Nuclear is green

When it comes to the environment, nuclear has a perception problem.

In June 2025, YouGov found that 34% of Britons regard nuclear power stations as not environmentally friendly (45% say they are). In 2021, only about half of the public identified nuclear as a low- or zero-carbon source—versus roughly four in five who said the same for wind and solar.

In the early days of nuclear power, before the risks of climate change were widely understood, environmentalists often welcomed it as an alternative to smog-producing coal or ecologically disruptive hydropower. By the 1970s, however, attitudes shifted. Concerns about nuclear waste and weapons were central, but the change was also bound up with the broader cultural currents of the time: distrust of institutions, disillusion with science as a source of progress, and a new strand of environmentalism that saw technology itself as a threat. The mistake was to view nuclear power in isolation rather than weigh it against the harms of the alternatives.⁶⁴

A single tiny uranium pellet can power a British home for 2 years. It would take 400 cubic metres of natural gas to do the same. To generate the same amount of power with offshore wind for 2 years requires around 200 grams of rare earth minerals, which contain natural radioactivity. For every gram of neodymium used in a wind turbine generates a gram of radioactive waste. A single 5MW onshore wind turbine will generate 250kg’s worth of radioactive waste.⁶⁵

Used nuclear fuel must be handled with care, yet fears over the dangers of nuclear waste are overblown. When spent fuel is removed from a nuclear reactor, it is transferred into large steel-reinforced concrete containers. Waste can be stored here for around 100 years and the containers are safe enough to walk up and touch. To generate one person’s lifetime household electricity use wouldn’t produce enough waste to fill a shot glass. All of the nuclear waste ever produced in Britain plus all the waste from another 100 years of generation could be stored in a building the size of Wembley, or about 0.00002% of the UK’s land mass.

Nuclear’s density extends to land use. To produce the same amount of power as Hinkley Point C in a year would mean building a solar farm the size of the Isle of Wight or an onshore wind farm the size of the entire New Forest. Britain has the land to do either and some forms of farming can co-exist with renewable generation, but every extra acre of land dedicated is an acre that cannot be used for nature recovery. If capacity factors fall due to the need to over-build then even more land will be needed.

Far from harming wildlife, many UK nuclear sites act as quiet nature reserves because access is restricted and the land is left largely untouched; at Dungeness, for example, black redstarts and peregrine falcons nest on the station, while over 20,000 wintering waterbirds use the surrounding shingle and wetlands.

All forms of power generation impact nature. Yet, the biggest threat to biodiversity is man-made climate change.

Crucially, nuclear is one of the lowest carbon forms of generation. Like wind and solar, nuclear produces zero emissions in generation. When you factor in emissions across the full life cycle from mining and construction to operation and decommissioning, nuclear on average emits less carbon than wind and solar. The crucial point is not whether nuclear is a gram of CO₂ per kilowatt‑hour lower than wind or solar, but that nuclear, wind, and solar emit about one‑twentieth as much as gas and about one‑sixtieth as much as coal.

Nuclear faces extreme planning barriers

Rules and regulations designed to protect nature and the environment are having the unintended consequence of frustrating the deployment of the cleanest source of power there is.

Environmental Impact and Habitats Regulation Assessments: In order to obtain planning permission to build Hinkley Point C – close to two existing (both now decommissioned) nuclear power stations – EDF were forced to produce a 31,401 page Environmental Impact Assessment. When they applied 8 years later for permission to build Sizewell C – also close to two existing nuclear power stations – they produced 80,000 pages of environmental documentation to support their application. In total, across the two nuclear power stations EDF produced more pages of environmental documentation for the planning inspectorate than two full sets of 32 volume Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Contained within those mammoth assessments are surveys covering invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, bats, birds, mammals, and plants. Surveys can only take place at certain times. For birds that means at least one breeding season and one winter. For some marine life such as ichthyoplankton (fish larvae/eggs) three years worth of survey data is needed. EDF will have employed hundreds of ecologists and spent millions of pounds. Yet the largest cost is delay, nuclear power plants can take as long as a decade to build, but pre-application surveys extend that process even further. If a new nuclear project was proposed tomorrow, it is unlikely a planning application would be ready to be submitted before the end of parliament.

