nuclear-news

Who is to blame for blocking a new ‘golden era’ for nuclear power?

It is not the regulators or we so-called ‘blockers’ who are the main impediment to nuclear. It is the systemic failure of the nuclear industry to produce viable projects such as the much-hyped but non-existent Small Nuclear Reactors; its predictable inability to prevent cost overruns or to meet deadlines; let alone its lack of credible ideas to deal adequately with risk, safety and the management of its dangerous and interminable wastes. Nuclear is an industry that is bound to fail

7 January 2026, https://www.banng.info/news/regional-life/who-is-to-blame-for-blocking-nuclear-power/

Andrew Blowers tackles this question in the January edition of Regional Life magazine

The mantra that nuclear technology ‘is essential for achieving national security, energy security and Net Zero targets’ proclaimed by the Government’s Nuclear Regulatory Task Force has become the unequivocal, if deeply flawed, basis for government policy. The Government has pledged to ‘turbo-charge the build-out of new nuclear power stations and enter a ‘golden era’ of nuclear power.

Standing in its way are ‘gold-plated’ regulations and community groups like BANNG committed to protecting local environments, ecology and human health. The Task Force Review report just published (December) asserts, entirely without supporting evidence, that ‘The primary barrier’ to revitalising nuclear’s role is ‘systemic failure within the regulatory framework’.

So, here we have a familiar confrontation between energy and economic growth on the one side and environmental protection on the other. We have been here before. Every decade or so a new nuclear revival is promised but, after much huffing and puffing very little materialises. At the beginning of the century Tony Blair declared new nuclear was back ‘with a vengeance. In 2011 eight sites, including Bradwell, were declared ‘potentially suitable’ for new nuclear power plants.

In the event, only one, Hinkley Point, materialised and has become notorious for being too late, promised for 2017 but unlikely to power up until the next decade. Its cost overruns have become legendary. According to the Government, the culprits are environmental regulations and campaign groups who insist that previously agreed audio fish deterrents (AFDs) must be installed to help save millions of fish from becoming entrained and entrapped in the colossal intake and outflow pipes going into the Severn estuary. The developer has prevaricated, proposing cheaper but environmentally destructive methods of abatement. Politicians, including Sir Keir Starmer, have mindlessly mocked the ADF as a ‘fish disco’. It makes one wonder how they might deride oysters from the Blackwater if they stood in the way of nuclear power at Bradwell.

It is not the regulators or we so-called ‘blockers’ who are the main impediment to nuclear. It is the systemic failure of the nuclear industry to produce viable projects such as the much-hyped but non-existent Small Nuclear Reactors; its predictable inability to prevent cost overruns or to meet deadlines; let alone its lack of credible ideas to deal adequately with risk, safety and the management of its dangerous and interminable wastes. Nuclear is an industry that is bound to fail.

Meanwhile the importance of regulations imposed by independent regulators designed to protect people and the environment cannot be overstressed. And the essential role of community groups and councils in seeking to ensure the environmental protection and health and wellbeing of the places they represent is something to be cherished, not denigrated. It is a pity the Government does not see it that way.

7 January 2026

Andrew Blowers tackles this question in the January edition of Regional Life magazine

The mantra that nuclear technology ‘is essential for achieving national security, energy security and Net Zero targets’ proclaimed by the Government’s Nuclear Regulatory Task Force has become the unequivocal, if deeply flawed, basis for government policy. The Government has pledged to ‘turbo-charge the build-out of new nuclear power stations and enter a ‘golden era’ of nuclear power.

Standing in its way are ‘gold-plated’ regulations and community groups like BANNG committed to protecting local environments, ecology and human health. The Task Force Review report just published (December) asserts, entirely without supporting evidence, that ‘The primary barrier’ to revitalising nuclear’s role is ‘systemic failure within the regulatory framework’.

So, here we have a familiar confrontation between energy and economic growth on the one side and environmental protection on the other. We have been here before. Every decade or so a new nuclear revival is promised but, after much huffing and puffing very little materialises. At the beginning of the century Tony Blair declared new nuclear was back ‘with a vengeance. In 2011 eight sites, including Bradwell, were declared ‘potentially suitable’ for new nuclear power plants.

In the event, only one, Hinkley Point, materialised and has become notorious for being too late, promised for 2017 but unlikely to power up until the next decade. Its cost overruns have become legendary. According to the Government, the culprits are environmental regulations and campaign groups who insist that previously agreed audio fish deterrents (AFDs) must be installed to help save millions of fish from becoming entrained and entrapped in the colossal intake and outflow pipes going into the Severn estuary. The developer has prevaricated, proposing cheaper but environmentally destructive methods of abatement. Politicians, including Sir Keir Starmer, have mindlessly mocked the ADF as a ‘fish disco’. It makes one wonder how they might deride oysters from the Blackwater if they stood in the way of nuclear power at Bradwell.

