In past months and years, the British Government launched consultations to address the dilemma facing British Industry around the planning process and the criteria for siting and locating nuclear energy plants.
Much has been said about the proposed changes to the planning system that will be heralded in by EN7 allowing for major infrastructure to be subject to a completely refreshed planning process from 2026 onwards.
The 2023/24 consultation set out the following as part of its intention:
“We now need to produce a new nuclear NPS, not only to provide an effective planning framework beyond 2025 but also to take advantage of the advanced nuclear technologies that will come onstream and provide the flexibility needed to meet the UK’s nuclear ambitions. EN-6 will continue to be an important and relevant consideration in any planning process for projects at the sites listed in EN-6, as well as amendments to DCOs for projects that were consented under EN-6, when the new NPS is designated.”
So, this new nuclear National Planning Statement (NPS) is intended to cater for the new nuclear technologies and take advantage of the opportunity to allow nuclear energy to be a fundamental part of the UK’s energy approach. The reforms as they materialise have to be looked at in the context that the existing nuclear sites in the UK were designated following a nomination process in 2006-2008 based on the technology characteristics of onsite fabrication, assembly and construction of GW-scale reactors. The selection criteria were largely risk-based and for the purpose of this discussion paper, the risk criteria considered were the historic radiation emission risks from an incident causing a release of ionised vapour from a PWR technology.
As the statement quoted suggests, the new NPS EN7 will look at the DCO process for existing and newly designated nuclear sites. In this paper I start to look at what that actually means. On one reading this is simply a consultation on how the DCO process can be improved through a new NPS to address some of the shortcomings of the existing NPS. I question whether this helps the objective of enabling new nuclear technologies to come onstream and provide the flexibility needed to meet the UK’s nuclear ambitions. Others are considering and have written recently about the issues around the consenting process under DCO provisions, and I do not consider those to any material extent here.
If the ambition is to utilise the planning system to enable expedited delivery of nuclear power plant on existing nuclear sites, the objective of having an NPS which refines the existing processes and accelerates the consents achievable, may meet the need of the ambition.
If, however, the ambition is to use the timeline available to replace the existing fossil fuel and gas generation systems with a mixed generation where base load and flexibility are provided by nuclear energy, different criteria apply. The location of nuclear power plants close to industry, allowing nuclear power plants to supply under private contract to industry and not to grid, and locating advanced (GEN IV)nuclear power plants close to conurbations and centres of population, are all issues that are in the minds of the advanced nuclear technology providers, no matter what stage in the technology approval process they are.
It is imperative that these GEN IV and SMR technologies are not treated as the same because SMR technology is almost exclusively based on existing PWR nuclear technology that is proven and operates throughout multiple jurisdictions. The 440 or so existing PWR and similar technology reactors provide around 9% of the world’s energy supply.
You can read the full report here.