Post-Consent Permitting: To build and operate Sizewell C over 160 separate permits are required. Many of which have substantial overlap and are, at least, partially duplicative. These include:

• Marine Licenses from the Marine Management Organisation;
• Water Transfer, Impoundment, and Abstraction licenses from the Environment Agency
• Protected Species Licenses from Natural England
• Land Drainage Consents from the Internal Drainage Board
• Control of Major Accident Hazards (COMAH) Notification from the Health and Safety Executive.

Even when a developer has been awarded planning permission to build a nuclear power station, which as we have noted involves extensive environmental assessments, they can still be required to carry out additional Habitats assessments in order to secure secondary consents. In some cases, Habitats Assessments from the DCO can be extracted and reused. However, this still requires developers to adapt the Habitats Assessment to the specific activity and there is a risk that different regulatory bodies demand different standards of evidence. For instance, some might argue that surveys performed for the DCO are now out of date given the length of the planning process. In principle, if environmental conditions have declined since the DCO was granted, the relevant statutory nature conservation body (SNCB), such as Natural England, could advise the decision‑maker to refuse the permit to discharge a planning condition. In other words, a nuclear project could be halted after construction has begun. In a recent blog post, the lawyer Catherine Howard, who worked on Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C’s DCOs notes that she is aware of some cases where offshore wind farms are being forced to produce Habitats Assessments to acquire minor marine licenses to carry out cable repairs.⁶⁶

To install Hinkley Point C’s cooling water intakes, EDF needed to dredge large amounts of mud. In 2013, they gained a licence to dispose of that mud at a designated mud dumping site near Cardiff. Dredging was delayed however because of extensive push-back from Welsh politicians based on misinformation about the level of radioactivity of the mud – in reality, dumping the mud would only have exposed nearby members of the public to the radioactive equivalent of eating two bananas.⁶⁷ As the process dragged on, a space opened up at a nearby dumping site in Portishead. Anti-nuclear campaigners responded by launching a legal challenge on the grounds that EDF needed to carry out an additional Habitats Assessment to dump the mud. This legal challenge failed, but it did manage to delay vital dredging work for a year. The risk of future legal challenges on similar grounds will have a chilling effect. Developers uncertain as to whether or not they need to carry out additional assessments for post-consents licenses are likely to do them out of fear of being delayed by legal action.

Environmental Mitigation and Compensation: Britain is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. Britons care about nature and want to protect it, yet Britain’s system of protections for threatened species and habitats delivers the worst of both worlds.

In order to comply with environmental legislation, nuclear projects are forced to invest in expensive and, critically, inefficient mitigations. One example is the acoustic fish deterrent proposed for Hinkley Point C. To prevent fish entering Hinkley Point C’s cooling water intake (and dying), EDF plans to install speakers near the intake playing jumbo-jet level noise designed to deter fish from entering. Not only would this so-called “fish disco” be expensive and sit on top of the world’s first “fish returns system”, initial plans would have put commercial divers at risk of death to perform regular maintenance. In the 12 years since the idea was first suggested a new technological solution was discovered that would be cheaper to install and maintain.⁶⁸

This system works for neither developers nor nature. Designing site-specific interventions is time-consuming and expensive for developers. In the case of nuclear, mitigations can be particularly problematic if they force developers to meaningfully change a design executed successfully elsewhere.

Site-specific interventions are rarely the most effective way of protecting nature. Paying farmers to create wetlands will almost certainly save more fish per pound than installing an acoustic fish‑deterrent.

For Wylfa Newydd on Anglesey/Ynys Môn, the Planning Inspectorate recommended that the Secretary of State refuse consent in part because the development might affect the population of Arctic terns. Part of the issue was the difficulty in proving that the birds would return later. This was a significant, though not the sole, factor in the project falling apart.⁶⁹

Part of the challenge for nuclear power is that because land near existing nuclear plants have deliberately been left untouched by human activity for decades, most proposed nuclear plants at designated sites are surrounded by protected sites rich in biodiversity. Nuclear is a victim of its own greenness.

