nuclear-news

Can the UK fast-track nuclear power without cutting corners on safety?

The UK’s nuclear regulator is being asked to consider radically
different designs on a scale and pace never before seen. That’s partly
why, as part of the deal, the two countries have agreed to accept each
other’s safety checks. The government claims this will “halve the time
for a nuclear project to be licensed”. The question is whether this can
be done as safely.

The US and UK take fundamentally different approaches to
nuclear regulation. The US’s Nuclear Regulation Commission (NRC) takes a
“prescriptive” approach. It sets detailed rules based on its own
research and enforces them directly. Like police setting speed limits, the
regulator decides the standards and then ensures nuclear operators meet
them. If an accident happens, operators can point to meeting every
requirement as evidence they followed the rules. They could even
legitimately blame the regulator.

The UK’s Office for Nuclear Regulation
(ONR) takes a “descriptive” approach. It sets broad standards but
leaves operators to prove how they will meet them. In road terms, the US
sets the speed limit and checks drivers obey it. The UK simply says cars
must stay on the road, leaving drivers to decide their own limits, prove
they’re safe, and take full responsibility if they crash. These two
approaches are driven to a large extent by the two country’s history and
make up of their nuclear industries. So while UK-US collaboration could
boost Britain’s nuclear industry and accelerate the path to low-carbon
energy, independence and transparency will be essential. Any perception of
corner cutting or transatlantic political interference could undermine
public trust and derail Britain’s nuclear ambitions.

 The Conversation 18th Sept 2025, https://theconversation.com/can-the-uk-fast-track-nuclear-power-without-cutting-corners-on-safety-265614

September 21, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, UK | Leave a comment

UK Ministry of Defence dismiss MP’ s call for inquiry into trident bases nuclear leaks.

 THE Ministry of Defence (MoD) has dismissed calls from an SNP MSP for a
public inquiry into nuclear leaks at Trident bases, claiming it is
“factually incorrect” to suggest they posed a safety risk.

Earlier this week Bill Kidd, the Glasgow Anniesland MSP, held a debate on reported nuclear safety incidents at Faslane and Coulport, where Britain’s nuclear fleet and arsenal are stored.

Kidd secured the backing of 28 MSPs from the
SNP, Scottish Greens, Scottish Labour, Alba, and one independent. However,
the motion was not voted on as it was debated as member’s business after
decision time.

It comes after The Ferret revealed that nuclear waste leaked
into Loch Long, in Argyll and Bute. The outlet reported that pipe bursts
were recorded in 2010, two in 2019, and two more in 2021. After an FOI
battle that lasted six years, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency
(Sepa) – the environment watchdog – stated the Royal Navy failed to
properly maintain a network of 1500 pipes at the Coulport armaments depot,
on the banks of Loch Long.

 The National 19th Sept 2025, https://www.thenational.scot/news/25481047.mod-dismiss-snp-msp-call-inquiry-trident-bases-nuclear-leaks/

September 20, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, UK | Leave a comment

EDF’s Heysham 1 and Hartlepool nuclear plants to operate for further 12 months

New Civil Engineer, 02 Sep, 2025 By Tom Pashby

The operational lives of the Heysham 1 and Hartlepool nuclear power plants have been extended by 12 months by their operator EDF………………

Hartlepool, Heysham 1, Heysham 2 and Torness all underwent reviews by EDF in December 2024 to assess how long they can continue to generate electricity. Heysham 1 and Hartlepool were scheduled to stop producing power in March 2027.

At the time, an EDF spokesperson explained to NCE that the best-case scenario for the Heysham 1 and Hartlepool power stations was that they could justify a one-year extension. However, that was caveated with a need to await the outcomes of “important inspection and safety case milestones”, which were due to be completed in 2025.

Those milestones have now passed and the results were positive for the power stations. When EDF’s executive and licensee boards met yesterday, 1 September, they gave approval to extend the lives of the nuclear stations, so Heysham 1 and Hartlepool will now likely operate through to at least March 2028.

A statement from EDF on 2 September said: “Heysham 2 and Torness, which are both scheduled to generate until March 2030, were not in scope for this review after a two-year extension was granted last year.”

EDF still hopes to see all four AGRs continue producing electricity for as long as possible, so it can be expected to conduct further reviews down the line, but these reviews do not have set dates for completion, the spokesperson told NCE……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

AGRs now well past their sell-by date’ – anti-nuclear campaigner

Nuclear Free Local Authorities secretary Richard Outram told NCE that the extension of the plants’ operating lives raises concerns about the possibility of graphite cracking.

