NFLAs ‘shout up’ for National Parks to be spared from nuclear development

Despite our objections and those of many in the antinuclear community, Energy Ministers and departmental civil servants remain intent upon introducing a new National Planning Statement, called the EN-7, which gives considerable latitude to prospective developers to site new nuclear plants more widely, subject to meeting certain criterion (called the ‘criteria-based approach’) and lifts any time limits (called ‘the removal of a deployment deadline’).

10th April 2025, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nflas-shout-up-for-national-parks-to-be-spared-from-nuclear-development/

NFLAs ‘shout up’ for National Parks to be spared from nuclear development

The Nuclear Free Local Authorities have made an emphatic plea to the government for National Parks to be definitively spared from development and for further ‘specific consideration’ to be given to the challenges attendant to siting so-called Small and Advanced Modular Reactors (SMRs and AMRs).

Interestingly neither of these notions was popular amongst respondents in the initial consultation on the policy with only 47% supporting the first and 50% the second; which begs the NFLAs to ask the question: why change the existing policy which is based on a government led strategic assessment of sites to in effect a ‘free-for-all’?

As we did in response to the first stage consultation, so in the second the NFLAs ‘shout up…against new nuclear in any of our National Parks and on sites adjoining or threatening Sites of Outstanding Natural Beauty or Immense Heritage Value’. The Welsh NFLA affiliates are particularly passionate in seeking to defend Trawsfynydd, which lies at the heart of Eryri, the premier National Park of Wales, from new development. As we point out:

‘The principle that National Parks can be excluded from future nuclear development has already been established by Government diktat. Any part of the Lake District National Park in England has been specifically (and in our view rightly) excluded from any consideration as a prospective site of a future Geological Disposal Facility. Surely then Trawsfynydd being at the heart of the Eryri National Park should enjoy the same protection in law?

In our view, to do otherwise exposes UK Government policy as hypocritical and inconsistent, implying that the premier National Park of Wales is not worthy of the same protection as the premier National Park of England and unfortunately conveys the impression that Wales remains a rank colonial possession, rather than a nation in its own right, whose natural assets are open to exploitation by any major nuclear development of the most egregious kind’.

Only 59% of respondents in phase one backed the inclusion of ‘SMRS and AMRs alongside large-scale GW technologies’ within the policy, with the NGO community calling for a separate policy. Despite this, Ministers intend this policy to be one-size-fits-all. In this second phase consultation, the NFLAs have referenced the lack of ‘specific consideration’ of the ‘additional, and not entirely defined, challenges’ that accompany the inclusion of SMRs and AMRs.

There have been many recent reports of concerns amongst the nuclear industry and the academic community about the radioactive waste produced by smaller reactors and the security implications of a wider rollout of smaller reactors. The NFLAs have therefore requested that final version of EN-7 should require ‘SMR, AMR, Micro reactor developers to submit robust statements about their proposals to address radioactive waste management, safety, security and proliferation concerns’.