Consultation (and Statutory Consultation): When the Labour politician Tony Benn, then-Britain’s Energy minister, visited France in the 70s to learn about their nuclear programme. He asked a French official how they gained public consent for such a major programme of building. The official’s response: “You don’t ask the frogs when you’re draining the swamp.”

France’s approach in the 1970s was extreme, yet Britain’s approach today is also extreme. Between 2014 and 2022, there were no fewer than seven public consultations for Sizewell C.⁷⁰ In theory, consultation allows developers to address potential issues at an early stage and build public support. In many cases, consultations lead to high levels of local support for nuclear projects. For example, 63% of residents within 25 miles of Hinkley Point C and 61% of residents in East Suffolk (the local authority that includes Sizewell) support the project.⁷¹

Consultation, however, is not working. Consultation is a statutory requirement for major infrastructure projects – this requirement is to be removed if the Planning and Infrastructure Bill passes – and as a result, failing to adequately consult can be grounds to refuse planning permission or challenge a project’s legality. As a result, developers are engaging in extensive and over-thorough consultation in order to avoid future legal challenges. Consultation has shifted from a meaningful and useful process to a box-ticking exercise.

It is not just the public that has to be consulted either. Before a planning application can be even submitted developers must consult a wide range of bodies as known statutory consultees. These range from the Environment Agency and Natural England to Sports England and Historic England. In theory, these bodies should offer specialised advice and help identify issues before they arise later in the process when changing plans is harder. However, there have become a growing source of delays within the planning process. Statutory consultees are meant to respond within three weeks; these deadlines are often missed with Natural England the worst offender.

Judicial Review: Between Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, there have been seven separate legal challenges against nuclear projects in the last twelve years. Six of the seven are planning related - the exception being a challenge to Hinkley Point C from Austria and Germany on the grounds it amounted to illegal state aid. In total, they delayed work on Hinkley Point C by 866 days. Since August 2022, Sizewell C has spent 827 days fighting ultimately unsuccessful legal challenges. One challenge covering additional coastal flood defences is still ongoing.

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Legal challenges, even unsuccessful, have two major impacts.

First, the knowledge that every word in a 80,000 page (or even longer) planning application will be tested in court embeds caution into every decision. Unnecessary surveys are commissioned. The strictest interpretation of every aspect of planning guidance and environmental guidance is taken as written. Projects move slower as a result and expensive environmental mitigations are proposed.

Second, legal challenges, even when unsuccessful, can create substantial delays to projects. This can push up costs significantly. In their submission to the Banner Review into Inappropriate Legal Changes, National Highways estimated that delays caused by unsuccessful legal challenges have increased the cost of building a new major road by £60m to £120m.⁷² National Highways projects are large in many cases costing over a billion pounds. However, their projects are small compared to a Hinkley or Sizewell-scale project where costs run into the tens of billions. If legal challenges to nuclear projects have comparable impacts then the total cost of delay could run into the billions. When financing costs are high, as is the case with nuclear projects, a year’s delay can have massive financial implications.

How planning makes nuclear more expensive

Britain’s slow, uncertain, and inflexible planning system is a key driver of our high nuclear costs.

Ineffective, but legally required, mitigations such as acoustic fish deterrents and fish returns systems not only add complexity to construction, they also increase the number of changes between projects within a fleet. This extends the FOAK problem and reduces the opportunity for learning-by-doing.

Not all design changes increase costs. In many cases, operational experience can lead to certain practices being identified as more efficient. For example, Hinkley Point C was originally intended to use a ‘wet’ store for spent fuel. However, international experience revealed that ‘dry’ stores - while larger - are easier to operate. Switching to a dry store not only required EDF to obtain a new consent from the Environment Agency, but had to apply to the Planning Inspectorate to update their planning consent because switching systems will mean the building the waste is actually stored in will need to be about 79m longer. The cost of applying for additional planning permission in both time and money deters developers from making changes to their design at a late stage unless they are extremely confident it will generate a sufficient saving.

Uncertainty in planning, both over the time it takes to win approval and the probability a project will be refused permission, threatens the viability of the fleet approach. Investors are unlikely to order an entire fleet – and bear the large upfront costs of a first-of-a-kind reactor project – if they are uncertain projects two, three, or five will be approved.

