclear power stations north of the Border – with their horrendous waste problems and soaring decommissioning costs,” said Mr Weir.
“Right now Scotland is capitalising on our vast clean, green energy potential, instead of following London Labour’s blind faith in costly, dirty, dangerous and unreliable nuclear power.”
Mr Miliband said significantly more generating capacity was needed in the long term to meet the UK’s low-carbon energy challenge, partly because of the intermittency of wind generation.
One-third of future generating capacity must be given consent and built by 2025, said the minister, adding: “While there are already proposals to build more energy infrastructure, more is needed to bring about the shift to a low-carbon future.”
Meanwhile, the prospects of Scottish Power’s Longannet station in Fife becoming the UK leader in clean coal technology improved with announcement that two rival companies had fallen out of the bidding process for a pilot project.
The ScottishPower design involves retrofitting the technology to the Longannet station and pumping the carbon through redundant oil pipes to the seabed below the North Sea. ScottishPower welcomed the announcement that a decision on the bids would be made in March, but local LibDem MP Willie Rennie warned that any delay to the delivery deadlines for a working scheme might mean Longannet losing out to the Kingsnorth scheme.
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