Nuclear power is the future Britain rejected. Now it's time for us to think again

Britain was once poised to be the world leader in clean energy.

- Martha Gill

We split the atom, pioneered the first commercial nuclear power station, and by 1988 had built 18 reactors, the third highest number in the world. By the mid-1990s, we were producing enough energy to supply a quarter of the country's electricity. But then, even as climate change was moving from being a contested idea to an accepted one, progress stalled. We stopped building entirely. Now we get just 14% of electricity from this source and five of our six remaining plants are due for retirement at the end of the decade.

Last week Ed Miliband optimistically announced the dawn of a new "golden age" of nuclear power. His hopes rest on a single Suffolk megaplant, Sizewell C - already delayed and now to be about 12 years in the making, if finished on time. And that looks far from guaranteed. After 10 years of planning, and nine of building, Hinkley Point C, in Somerset, missed its deadline for completion this year and has been pushed back to 2031. How did we lose our advantage?