nuclear-news

Security fears over mini nuclear plant network with ‘1,000s more police needed’.

Keir Starmer’s plans for a ‘proliferation’ of small reactors – potentially nearer UK towns – would require an urgent rethink of how armed officers protect them, experts warn.

Government plans to build a network of
“mini” nuclear power stations across the country have failed to
adequately assess major security threats to the public, top policing
experts have warned.

Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to “rip up the rules”
governing the nuclear industry to fast-track so-called Small Modular
Reactors (SMRs) to generate affordable low-carbon electricity, boosting the
economy and powering energy-intensive technology such as AI data centres.

However, security analysts caution that arrangements for guarding SMRs from
terrorists, enemy states and criminal groups need radical rethinking to
protect the public. They told The i Paper that thousands more armed
officers could be required to defend these facilities – which may be
located nearer towns and cities – plus the vehicles carrying their
radioactive fuel.

They believe these policing operations would be so much
larger, more complex and more costly than existing arrangements that a new
force may be required – yet fear ministers are overlooking or
underestimating the challenges ahead.

The Government hopes the first SMRs
will open in less than 10 years, probably at some of the country’s eight
existing nuclear sites, but the network may later expand to other locations
in England and Wales. Professor Fraser Sampson, a national security expert
at Sheffield Hallam University, said these will necessitate “a very
different policing and security model,” especially if they are located
“much nearer or even within areas of significant population, and you have
many more of them.”

Sampson, a former solicitor and police officer who
recently served as the UK’s biometrics and surveillance camera
commissioner, worries the Government is not focusing enough on security.
Anticipating a “proliferation of smaller sites,” he said: “The thing
that I think is missing, and Two researchers at King’s College London, Dr
Zenobia Homan and Dr Ross Peel, have warned that SMRs increase the
possibility of “insider threat.”

 iNews 20th April 2025
https://inews.co.uk/news/crime/security-fears-mini-nuclear-plant-network-police-3648464

April 23, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, UK