Change the mindset of Britain’s nuclear regulator

  1. The ONR’s sponsorship should be moved from the Department for Work and Pensions to the DESNZ.
  2. The ONR should be given a new objective to promote the safe and secure deployment of civil nuclear power for the benefit of society, the economy, and decarbonisation.
  3. The Government should require the ONR to create a ‘regulatory red team’ with a mandate to enable and deliver new nuclear energy to scrutinise its decisions and report up to ministerial level.

Restore proportionality to nuclear regulation

  1. The ONR should be required to publish a clear hierarchy of RGP and place ‘real‑world safe operation in an International Nuclear Regulators’ Association (INRA) country’ at the top. There should be recognition that RGP should be based on demonstrated safety improvement applicable to that reactor type.
  2. The Government should require ONR to accept safety analyses approved by peer regulators by default and limit extra work to cases where UK-specific factors clearly justify it.
  3. The ONR should review all of the published RGP documents looking at their relevance and the extent to which they overlap or conflict with other sources of RGP in INRA countries, with a special focus on markets with high significance to SMR vendors, such as the US.
  4. The ONR should be required to support dutyholders to challenge ALARP decisions by creating a clear definition of Gross Disproportion (Exceeds a Cost-Benefit Ratio of 2) and using the Treasury Green Book Value of Prevented Fatality figure.
  5. The duty to reduce risks or dose to ALARP should be automatically considered discharged when exposures are below the Basic Safety Objective (BSO) level.
  6. For Fault Conditions, the BSO should be raised to be in proportion to other risks we consider broadly acceptable such as the annual risk of electrocution in the home.
  7. For Normal Operations (Occupational Exposures): between the Basic Safety Objective and the Basic Safety Limit (20mSV per year for workers) where the operator / developer has demonstrated ALARP, and there is a challenge to introduce further design changes by the regulator, the burden of proof on gross disproportion for any design request should be on the regulator to prove and should be time-limited.
  8. The BSO for normal operation should be raised to a value between 0.15 and 0.3 mSv per year.
  9. For facilities demonstrating doses below the threshold of no regulatory concerns the developer/operators should be granted  a “Light” Radioactive Substances Permit/Authorisation, with requirements reduced simply to monitoring discharges and confirming they are discharging within these limits.

Modernise and streamline regulation for new nuclear technologies

  1. The Defra Secretary should make an immediate ruling that all new reactor designs are considered justified provided they acquire a site licence or planning approval.
  2. The Government should create a new SMR/AMR “low-consequence” category under the Nuclear Installations (Prescribed Sites and Transport) Regulations 2018 with a substantially lower liability requirement and review third-party liability arrangements for new nuclear technologies.
  3. The Radiation (Emergency Preparedness and Public Information) Regulations 2019 (REPPIR) should be amended so the current 30KM OPZ for reactors is replaced by a design-specific, evidence-based approach. In cases where doses at the site perimeter are below the level that triggers urgent action, the DEPZ should be eliminated.
  4. The EN-7 National Policy Statement and ONR Siting guidance should replace the Semi-Urban Population Density Constraint with a risk-informed approach based on site-specific hazard and consequence assessments.
  5. The ONR should be required to assess technical design first, then the plant, site, and organisational capability in the Nuclear Site Licence process.

Protecting nature effectively

  1. The Habitats Regulations should be amended to clarify that ‘de minimis’ impacts do not have an adverse impact on a site’s integrity, including in combination with de minimis impacts from other projects.
  2. To fix this, the Habitats Regulations should be amended to remove the requirement to prove a negative and require scientific evidence of an impact before Natural England can block a plan.
  3. The Habitats Regulations should be amended to clarify that compensation measures can include measures that benefit the national network of protected sites, provided they either benefit features affected by the plan/project or contribute towards meeting an Environment Act 2023 strategy in the vicinity of the project.
  4. The Habitats Regulations should be amended so that the requirement to produce a Habitats Regulations assessment does not apply to licenses, permits, and conditions for projects that have been granted planning permission.
  5. The Government should legislate to amend the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act to remove the vague duty to further the objectives of National Landscapes.

Eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy

  1. The large list of permits, licenses, and consents required after planning permission is granted should be reviewed and where activities are duplicative, rationalised.
  2. In order to get statutory consultees to respond within legal timeframes, the government should legislate to create a rule of positive silence: a failure of a Statutory Consultee to respond to a request within 21 days should count as them having waived their right to object.

Reduce the incentives to fight new development

  1. Aarhus Cost Protection Caps, set at £5,000 and £10,000, should be raised substantially and should not apply in cases where legal challengers have the means to pay costs, or have demonstrated substantial ability to fund cases using crowdfunding, or have repeatedly lost similar cases.
  2. The Business Rates retention system should be reformed to allow councils to fully retain business rates for new SMR, Large-Scale Nuclear, and Data Centre projects.

Create alternative routes to market for commercial nuclear deployment

  1. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero should open future Pot 2 CfD auctions to SMR and micro-SMR projects.
  2. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero should offer a bilateral (e.g. non-auction) CfD for innovative new nuclear (Micro-SMRs and AMRs) deployed in the next five to ten years. The model should reward faster deployments with 5GW available before 2030 and 10GW by 2035. If a project is delivered before 2030, receive a generous strike price, while one in 2035 should get a lower strike price.
  3. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero should create a new Industry Growth CfD to reduce counter-party risk for PPAs. The fallback CfD should be pegged to a forward rolling average of the wholesale price at the moment the PPA falls down.
  4. The Government should update REGOs to explicitly include nuclear power and use real-world 30 minute data on fuel mixes to make SMR PPAs attractive for businesses seeking to cut their emissions.
  5. The Government should update the Green Financing Framework to include investment in civil nuclear power.

Update grid regulations to unlock investment in co-located nuclear power for industry

  1. To unlock tech investment into co-located nuclear, the Government should create a new exemption to the Electricity Act 1989 to allow privately owned and operated substations to connect to the national transmission system to serve co-located clean power generation with AI data centre demand within AI Growth Zones.
  2. NESO should allow data centres (and other heavy industrial users) to buy a ‘non-firm’ grid connection when they have reliable on-site generation.