Governments need to become reliable partners in the construction of new commercial nuclear power plants by designing a long-term vision including a state guarantee or state participation for new-build, a white paper by a Netherlands-based NGO says.

The paper, published on Tuesday by the e-Lise Foundation, says governments have shown themselves to be unreliable in the past with nuclear phaseouts in countries including Germany and the Netherlands. Recent nuclear power plant projects in France, Finland and Britain have been hampered by government-enforced changes during preparation and construction. “The government itself thus poses an unacceptable high risk to these commercial ventures,” the paper concludes.