Are the stars finally aligning to get the new 'golden age' of nuclear power off the ground?

Presidential visits, like investment summits, involve a blizzard of claims about companies set to spend squillions in the UK.

- Nils Pratley

Some “commitments” are merely extrapolations of current trends. Some can be filed under “believe it when you see it”. Some involve throwing everything into the mix and producing an implausibly precise number for the “economic value” to the UK. A few pledges are genuinely new, but scepticism should be the default setting.

How to view this week’s “landmark commitments” by UK and US firms to build new nuclear power plants in the UK? Actually, this may be one of those rare occasions when one shouldn’t be too cynical.

The announcement deserves attention because it was aimed at one of the biggest impediments to the “new golden age” of nuclear energy: the sheer time it takes to get new projects off the ground.

Under the US-UK agreement, each country would recognise the other’s regulatory and safety regime, which should cut duplication in the assessment phase. The idea is that the time taken for a project to get a licence would fall to two years, rather than the current threeor four-year wait.