“The EDF announcement is unsurprising. Although company bosses may crow a lot about the preservation of local jobs, the NFLAs suspect this is actually about the preservation of EDF’s bottom line,” he said.

“Given the parlous state of the French parent company’s finances, the intermittent output of the domestic fleet, and the vast overspend on Hinkley Point C, EDF has a clear incentive to keep open for as long as possible any nuclear plant in the portfolio which actually operates and generates profits.

“The NFLAs have previously expressed our concerns with the Office for Nuclear Regulation that these ageing AGRs are now well past their sell-by date, with graphite cracking being a real worry, as seen recently at the sister AGR plant at Torness.

“We shall continue to monitor the situation and ask challenging questions of regulators and the industry because public safety and environmental harm must never be compromised in favour of company profit.”………………………………………………. https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/edfs-heysham-1-and-hartlepool-nuclear-plants-to-operate-for-further-12-months-02-09-2025/

September 4, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, UK | Leave a comment

OUR NUCLEAR WORLD: PICK YOUR TARGET

Why use your own nuclear weapons (with all the risks of escalation that this entails) when you can just take out your enemy’s nuclear power stations or nuclear waste facilities?

 Jonathon Porritt 27th Aug 2025

I’ve reluctantly come to the conclusion that the only way the nuclear industry’s hype-machine is going to be stopped in its tracks is a Russian cyber-attack on the nine nuclear reactors still operating here in the UK, causing them all to close down and leading to the grid temporarily collapsing. That should do it.

I jest – sort of. But nothing else has worked. In just the last few weeks:

1 The Treasury’s financial modelling for the new power station at Sizewell C (seen by the Financial Times) gives a range of roughly £80 billion to £100 billion, far higher than the official estimate of £47 billion from the Department of Net Zero and Energy Security – which in itself was already nearly double the original cost of £20 billion!

2 The Treasury recently described the Government’s proposals for a new Geological Disposal Facility to deal with the 700,000 cubic metres of spent nuclear fuel as ‘unachievable’. This is a truly extraordinary development – confirming that the UK still has NO idea what to do about its legacy nuclear waste, let alone the waste that will be produced by any new reactors. Yet this got hardly a mention in the media.

3 The Government confirmed that it will be splurging a further £17 billion of taxpayers’ money between now  and 2030 on Sizewell C, Small Modular Reactors and fusion energy – even as it continues to ignore the scourge of chronic poverty here in the UK, with 4.5 million children living in poverty – the highest number ever recorded.

On top of which, the industry’s hype-machine is now being turbocharged by the even more powerful hype-machine of AI. Never forget that the nuclear industry is supremely well-equipped to leap onto any and every boondoggle coming down the track – the Bitcoin/Crypto boom a decade ago (which never quite happened), and then green hydrogen. With every hard-to-abate sector queueing up for its share of vanishingly small volumes of green hydrogen, the Knights of Nuclear were up into their saddles just as fast as enough hobby horses could be corralled together to claim that it is only nuclear power that can provide the electricity required.

And now it’s AI. We’ve all read the growth projections for AI-enabled markets – from billions of dollars today to trillions tomorrow. I won’t weary you with the extrapolated increases in electricity consumption for all the new data centres that this entails – but it’s going to be a lot. On a par with the electricity consumption of small countries. New data centres are being built right now, ever bigger, already gobbling up more and more electricity. Nor will I invite you to ask why this AI boom must not – ever, on any terms – be subjected to much deeper scrutiny as to the balance of costs and benefits that will emerge. AI represents the apogee of latter-day technological determinism: if it can be done, then it must and will be done. So suck it up.

I’m not making light of this. The AI-driven nuclear boom in the USA is for real. Donald Trump is getting rid of most regulatory oversight of the nuclear industry, to speed things up, and stock prices of all the publicly traded nuclear companies are up by huge percentages. And it doesn’t seem to matter what kind of nuclear we’re talking about: 40-year-old decommissioned reactors to be given a new lease of life; plans for new big reactors, even in blue states like New York, being fast-tracked; Big Tech applying for construction permits for Small Modular Reactors that are still on the drawing board; and more than $500 billion apparently raised for new fusion reactors – seriously!

