A majority of the UK’s nuclear reactors are lying dormant, meaning about 58% of the country’s nuclear capacity is going unused.
Six of the country’s nine nuclear reactions are offline for maintenance, according to the Nuclear Industry Association.
The UK relied on gas to produce 59% of the country’s electricity on Wednesday.
Wind power accounted for 15% of the power supplied to the grid that day, while biomass, solar and coal combined to produce about 20%.
As a majority of the country’s nuclear reactors are out of action, nuclear power comprised just 6% of the electricity on the grid.
The outages were blamed on a failure in the boiler pipework at Heysham 1 in Lancashire, which led to the shutdown of four reactors.
This included the temporary closure of two reactors at Heysham and two in Hartlepool.
EDF, the operator, said it expects all four reactors to be back online by early February.
The French power company said it has taken the decision to temporarily take the reactors offline so engineers can inspect the issue.
An additional two reactors, including one at Torness in Scotland and one at Heysham 2, have been shut down for planned maintenance and are due to come back online by the end of January.
Eight of the existing nuclear reactors in the UK are expected to be retired this decade, while two new projects are in development at Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C.
Outages and the age of the existing fleet have sparked discussions about the need for more nuclear plants across the country.
Baseload power is needed to bolster the smooth running of the grid, and so the government wants to quadruple nuclear power by 2050.
However, it could take years for new nuclear plants to come online after budget hikes and delays.