Long and expensive planning processes are a barrier to the deployment of Small Modular Reactors in particular. Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C can spread the cost of the planning process over two massive units. For small projects, those fixed costs are still there, but they can’t spread them over the same amount of generation. In other words, our planning system biases investment towards building a few large mega-projects and away from building many smaller projects.

The delays and risks involved create a barrier to entry for new innovative SMR builders. Every survey, consultation, and legal challenge extends the construction timeframe further. SMR startups will have to bear large upfront costs for years before their reactor generates its first watt of power.

What needs to change

Protecting nature effectively

Extensive environmental impact and Habitats Regulations assessments significantly extend the development timeline for new nuclear power stations. In many cases, they lead to expensive and ineffective mitigations adding risk to the development process. It is right to want to protect and enhance nature, but existing policies do not work for nuclear nor nature.

One major issue is that even De Minimis impacts can count as an adverse impact on the integrity of a protected site. As a result, even extremely small impacts such as losing half a percent of a habit within a site or even a single bat death can lead to a stage three Habitats Regulation assessment requiring compensation or alternative action. 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.

Britain’s laws and regulations are not, as a rule, drafted by scientists. In the case of the Habitats Regulations, they are worded such that they require ecologists to ‘prove a negative’. This, in turn, leads to an extreme degree of caution. In other words, developers must act as if a protected species is present even if surveys are inconclusive. This leads to more studies than necessary and, on occasion, mitigations for impacts that are unlikely to occur. 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.

When there are likely adverse impacts, developers are required to find mitigations and if they can not, provide compensation. One problem is that conservation regulators like Natural England require like-for-like compensation. As Catherine Howard, a lawyer who worked on Hinkley Point C put it: “if your power station risks killing a certain type and number of fish, you must show how that type and number of fish will be replaced at or near that site by your compensation proposals.”⁷³ The problem is like-for-like compensation can be difficult to design and is unlikely to be the most effective use of money for nature. Like-for-like compensation is not required by the EU Directive from which the Habitats Regulations are derived, but nonetheless conservation bodies like Natural England treat it as a requirement. 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.

Most of Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C’s environmental assessments were carried out post-consent to acquire additional construction permits, licenses and consents. In the case of Hinkley, this created an additional opportunity to bring a legal challenge which delayed a crucial part of construction for over a year. If the Habitats Regulations Assessment (HRA) at the DCO stage is meant to be “bounding” (covering the full project) then small works within that approved envelope should not need to be reassessed post-consent. 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.

Many sites for new nuclear power stations are surrounded by ‘National Landscapes’ (the new term for AONBs). A new measure in LURA requires projects that impact on National Landscapes to further their purposes. This vague legal requirement has led to large and variable requests for payment.⁷⁴ 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

In order to build a nuclear power station, developers can be required to obtain over 160 permits, licenses and consents. Many of the permits cover essentially the same activity, while others overlap and could be combined. For example, the requirement to acquire an Impoundment licence granted by the Environment Agency and a Land Drainage Consent from the Internal Drainage Board means that two separate licenses are required for the same activity. The large list of permits, licenses, and consents required after planning permission is granted should be reviewed and where activities are duplicative, rationalised.

Developers are required to consult Statutory Consultees in advance of submitting their planning application. Statutory Consultees are legally required to respond within 21 days. However, a significant proportion of Statutory Consultees are failing to respond in a timely manner. In some cases, this is leading to significant delays. 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

Lawsuits are being used to delay and disrupt nuclear projects creating substantial risk for developers and making it harder to invest in nuclear. There is a clear domestic mandate for nuclear power, which shouldn't be frustrated in the courts. Under the Aarhus Treaty, legal challenges against nuclear on environmental grounds benefit from a costs cap which effectively subsidises opponents of green energy if they lose their case. This is an exception to the UK’s long-standing ‘loser pays’ principle where the person losing a legal case is required to pay the costs of the winner. These cost 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. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill’s proposed reduction in the number of opportunities litigants have to renew cases are welcome and will reduce delays, but should also apply to lawsuits challenging permitting and site licenses.

Locals should be incentivised to support new nuclear, but at the moment are discouraged by the fact that 50% of business rates from new projects go to the Treasury, not local people. 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.