It is not the regulators or we so-called ‘blockers’ who are the main impediment to nuclear. It is the systemic failure of the nuclear industry to produce viable projects such as the much-hyped but non-existent Small Nuclear Reactors; its predictable inability to prevent cost overruns or to meet deadlines; let alone its lack of credible ideas to deal adequately with risk, safety and the management of its dangerous and interminable wastes. Nuclear is an industry that is bound to fail.

Meanwhile the importance of regulations imposed by independent regulators designed to protect people and the environment cannot be overstressed. And the essential role of community groups and councils in seeking to ensure the environmental protection and health and wellbeing of the places they represent is something to be cherished, not denigrated. It is a pity the Government does not see it that way.

January 13, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

Does Britain really need nuclear power?

Well, the answer was supplied in 2023 by the Rishi Sunak administration which admitted that the main reason for its continued eye-watering financial support for civil reactors was that they provided needed technical support and expertise for the government’s nuclear weapons programme.

Well, the answer was supplied in 2023 by the Rishi Sunak administration which admitted that the main reason for its continued eye-watering financial support for civil reactors was that they provided needed technical support and expertise for the government’s nuclear weapons programme.

   December 14, 2025 by beyondnuclearinternational

It doesn’t, but the link to nuclear weapons is the key driver, writes Ian Fairlie

In recent months, the government has continued to promote nuclear reactors. For example, the Energy Secretary is now asking GB Energy to assess sites to be used to host new nuclear reactors. And the Prime Minister continues to push for so-called Small Modular Reactors and has backed the US President’s wishful thinking of ‘a golden age of nuclear’.

But these announcements and proposals are mostly pie-in-the-sky statements and should be treated with a pinch (or more) of salt, as the reality is otherwise.

Let’s look at what is happening in the rest of the world. Last year, a record 582 GW of renewable energy generation capacity was added to the world’s supplies: almost no new nuclear was added.

Indeed, each year, new renewables add about 200 times more global electricity than new nuclear does.

Of course, there are powerful economic arguments for this. The main one is that the marginal (i.e. fuel) costs of renewable energy are close to zero, whereas nuclear fuel is extremely expensive. Nuclear costs – for both construction and generation – are very high and rising, and long delays are the norm. For example, the proposed Sizewell C nuclear station is now predicted to cost £47 billion, with the government and independent experts acknowledging even this estimate may rise significantly. The upshot is that new nuclear power means massive costs, a poisoned legacy to future generations, and whopping radioactive pollution.

Given these manifest disadvantages, independent commentators have questioned the government’s seeming obsession with nuclear power. It is not that nuclear provides a good solution to global warming: it doesn’t. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that renewables are now 10 times more efficient than new nuclear at CO2 mitigation.

It’s not that AI centres will need nuclear: the International Energy Agency expects data centres will cause a mere 10% of global electricity demand growth to 2030. And it forecasts that the renewables will supply 10 to 20 times the electricity required for data-centre growth, with Bloomberg NEF predicting a 100-fold renewables expansion.

As for so-called Small Modular Reactors, the inconvenient truth is that these designs are all just paper designs and are a long way off. They would also be more expensive to run than large reactors per kWh – the key parameter. And as the former Chair of the US government’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) says, SMRs will produce more chemical and radioactive waste per KW produced than large reactors.

Given a UK Treasury strapped for cash, the unsolved problem of radioactive nuclear waste, the spectre of nuclear proliferation, and it’s being a target in future wars, many wonder why the government is so fixated with nuclear power.

Well, the answer was supplied in 2023 by the Rishi Sunak administration which admitted that the main reason for its continued eye-watering financial support for civil reactors was that they provided needed technical support and expertise for the government’s nuclear weapons programme.

Here is CND’s look at those links between nuclear power and nuclear weapons:

Nuclear weapons and nuclear power share several common features and there is a danger that having more nuclear power stations in the world could mean more nuclear weapons.

The long list of links includes their histories, similar technologies, skills, health and safety aspects, regulatory issues and radiological research and development. For example, the process of enriching uranium to make it into fuel for nuclear power stations is also used to make nuclear weapons. Plutonium is a by-product of the nuclear fuel cycle and is still used by some countries to make nuclear weapons.

