nuclear-news

Special investigation: UK’s nuclear waste a ‘calamity for future generations’.

 Plans to dispose of high-level nuclear waste over the long
term remain uncertain. Plans to deal with nuclear waste must be considered by the new energy secretary Miatta Fahnbullaeh.

Britain is planning a new fleet of nuclear reactors – without a repository for high-grade legacy waste. The UK’s efforts to find a location for an underground nuclear waste burial site have stalled. New energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh must review two remaining areas in Cumbria, after three were abandoned following community pushback, Energy Voice has learned.

Two sites, Mid Copeland and
South Copeland, near existing nuclear waste storage facilities at
Sellafield, are being assessed for “permanent” nuclear waste storage in
a planned geological disposal facility (GDF), the Nuclear Decommissioning
Authority (NDA) confirmed in an  emailed statement.

With a UK nuclear burial site undetermined, storage at Sellafield time-limited, and three major nuclear projects expected to operate beyond 2055, government has been accused of “kicking the can down the road”. Further, the National Wealth Fund (NWF) did not factor long-term waste disposal into decisions to invest in Sizewell C, Energy Voice has also learned.

The state-owned body backed the UK’s new 3.2GW nuclear power station in Suffolk with £36.6 billion in debt finance. Its chief investment officer Ian Brown told Energy Voice during an interview in March, months after the project reached a final investment decision: “I wouldn’t say it’s not something we look at, but at the moment… the proposal is that the waste material will just stayon site.

“It’s going to take a while to work out where in the country
we’re able to drop the stuff into the ground, if ever.” Professor Andrew
Blowers, co-chair of the NWS/NGO Exchange and former member of RadioactiveWaste Management Advisory Committee, said: “The new build programme is costly, risky with long timescales and makes little sense as a part of the energy mix needed to achieve net zero.

“Far from helping to deal with
climate change, the wastes from such a programme will add yet more calamity o future generations.”

NDA subsidiary National Waste Services (NWS),
created in 2022 to handle the UK’s “future radioactive waste”, has
submitted a decision to the energy secretary on where to locate a
high-grade nuclear waste burial site, a spokeswoman said. The energy
secretary must now formally respond to its proposal.

However, the Office
for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) told Energy Voice that NWS needs to “find a
suitable site and a willing community” to host nuclear waste. It said:
“No site has yet been identified.” Of five potential sites, three were
ruled out, including the coastal region of Seascale, a site near Sellafield
in Cumbria, and another in Lincolnshire, where the county council voted
unanimously to withdraw from the plans. “

Three other communities have
previously been involved in the process but are no longer,” the ONR said
in a statement to Energy Voice. “Allerdale in Cumbria was withdrawn due
to insufficient suitable geology. Theddlethorpe (Lincolnshire) and South
Holderness (Yorkshire) voluntarily withdrew from the process.” Blowers
said,

“At present a GDF is uncertain, its location unclear and its
timescale already far into the later part of this century. It is
irresponsible and immoral to create yet more wastes arising in the next
century for which no management provision can conceivably be made.”
“The mad rush to building yet more dangerous nuclear power stations with
their eternal dangerous radioactive debris should be stopped dead in its
tracks now,” Blowers said.

Energy Voice 17th Aug 2026,
https://www.energyvoice.com/renewables-energy-transition/nuclear/602330/uk-nuclear-waste-management-problem/

August 21, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | UK, wastes