The Government has welcomed the completion of EDF's £12.5 billion purchase of British Energy Group.

The purchase is a significant step in EDF's plans to build four new nuclear reactors in the UK.

In 2002 the Government stepped in to support a restructuring of the company in order to ensure the safety of nuclear power and security of electricity supplies. Since then, the challenge to tackle climate change has made the growth of new nuclear power more pressing and this transaction enables the UK to move further towards its ambition to become a low carbon economy.

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Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said: "Given the challenge of climate change and energy security, it is right to embrace nuclear power as one of the technologies that can serve us in the future. Today's announcement marks an important step on the path to new nuclear power becoming a reality, just a year after we published the Nuclear Energy White Paper.

"In addition to the important investment made by EDF, our ambition is to have more than one firm building and operating nuclear power stations in the UK. There are strong signals of interest in this from the power industry and we will continue to work with stakeholders to bring about the conditions that can make that possible."

(CD/JM)