The long list of links includes their histories, similar technologies, skills, health and safety aspects, regulatory issues and radiological research and development. For example, the process of enriching uranium to make it into fuel for nuclear power stations is also used to make nuclear weapons. Plutonium is a by-product of the nuclear fuel cycle and is still used by some countries to make nuclear weapons.

There is a danger that more nuclear power stations in the world could mean more nuclear weapons. Because countries like the UK are promoting the expansion of nuclear power, other countries are beginning to plan for their own nuclear power programmes too. But there is always the danger that countries acquiring nuclear power technology may subvert its use to develop a nuclear weapons programme. After all, the UK’s first nuclear power stations were built primarily to provide fissile material for nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Nuclear materials may also get into the wrong hands and be used to make a crude nuclear device or a so-called ‘dirty bomb’.

The facts 

Some radioactive materials (such as plutonium-239 and uranium-235) spontaneously fission in the right configuration. That is, their nuclei split apart giving off very large amounts of energy. Inside a warhead, trillions of such fissions occur inside a small space within a fraction of a second, resulting in a massive explosion. Inside a nuclear reactor, the fissions are slower and more spread out, and the resulting heat is used to boil water, to make steam, to turn turbines which generate electricity.

However, the prime use of plutonium-239 and uranium-235, and the reason they were produced in the first place, is to make nuclear weapons.

Nuclear reactors are initially fuelled by uranium (usually in the form of metal-clad rods). Uranium is a naturally-occurring element like silver or iron and is mined from the earth. Plutonium is an artificial element created by the process of neutron activation in a reactor.

Nuclear secrecy 

The connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons have always been very close and are largely kept secret. Most governments take great pains to keep their connections well hidden.

The civil nuclear power industry grew out of the atomic bomb programme in the 1940s and the 1950s. In Britain, the civil nuclear power programme was deliberately used as a cover for military activities.

Military nuclear activities have always been kept secret, so the nuclear power industry’s habit of hiding things from the public was established right at its beginning, due to its close connections with military weapons.  For example, the atomic weapons facilities at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire, where British nuclear weapons are built and serviced, are still deleted from Ordnance Survey maps, leaving blank spaces.

It was under the misleading slogan of ‘Atoms for Peace’, that the Queen ceremonially opened what was officially described as Britain’s first nuclear power station, at Calder Hall in Cumbria, in 1956. The newsreel commentary described how it would produce cheap and clean nuclear energy for everyone.

This was untrue. Calder Hall was not a civil power station. It was built primarily to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. The electricity it produced was a by-product to power the rest of the site.

Fire at Windscale piles………………………………………………………………..

Subsidising the arms industry

The development of both the nuclear weapons and nuclear power industries is mutually beneficial.  Scientists from Sussex University confirmed this once again in 2017, stating that the government is using the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to subsidise Trident, Britain’s nuclear weapons system.

As part of a Parliamentary investigation into the Hinkley project, it emerged that without the billions of pounds ear-marked for building this new power station in Somerset, Trident would be ‘unsupportable’. Professor Andy Stirling and Dr Phil Johnstone argued that the nuclear power station will ‘maintain a large-scale national base of nuclear-specific skills’ essential for maintaining Britain’s military nuclear capability.

This could explain why Prime Minister Theresa May continues to support subsidising a project which looks set to cost the taxpayer billions. Subsidies which go to an industry which still can’t support itself sixty years after it was first launched.

What to do with the radioactive waste?

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….The safe, long-term storage of nuclear waste is a problem that is reaching crisis point for both the civil nuclear industry and for the military.

During the Cold War years of the 1950s and 1960s, the development of the British atomic bomb was seen as a matter of urgency. Dealing with the mess caused by the production, operating and even testing of nuclear weapons was something to be worried about later, if at all.

For example, the Ministry of Defence does not really have a proper solution for dealing with the highly radioactive hulls of decommissioned nuclear submarines, apart from storing them for many decades. As a result, 19 nuclear-powered retired submarines are still waiting to be dismantled, with more expected each year. Yet Britain goes on building these submarines………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Reprocessing…………………………………………………………………………

Terrorism

A major objection to reprocessing is that the plutonium produced has to be carefully guarded in case it is stolen. Four kilos is enough to make a nuclear bomb. Perhaps even more worrying, it does not have to undergo fission to cause havoc: a conventional explosion of a small amount would also cause chaos. A speck of plutonium breathed into the lungs can cause cancer. If plutonium dust were scattered by dynamite, for example, thousands of people could be affected and huge areas might have to be evacuated for decades.

Conclusion

The many connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons are clear. Nuclear power has obvious dangers and its production must be stopped. We need a safe, genuinely sustainable, global and green solution to our energy needs, not a dangerous diversion like nuclear power. CND will continue to campaign to stop new nuclear power stations from being built, as well as for an end to nuclear weapons.