It’s not (yet) quite so insane here in the UK, but the signals are worrying. Strenuous efforts are being made by Ministers to force the Office for Nuclear Regulation to fast track any old nuclear proposal. Sweetheart deals with the private sector are being sorted out – regardless of the costs to taxpayers. Rational, evidence-based decision-making is a long-gone memory.

What exactly lies behind this mania? In the timeless words of Sherlock Holmes: ”once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth”.

So, let’s try that out for size in the context of nuclear power. It would surely be completely impossible for any responsible government pursuing a Net Zero energy strategy to prioritise nuclear power over all other options, given that:

1. Large-scale nuclear reactors are now by far the most expensive option (on a Levelised Cost of Energy basis). UK Government figures in July this year showed new nuclear at £109 per MWh, offshore wind at £44MWh, large-scale solar at £41MWh and onshore wind at £38MWh.
2. Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) don’t yet exist, but all experts agree their electricity will be even more expensive than that of large reactors – precisely because they can’t achieve the same economies of scale.
3. The contribution of both big and small new reactors to a Net Zero electricity system in the UK will be literally ZERO before 2035 at the very earliest.
4. Both big and small reactors will continue to produce significant levels of nuclear waste, adding to a waste crisis to which (as already mentioned) we have no long-term solution.
5. ALL nuclear facilities pose a significant security risk, both from the point of view of cybersecurity (more later) and the very real possibility of physical attacks through ‘hostile third parties’.

Which brings us to the extraordinarily improbable truth of it: these days, nuclear power has little to do with electricity generation, and a whole lot more to do with the maintenance of the UK’s nuclear weapons capability……………………………………………………………………

It took a while for the UK Government to catch up, but in its latest Nuclear Roadmap it no longer beats around the bush. There are multiple references to the synergies between nuclear power and nuclear weapons: “this Government will proactively look for opportunities to align delivery of the civil and nuclear defence enterprises….it acknowledges the crucial importance of the nuclear industry to our national security, both in terms of energy supply and the defence nuclear enterprise”, and so on.

Big corporations are loving the fact that this is now out in the open. Bechtel, Babcock and Wilcox, AECOM, Rolls Royce – they’ve all spent decades feeding at the trough of either overt or hidden cross-subsidies between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Rolls-Royce has been one of the most outspoken advocates for Small Modular Reactors, arguing their importance back in 2017 “to relieve the Ministry of Defence of the burden of retaining the skills and capability”………………………………………………………………….

 As nuclear nations double down on nuclear power, it’s blindingly obvious that they are ramping up serious threats to national security. Nowhere is this clearer than with the drive to develop SMRs. Most designs currently on the drawing board (that are not light water reactors) will be using as their fuel high-assay, low-enriched uranium – or HALEU, to use the jargon. When it’s first extracted from the earth, uranium concentrations are usually around 1% of the total volume of the ore. HALEU fuel has to be enriched up to around 19% – just below the 20% threshold for the kind of highly-enriched uranium judged to be viable for the manufacture of nuclear bombs. And almost all HALEU fuel comes from Russia!

Beyond that, every nuclear facility (old and new) becomes a target for hostile third parties. Welcome back to the inconceivably scary world of nuclear cyberwarfare. Despite the highest grade of propaganda promoted by the Ministry of Defence – that all nuclear facilities are ‘bomb-proof’ (I kid you not!) – most cyber-experts grudgingly acknowledge that this is just bullshit when it comes to cyber-defence.

And we have no finer example of that than Sellafield, one of the most hazardous nuclear waste and decommissioning sites in the world, sprawling across 2 square miles on the Cumbrian coast. Back in December 2023, a Guardian exclusive revealed that Sellafield had been hacked into ‘by cyber groups closely linked to Russia and China’ since 2015 – despite years of cover-ups by senior staff.  “The full extent of any data loss and any continuing risks to systems was made harder to quantify by Sellafield’s failure to alert nuclear regulators for several years”. The denials didn’t last long. The Guardian’s painstaking research over 18 months had got Sellafield bang to rights. In October 2024, it was fined £400,000 by the Office For Nuclear Regulation after it pleaded guilty to criminal charges over years of cyber-security breaches. Astonishingly, the ONR also found that 75% of its computer servers were vulnerable to cyber-attack.

…………………..Why use your own nuclear weapons (with all the risks of escalation that this entails) when you can just take out your enemy’s nuclear power stations or nuclear waste facilities?

…………………… https://jonathonporritt.com/uk-nuclear-policy-risks/

August 30, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, UK | Leave a comment