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Hutton stressed his backing again last week. “Our commitment to nuclear power is clear and nuclear new build does not depend on one single deal. BE still has potential sites: and sites are available from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

“The level of interest in nuclear new build in the UK from EDF and from other operators remains high.”

Iberdrola, the Spanish owner of ScottishPower, has said it is interested in nuclear new build in the UK although it quickly dropped out of the bidding for BE when the price started to rise.

It has another hurdle to overcome. In Scotland, where ScottishPower mainly operates, the SNP government remains opposed to new nuclear stations.

Energy is not a devolved matter but planning is and the SNP say they would block plans for new nuclear power stations. The issue has concerned business leaders worried about a potential energy gap in the near future.

The Scottish Council for Development and Industry has commissioned international energy specialist Wood Mackenzie to investigate whether Scotland can meet the government’s target of 50% power from renewables by 2020.

The SNP has talked up the ability of wind, wave and tidal to meet Scotland’s energy needs.

Earlier this year, first minister Alex Salmond said that Scotland had produced enough non-nuclear electricity to satisfy all its power needs in 2007.

“Our aim is a non-nuclear Scotland,” he said. “We are not going to close nuclear stations; they will come to the end of their natural lives and then will be shut.”

For Britain’s hard-pressed manufacturers, the certainty over energy prices that the proponents of nuclear power say it will bring cannot come soon enough.

They have been rocked by the rapid rise in energy prices, which has left them paying considerably more than their main competitors in America and continental Europe.

The Energy Intensive Users’ Group, an organisation that lobbies on behalf of big corporate power users, says British manufacturers are now at a “permanent competitive disadvantage”.

It has compiled a list of companies that have either shut up shop, moved manufacturing abroad, or curtailed operations as a result of high energy prices.

“Over 6,000 jobs have been lost in the glass sector over the last 18 months. The major cost rise has been gas — increasing 300% between 2003 and 2006 — in turn pushing up the cost of electricity and raw materials, all of which are indigenously sourced in the UK and some of which, notably soda ash, are supplied from other energy intensive industries,” the EIUG says.

The high cost of British energy is not a new problem. A previous crisis point came in the winter of 2005-06, when gas prices soared to 110p a therm (a unit of energy) and more. At the moment, the forward spot price for gas is about 100p a therm, and tipped by market analysts to go higher.

Executives at companies that have energy intensive operations are already pondering whether to close down their manufacturing plants over the winter months.

As in the market for consumer gas and electricity, the high prices for industrial users are a result of a combination of factors unique to the UK.

The plentiful supply of North Sea gas is drying up, leaving the UK as an importer at the mercy of world markets.

A legacy of the North Sea bonanza is that the UK has little gas storage capacity to help smooth out peaks and troughs in supply and demand.

“The UK has gas storage equivalent to a dozen days’ demand. In Germany, they have 90 days and a similar margin in America,” said Jeremy Nicholson of the EIUG.

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