Ian Fairlie is an independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/12/14/does-britain-really-need-nuclear-power/

December 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

Severn Estuary Interests Group responds to Nuclear Review (Fingleton Report) challenging misleading environmental narrative

Friday 5 December 2025, https://www.somersetwildlife.org/news/severn-estuary-interests-group-responds-nuclear-review-fingleton-report-challenging-misleading

The Nuclear Review, or Fingleton Report, calls for a radical reset of Britain’s approach to nuclear regulation and potentially to National Strategic Infrastructure Projects as a whole.

The report and surrounding reporting and commentary perpetuates the damaging government narrative that environmental protections are preventing development. 

The original government decision was to build a power station on one of the most highly protected ecological sites in the UK and Europe. The Severn Estuary is both a Special Area of Conservation and a Special Protection Area – a globally significant habitat supporting vast populations of migratory fish, internationally important bird species, and diverse invertebrate communities.

The impact of the nuclear power station on these important and vulnerable habitats and species will be immense and will continue for 70 years. HPC will extract the equivalent of one Olympic-sized swimming pool every 12 seconds, force it through the reactor system at high velocity, and then discharge it back into the estuary significantly heated. The idea that these impacts are trivial is pure misinformation. 

The data cited in the Nuclear (Fingleton) Report is inaccurate. It is data collected in relation to Hinkley Point B, an older and now decommissioned nuclear power station, and extrapolated for HPC. The designs of these power stations are not the same.

The data ignore fish behaviour in the estuary resulting in assumptions that much lower numbers will be impacted than the reality. The importance of the estuary for fish spawning is largely ignored and juveniles that can’t be counted but will be sucked through the cooling system. The impact on species and habitats will be extremely damaging in a Special Protection Area and Special Area of Conservation.

It is also important to place current claims about cost increases in a proper context. Hinkley Point C was originally expected to be operational in 2017 at a cost of £18 billion. It is now projected for 2031 at a cost of £46 billion. EDF itself has attributed these enormous delays and overruns to inflation, Brexit, Covid, civil-engineering challenges, and an extended electromechanical phase. Given the scale of these industry-driven issues, it is frankly unworthy to mock those seeking to uphold the legal requirement for EDF to install an acoustic fish deterrent on the enormous cooling-water intakes. 

The real issue here is the developer’s approach, not the environmental regulations that function to protect nature. EDF devised the mitigation measures themselves, rejecting offers of collaboration from local experts. This, as with the notorious HS2 bat-tunnel debacle – has inflated costs precisely because expert ecological advice was not incorporated early enough. The continuing narrative that environmental safeguards are the “blocker”, or that only “a few individual animals” benefit from mitigation or compensation, is a deliberate and politically convenient distortion of the evidence. 

Simon Hunter, CEO of Bristol Avon Rivers Trust said: “When developers fail to consult meaningfully, ignore local expertise, and attempt to sidestep environmental safeguards, costs rise and nature pays the price. Many countries would never have permitted a development of this scale in such a sensitive location in the first place. The situation at HPC is not an indictment of environmental protection, but of poor planning, weak accountability, and a persistent willingness to blame nature for the consequences of human decisions.” 
 
Georgia Dent, CEO of Somerset Wildlife Trust said: “The government seems to have adopted a simple, reductive narrative that nature regulations are blocking development, and this is simply wrong. To reduce destruction of protected and vulnerable marine habitat to the concept of a ‘fish disco’ is deliberately misleading and part of a propaganda drive from government. Nature in the UK is currently in steep decline and the government has legally binding targets for nature’s recovery, and is failing massively in this at the moment. To reduce the hard-won protections that are allowing small, vulnerable populations of species to cling on for dear life is absolutely the wrong direction to take. A failing natural world is a problem not just for environmental organisations but for our health, our wellbeing, our food, our businesses and our economy. There is no choice to be made; in order for us to have developments and economic growth we must protect and restore our natural world. As we have said all along in relation to HPC, how developers interpret and deliver these environmental regulations is something that can improve, especially if they have genuine, meaningful and – most importantly – early collaboration with local experts.” 

The Severn Estuary Interests Group, a collaboration of organisations that prioritise the health and resilience of the estuary for nature and people, is able to say based on decades of experience, that the environmental rules and regulations are not the reason EDF have found themselves spending an alleged £700m on fish protection measures. The Fingleton Report and subsequent reporting has failed to acknowledge some important points with regard to the building of Hinkley Point C: 

December 9, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment