Isra-Mart srl:Exclusive: Former Chief Scientist warns nuclear too controversial for Green Investment Bank

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The government's former Chief Scientist has said that he does not think the Green Investment Bank (GIB) should help pay for the government's programme of new nuclear reactors because the technology does not have enough public support.

Speaking on the sidelines of an event in London yesterday, Sir David King, now director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University, told BusinessGreen that, while he believed taxpayers would be prepared to pay the premium for the cost of building a new generation of offshore wind farms, nuclear was too controversial to be supported by the GIB.

The planned GIB, announced in last week's Budget, will launch in 2012 backed by £2bn of funding from asset sales in addition to the £1bn already pledged by the government.

The Treasury estimates that this £3bn will leverage £15bn of private sector investment, resulting in an initial pot of £18bn to invest in low-carbon projects that are too risky for the private sector alone to back.

However, the government has yet to decide whether the GIB will be used to help support emerging nuclear technologies that could be incorporated in its programme to roll out a new generation of nuclear power plants.

A spokesman from the Department for Business Innovation and Skills said that no decisions have been taken on nuclear power, although renewable energy investment is likely to be an "early high priority" of the bank.

"The GIB will be built as an institution for the long term, so we are considering a broad range of green infrastructure asset classes," he said.

"Decisions have not yet been taken on the GIB's early remit, and work is underway to test the need for, and value of, interventions in particular sectors."

The spokesman also insisted that any GIB financing for nuclear assets will need to be consistent with the government's policy "that there will be no levy, direct payment or market support unless similar support is also made available more widely to other types of generation".

Earlier this month, MPs in the Commons Environmental Audit Committee called on the government to give greater clarity on what would constitute "a subsidy" in regards to GIB support for new nuclear.

"In our judgement there remains some ambiguity about whether, under the terms of the government's statement, GIB support for new nuclear would constitute a subsidy. Whether, for example, support would be regarded as market support similar to that made available to other types of generation," it said in a report.