Mike Weightman, executive head of the Office for Nuclear Regulation broadly concluded that the U.K. is not exposed to the natural hazards that contributed to the Japanese accident. Also, U.K. plants are a different, safer design than the Japanese reactors.

“I see no reason why we should not proceed with our current [nuclear] policy,” reported Huhne, following Weightman’s findings. “We want to see new nuclear as part of a low carbon energy mix,” he added.